Yucatan

On to Palenque >

December 22nd, 2004 It Begins... Days 0-2

Arrive Cancun,

Cancun -Playa Del Carmen (about 70k),

Playa Del Carmen to Tulum (about 65, 70K)

Somehow, both me and my bike have managed to arrive in one piece, undamaged.

On the plane I sat in between two very sweet people, Laurie and Victor. Laurie offered me a place to stay in Playa Del Carmen, Victor gave me tons of phone numbers of his siblings who live throughout Mexico.

The first problem was getting my huge bike box to Cancun and finding a place to stay. Victor helped me out as I assembled my bike in the airport (for all of you who know how mechanically inept I am, let me repeat that: I assembled a bicycle!), and we tried to fit it into his nephew´s car, but it was like trying to fit four people, tons of baggage and a bicycle into a car the size of the volkswagon beetle. Victor accompanied me to the van-stand where he convinced the van driver to drive me into Cancun city.

Cancun is divided into two areas: a long stretch of island with the big-name resorts, and the downtown, "Mexican Cancun" with cheap places to stay and eat. As soon as I got dropped off somewhere in the middle of Mexican Cancun I realized just how poor my Spanish is. No worries, though, because I´m a pro at the pidgin-English mime game...

Since the Lonely Planet Mexico guidebook weighs about five tons, I cut out the pages dealing with Northern Mexico and Baja California. The owner looked surprised enough to see me leave on a fully-loaded bicyle at 6 am ("No regresa?") but he must´ve been real confused when he found the slashed Lonely Planet pages scattered on my bed...

My first day I rode from Cancun south to Playa Del Carmen - supposedly about 70km. Oddly my cyclecomputer only read 39km, so either its secretly counting in miles, broken, or all the maps and street signs saying 70km are completely wrong. I was so scared that I´d be out of shape and overexerting myself or get heat stroke or something that I rode dead-slow. Maybe I´m not out of shape, or maybe its just easy to ride 70k with 30lbs of weight (or maybe my cyclecomputer was right) because it wasn´t so bad. The road was flat and unscenic, but definitely much less ghetto than some of the roads Nadja and I have biked outside of Boston. I stopped in some Mexican village to buy sunscreen which for some reason cost almost $20. I´m still not sure why sunscreen costs so much in Mexico. Anyway Playa del Carmen was nice: white beaches, green water, more chilled out than Cancun but still swarming with rich American tourists and therefore quite expensive.

Today I rode about 70k from Playa to Tulum, again my cyclecomputer read only 40km. It was pretty windy, too - it sucks when you´re pedalling furiously and suddenly realize that walking would just be much faster. Mexicans I´ve met along the way keep saying that its a "bit cold," not that cold, but just slightly colder weather than they´re used to. I generally listen to comments like that with a red face and sweat streaming down my face. It´s gotta be like 80, 90 degrees with a very high humidity.

I´ve been having minor problems with the front gearshift, nothing major. An Australian guy at the hostel tried to fix it, but apparently some piece is bent, so I took it to a local bike mechanic. It was a pretty frustrating half-hour because he seemed to know what was wrong but I couldn´t understand his Spanish. Then he thought I couldn´t understand the gear numbers (uno, dos, tres) so he ran and got the dictionary and pointed out that uno is one, etc... I ended up paying him a dollar, leaving, and cursing myself for not trying harder in Spanish class.

Flats: 0

Men with large guns: 0

Dead yellow birds on the roadside: 27

Epiphanies:

1) Bicycle riding = lots of free time to think

2) Cliff Bars are good.

3) If I get off my bicycle for a couple minutes, the blood starts flowing to my butt again.

4) When sweat drips into your eyes, it burns.

Things I wondered about:

a) How did all those yellow birds die?

b) What is the liquid that I seem to get sprayed with everytime a truck passes by? Diesel? Water? Urine?

December 24th, 2004 - A Long Day

Day 4: Tulum - Valladolid 113 km

Before this trip, the longest I´d ever cycled in one day was 60 miles in a day (without panniers!) and even then I nearly passed out. That was after an entire summer of riding.
So I set a personal record today - biking over 65 miles, with 30 pounds of weight, in the suffocating heat. I think I drank almost 10 liters of water.
The first 46k was great: I passed through small villages, lots of friendly kids, etc... visited Mayan ruins at Coba, checked out some crocodiles in a nearby lake.
Next 30km were hard - there was nothing to look at, just the same flat road and the same scrub/jungle the whole way, and the sun was killer. My face is sunburned except for a stark white stripe across my nose where my sunglasses are. It looks awesome.
So as I´m biking through the middle of nowhere, I see two cyclists with panniers coming down the road. Turns out they´re from Boston and were riding from Boston - Argentina, they´d been on the road for four months.
I took a break and talked to a Mexican family whose car had broken down on the way to Cancun. After about 80km I was stopping every 10k for food and water, and the last 10k to Valladolid there were villages on the side so it was a bit easier.

Valladolid is my favorite city so far. The colonial buildings are painted bright colors of red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink. The houses have these gigantic doors and windows, which they usually leave open - it adds to the small town feel. You walk down the street and can see into everyones dining room. Its the kinda place where people don´t lock their bikes (I felt like an uptight asshole for locking mine up), where people gather in the town square every night to listen to that evening´s musical performance, where adults and children spend their day chatting on benches in one of the many parks. Totally chill and laid back.
Walking down the main street the next morning, I saw a Mexican Santa, a Mexican Sponge-Bob, and five other characters all dancing in the street - it was a pre-Christmas show for the kids. Valladolid rocks.

December 26, 2004 - Hace Mucho Viento (Its Very Windy)

Day 4: Valladolid - Chichen Itza (53 km)
Day 5: Chichen Itza - Merida (120 km)
Day 6: Rest Day - Flamingoes!

Where does wind come from? How you do make it stop?

Day 4: Valladolid - Chichen
Checked out Cenote Dtzinup on the way. Cenotes are these cool underground limestone caves full of water. Chased by my first dog today. I was riding past a boy and his dog and said "Ola!" The cute little boy smiled at me, then turned his dog´s head toward me as if to say ¨Look, a bicycle!¨ and of course the dog went totally apeshit and chased after me for awhile. Luckily I was faster.
Stayed in a real sketchy hotel that night. After selling me on a dirty room, the owner, a short older guy, said Feliz Navidad (Merry christmas) and leaned in to give me this weird bearhug(I firmly pushed him away) and invited me out for a beer.
Firstly, I was so wet with sweat that you´d have to be insane to even get near me, Secondly, you don´t give hugs to people you´ve just met whether its Christmas or not, Thirdly, Dec 24 is ¨family night¨ for Mexicans, you don´t go out for a beer with your hotel guest.

Day 5 started off well: I got up early and went to see some of the most famous Mayan Ruins at Chichen Itza. It was really nice to have a bike - I got there before everyone, and had the entire site to myself and was the only one atop El Castillo, this giant pyramid in the middle of the ruins. Truly brilliant.
Then it was off to Merida... still going well... cruised through Mayan villages under the cloudy sky (a relief from the sun!!) and rode into a refreshing storm with mild winds.
After 50k, the wind got crazy! Each kilometer was excruciatingly difficult. Just when I thought it couldn´t get any worse, the wind picked up - slowing me to 10k/hr - and I had to struggle just to keep up that pace. But of course I was 70k from my destination and it was already late so I had no choice but to pedal onward...
(The next day I found out that Celestun, the nearest coastal town, experienced hurricane-strength winds. I was probably getting the tail-end of those winds.)
For four torturous, frustrating hours I considered giving up (families were pulling over and offering me rides to Merida) but was determined to beat the wind and arrive in Merida by bike, however long it took me.
It couldn´t get any worse, right?
Then I heard barking, looked in my mirror to see a dog coming after me - not the bicycle-friendly village dogs either, I wasn´t near a village. I pedalled like hell; luckily the dog stopped at what I figured was his territory-line or something.
4pm, and I still had 50k left.
Luckily, when I hit the road again, the wind had let up slightly.
About 25km away from Merida it got dark, so I whipped out my bike-lights. There was a large shoulder and not much traffic, and drivers gave me space. I finally arrived in Merida, exhausted, at 7:30 pm - renourished myself with beer, pizza, and cigarettes.

Day 6: Flamingos.
Gave my ass a break today and visited the estuary at Celestun, on the Gulf Coast. Took a motorboat through the estuary, where we saw herons, pelicans, egrets and flamingos. The flamingoes were the best: there were just hundreds of them, and the boat got really close. Went through a cool mangrove forest also.
It was my first day as a ¨tourist¨ - I arranged a cheap tour through a hostel. I see so much more on my bike, and on the tour van or with a tour group you can´t have a real conversation with Mexicans. Although they undoubtedly think I´m crazy on my bicycle, they´re still open to conversation and super-friendly.
Having a tour guide was good because I was able to find out lots of things I was wondering about (like the meaning of some street signs). Those little yellow birds I saw on the roadside were orioles, and the reason they were all dead was because they fly really low - straight into traffic. I learned that snakes can somehow jump and bite people riding bicycles, and there are lots of snakes in the Yucatan - also lots of foxes, apparently.

My mission now: to eat an armadillo. The tour guide, Enrique, said he ate one once south of Merida, which is where I´m headed.

Flats: 0
Men with guns: 0
Things I wondered about: 1) If a dog did catch up to me, what would it do? Bite me? Maim me? Can dogs (aside from dingos) kill people?
2) The fucking wind.

Oh yeah, and I´d also always thought that people who developed strange attachments to objects (like cars) were a little odd. I´m not waxing my bike or anything but I´m starting to get a little bit attached. Weird, I know.

December 29, 2004 - George W. Bush's face

Day 7 Merida - Uxmal 97 km
Day 8 Uxmal - Hopelchen 73 km
Day 9 Hopelchen - Campeche 96 km

Day 7:

Ran over my first carcass today - a bird's. It crunched. (Mugur, I thought how'd you see that roadkill and probably be happy that you had meat for dinner.)
Today I was supposed to encounter hills, but they were more like little mounds. I made excellent time, arriving at the Uxmal ruins by noon. These ruins were my favorite so far: probably because they covered such a huge area.
I was taking a picture of these small stone phalluses with the amusing sign reading ¨Do Not Sit¨ when I felt pinches all over my legs and looked down to find tons of red ants crawling all over me. Brought back fond memories of Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, when these kids led me off into some jungle area and I accidentally walked into a tree full of giant red ants. I looked utterly ridiculous then, hopping around and trying to swat at the ants crawling on my back. At least this time, they didn´t get UNDER my clothes.

Uxmal was real touristy and as I was loading up my panniers outside the entrance, a woman dressed like she was going to a cocktail party was laughing and pointing at me and saying something about "bicicleta." I figured it wasn't worth it to get into a fight (though I wanted to) so instead I just went up to her with my camera - real close - laughed, pointed, and made a show of taking her picture in front of everyone on line. That sufficiently disturbed her.
Slept in a beautiful place that night - in the Mayan village of Santa Elena, at Hotel Sacbe.

Day 8: Uxmal - Hopelchen

I know I'm getting a good breakfast when my omelet perfectly fits the shape of the plate and my butter is a perfect cube, served on a separate platter. Add to that real coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, etc... I was in heaven.
The friendly owners of Hotel Sacbe informed me that there was musuem in town that contained mummies (¨mommies,¨ as they called 'em). Apparently, during renovations on the town church, workers had discovered about a dozen partially preserved children under the floorboards (I'm still not clear on why they buried people under the church floor). It was eery seeing mummies of such small kids.
Today was quite exhausting, too: lots of small hills. Lost my breath a couple times.

Day 9:

Since leaving Merida, Day 7, I've been in decidedly less-friendly territory (¨friendly¨ is a complex algorithm that integrates smiles, waves, and reciprocal Olas or Buenas Dias). I've been dissed so many times that I stopped saying hello.
I'm in hickville, too: everyone here wears cowboy hats and boots.
Oddly, in Hopelchen there was a whole crew of blond-hair, blue-eyed hicks who mingled with the rest of the Mexicans but spoke a different language amongst themselves, possibly German. I know Germans immigrated to this area a long time ago, but I thought they'd all left. As I'm writing this, it occurs to me that I should've asked them. Oh well.
Got pulled over by a policeman today. Turns out he was just being friendly but I think I have a fear of all policemen, and especially those in foreign countries, that I will never be able to shake.
Now I'm in the colonial city of Campeche right on the Gulf Coast. I'm skipping about a week of my planned route: Campeche - Villahermosa. The two Boston - Argentian cyclists I met told me it wasn't safe, so they skipped it; and an Australian who hitchhiked Mexico said he had some sketchy encounters in that area.

But first I go to Palenque, to see some more ruins, than to Villahermosa, where I start my attempt at the mountains of Chiapas. I thought of strategy: George W Bush's face never fails to get me angry. If I picture his face every time I encounter a steep incline, my adrenaline will start pumping and hopefully help me to the top of the mountain.

Flats: 0 (Amazing - I think my tires have some kind of kevlar lining.)
Men with large guns: 0 (Unless you count the policeman)
Carcasses ran over: 1 snake, 1 bird
Animals spotted: vultures, butterflies, blue jays, rabbits, snakes (2), a monkey, DOGS, a tarantula, cows, pigs, chickens, geckos, lizards

Observations:
1) If people are laughing at you, laugh with them. That way it feels like you're all sharing in some mysterious private joke.
2) Mexicans and Indians (as in the ones from India) are opposites, at least in terms of staring. Indians will stare at me, open-jawed and drooling, even if I scream at them. Mexicans, on the other hand, are hyper-aware of staring and are talented at quickly averting their eyes. For example, if I´m looking downward and I know a Mexican man is staring at me, if I move my head in the slightest motion he´ll look away.