Day 29: Sahagun to Cosamaloapan

241 miles

After setbacks on day 26 and 27 I am glad to say that I feel like I am back to normal. Today was a great day on the bike. My body feels fantastic and my headspace is in a good spot once again. My big day today helped propel me out of, the heavily populated Mexico City sprawl that seemed to stretch on for over 100 miles each way. Once I passed Puebla, the roads calmed down considerably, then past Cordoba the roads got even quieter. I am now out of the high mountains of Mexico and I once again feel that I am entering a new era of my journey, even though I am yet to leave Mexico.

I got my normal 3 AM wake up time down. I was rolling before 4 AM, but I wasn’t rolling for long. About 200 feet out of the motel parking lot I got a front flat. So much for my tubeless set up in the front, that lasted all of about 150 miles. I threw in a tube and was on my way. I had added on about 5 km to get to a hotel last night. Normally I never would’ve considered adding mileage on and instead would’ve just camped, but the cold rain had me wanting a hotel and I hadn’t seen any good camping spots anyways. The side road I was on was torn to pieces. It was one of the roughest roads I’ve ever ridden. I wasn’t at all surprised to get a flat. It was a little chilly in the dark 53° mist. Luckily, I was working up a gradual climb. By the time the clouds started to lighten up from the rising sun I was up at 8,900 feet. Every time I thought the climb was topping out, it would pitch back up. I knew it wouldn’t get over 10,000 feet, but I was still quite surprised to see the road get up to 9,000. I was thoroughly encompassed by thick clouds and couldn’t see anything which was a bummer because I knew there were huge volcanoes all around me. Mount Orizaba is the tallest mountain in Mexico and third tallest in North America at over 18,000 feet, clocking in behind Denali and Canada’s Mt. Logan—of which I of course saw Denali while in Alaska and while I couldn’t quite see Mt. Logan, I was very close to it through Kluane National Park on Day 6. Orizaba is the second most prominent volcano in the world behind Kilimanjaro! I had a long descent into a quite large town, Tlaxcala City, before turning east towards Puebla. I was certainly far from the desert now. The vegetation was lush and bountiful. There were pine trees and a lot of species that I am unfamiliar with. I expected desert all the way to the Guatemalan border. I think it will turn back to desert when I get into Tabasco State, but I’m not sure. When I rode through Tabasco in the spring, it certainly looked like a desert, but that was at the end of the dry season after a horrible drought. Now it is the peak of the rainy season and things may look a lot different. Getting through Puebla was a bit of a mess. There was a ton of traffic and the shoulder wasn’t always the best. Luckily for me, Volcán Orizaba briefly poked out from the clouds which made my day. It was the only mountain I saw all day, everything else stayed in the clouds. When I first saw the volcano, I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. The photos simply do not do it justice. This thing rises straight up from a sea of development quite literally into the clouds. The top several thousand feet were coated in snow, something I wasn’t totally expecting to see. I knew Mexico City had large volcanoes around, but before this trip, I didn’t realize they were 18,000 feet tall. It makes sense that there was snow up there if it was 50° at 9,000 feet, then 9,000 feet higher at 18,000 feet it makes would be roughly 30° cooler. It would be pretty awesome and easy climb. It didn’t look glaciated, more like snow fields. I wonder how often it’s skied? That would be incredible; skiing in Mexico. Perhaps the only more unique place than that would be skiing the volcanoes of Ecuador (Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Cayambe, etc. All 18,000-20,000ft) on the equator or Mauna Kea in Hawaii (14,000 ft). I stayed on the main perimeter highway around Puebla, taking a straight shot on the north side. It took about two hours to work from one side of the congestion to the other, but I made good speed during these miles and was happy to come out on the other side of Puebla on a significantly quieter road. I had dropped a bit in elevation down to 7,000 feet. I knew I would end the day at sea level. There have been squiggly lines on the map between Puebla and Orizaba that I have been eyeing down for days. Just looking at the map you can tell that there is a huge descent. I knew that it would have to be at least 4,000 or 5,000 feet in one go. Out of Puebla I started climbing again and eventually got back up over 8,000 feet. I stopped right before the descent for a first lunch at around 11:30. There really wasn’t any food of substance, so I just got some drinks and empty calories worth of crackers and headed on my way. As promised, there was a fantastic descent out of the mountains. The plateau dropped away into a deep Canyon, Cañón del Rio Blanca. For 15 miles the road descended at a 4% average gradient. This should’ve been a fun descent, but the road was incredibly pothole, so I was on edge the entire time. I also had a pretty brutal headwind coming straight up the canyon. However what it lacked in riding quality it made up for in beauty. Clouds obscured everything over 8000 feet, but that left great sloping Canyon walls that seemingly rose forever into the clouds. As I descended, I figured it would get more arid, but it actually got more and more wet. by the time I was down to 4,000 feet so the lush green canyon walls bolted to the sky in unrestrained exuberance. It felt like I was in a box with clouds overhead, the valley floor below, and nearly vertical walls on all sides as the canyon twisted and turned through the chaotic jumble of mountains. In Orizaba I was surprised to see that I was completely surrounded by jungle. Impenetrable forest on all sides with vines and over arching trees all along the roadway. The descent continued and the road got incredibly busy with traffic flowing between Cordoba and Orizaba. There was absolutely no shoulder and I was left to fend for myself on the main road. It started raining a bit too, which definitely was not ideal.

I tried to blittz my way out of Orizaba and Cordoba as fast as possible, which was made difficult by the headwind. I was able to get through uneventfully in the end and reworded myself with a stop for some real food. I found a little restaurant right next to a gas station. Just what I needed. I ordered my food and then went into the gas station for chocolate milk and a variety of other drinks. As I ate my burrito and fried plantains, I made some new friends who were fascinated by my ride. They sat down at my table and bombarded me with questions about where I was going, where I’d been, and how I like life in the United States. My food was absolutely fantastic. Fried plantains are one of my favorites and I’ve never had them prepared this way with cheese and milk. The milk was quite sweet, which was a great compliment to the crispy plantains. My friends watched me eat and were thrilled at my appetite and the almost rude ferocity and velocity at which I stuffed my face. I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing so I dove into the chili pepper on the side of the plate. I wanted to be a good gringo and finish all of my food, even the picante stuff. I figured if there was a huge pepper on the plate it wouldn’t be that hot since it looked like it was meant to be eaten alone. I was mistaken. I ate about half of it in three big bites before the heat hit me. I realized I’d made a pretty big mistake immediately. Luckily I had a whole liter of chocolate milk with me and a liter of water as well as a latte drink and a yogurt smoothie. I tried to play it cool and just act like I was drinking them to rehydrate. I was fighting for my life trying to keep my composure while questions kept raining down on me. I think they could tell that I wasn’t doing so well with the heat, which was funny for both them and me. By the end of my lunch break word had gotten around the parking lot that the gringo was a bit loco and my journey attracted some attention.  I took no less than eight pictures with different people before I could get out of the parking lot, including a few with secret-not-so-secrete admirers. Sorry ladies, I don’t think Jadin would be super stoked if I moved to Peñuela, Mexico. I also racked  up quite a few new social media followers. I shared my website, but nobody spoke English so they just kinda laughed at the pictures. Anyways, if any of you guys are reading this, thank you for making my day :) That was a fun lunch stop. After rolling out of lunch feeling about 10 pounds heavier but boosted by my high spirits, I continued southeast. I was under 500 feet of elevation and it was hot and humid. It was hard to believe that I’d been up at 9,000 feet this morning with arm warmers and gloves on. Now my jersey was unzipped and sweat was pouring off me. The desert heat is fine, it’s manageable. I had a couple hundred degree days, but I didn’t really felt like they affected me. Now that I’m in the tropics–I did pass the tropic of cancer on day 26–it’s not quite as hot as it was in the United States, but the humidity makes it much worse. Everything gets really clammy and sticky and nothing dries out. It’ll take a couple days to get used to for sure. There are a lot of little annoying things about always being wet. For starters, it heightens my risk of rashes, saddle sores, and painful trench foot. It also makes it harder to regulate my body temperature, obviously, which results in a lot more sweating than I would be doing in the dry heat. Even if it doesn’t rain, I am literally dripping wet from my own sweat. An inconvenient side effect of this is that my phone is rendered basically unusable while riding. My hands are too clammy touch the screen and the phone, being in my back pocket, is covered in sweat so the camera lens gets all foggy, and the touchscreen refuses to work. It’s not that big of a deal in theory since I shouldn’t be on my phone while I’m riding anyways, but I absolutely love to take pictures while I’m riding. I like living in the moment, but I know that a lot of the things I’m seeing will be forgotten if I don’t capture them in photos or words. It’s essentially impossible to take a photo unless I stop to get a cloth out of my bag to wipe off my phone and my hands. Coming out of the mountains I felt like I was in a completely new place. The jungle made it feel like a completely new country. The architecture changes a little bit, obviously the trees and agriculture and everything that goes with that changes a lot. With all these changes there is also a cultural shift. It really felt like I was in central America. I almost am; I think I will get to Guatemala in about two days of riding. I have found that while not completely unpleasant, Mexicans have not been as outgoing as many of the people I met in the jungles of Central America. The drivers in Mexico certainly have been rude, but most of the people on the side of the road have been more apathetic than anything else. Through Guatemala, I have fond memories of people waving and kids chasing me. That hasn’t really happened here and I’m excited to get back to that. I saw a little bit of that this afternoon in the jungles that I was passing through, but I was still limited access highway, so there weren’t a bunch of people around. That’s the beautiful thing about getting away from these highways of Mexico. I’ve been skirting the cities and staying on these concrete lines that completely erase all the culture. The further into Central America I get the more I will be on smaller roads that go straight through small towns and population centers.

There there were no towns of note this afternoon. Soon there will be more roadside vendors, motorcycles, pedestrians, and people on the side of the road to interact with. This will all help reduce some of the alienation that I have felt here in Mexico. The last 60 miles of my ride I left behind the true jungle in favor of flat coastal plaines covered in lazy winding rivers and lakes and  marshes. I was on a limited access two lane divided highway that cut straight through the landscape. There wasn’t all that much to see so I just put my head down and rode. There were absolutely no people around. There were no towns to speak of. The road would stay smooth for a while and then fall into utter disrepair. It was completely chopped up and potholed in spots which made it very dangerous and hard to get into a rhythm. The closer I got to my hotel the more roadwork there was. The two lanes would funnel into one over and over. There was consistent trucker traffic and they would always get mad to be stuck behind me, so I would let one truck go and then just sit its draft. Since the speed limit through construction zones was 30-40kph it was easy to ride with the trucks. This seemed to make them even more mad, the fact that I could keep up with. Even though the riding was quite boring and the humidity was throwing me for a loop, I maintained very high spirits all day. I’m very happy to be feeling strong again both mentally and physically. My bike seems to be working alright. My rear shifter is very finicky, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any worse. I can only hope that it will hold until Panama, I believe it will. Today was a great start to what I hope to be a strong push to Panama City. I had a lot of descending on the day, but I still logged good mileage and I don’t think that the descending actually helped my speed that much because it was relatively slow descending. I’d be very happy to lock in to 200 to 220 mile days from here until Panama City. That would absolutely blow my pre-trip expectations out of the water. Over the past 29 days that is now just what I expect of myself, but Central America certainly will provide new challenges, foremost of which will be the weather. Still, I feel confident in my ability and excited to get into my next phase.

I arrived at my hotel shortly after dark and for the second night in a row I was a little bit shocked at how weird my room was. Everything was totally normal except for a random stripper pole on the corner. Maybe next time they could invest in air-conditioning instead of a stripper pole. No complaints though. I paid $15 for the room and a cold coke. I locked Le Revè—the name I have bestowed to my bike, French for “the dream”—to the pole and headed off to sleep. I always lock my bike at night and I figured the pole was just as good of a place as anywhere else. I think my bike is feeling a little self conscious with her mismatching wheels. She isn’t nearly as beautiful anymore. It’s good to see her getting some confidence back on the pole.