FOG

There has been soooooo much fog in my life these last couple of days, and rain, always rain.  I´ve noticed that all of my photos have been a little blurry, and it´s all because of the fog.  It sticks to the lense and sticks to my body.  It pours into the valleys and then just leaves again.  Giant clouds of fog descend on my bike and follow me through the mountains clouding my vision, clouding my brain. Today I came zipping down a mountain from Tlanchinol with the footprint of my tent wrapped around me to keep my legs dry from the rain and fog.  I should have brought some rain pants.  Luckily the hood of my rain coat comes over my helmet to keep me nice and dry from my head to my waist.  A dry core.  That´s the most important thing right?  Yesterday I rode hard through a fog that was so thick I could barely see my front wheel.  I attached my headlamp on the blink setting to the back of my bike because it´s seriously bright and I needed some sort of protection from the busses and trucks.  Some things I´ve learned:  you can go real far in a short time.  Sometimes 4 kilometers feels like a death sentence.  And don´t get thrown off by the honking cars, you´re not doing anything wrong, they just think you´re cute or crazy.  So far everything has been really damn awesome and I don´t think I could have picked a better route.  It´s gorgeous and full of surprises.  Tomorrow I head to Xilitla to see a really neat surrealistic castle in the jungle.  Super super amped!

Near Lolotla

Coacuilco

San Cristóbal, Eloxochitlan, and Molango

The bike is fixed!!!! And I´m on the road again!!!  Yesterday I left San Cristóbal and the amazing family that fed me and helped me out for a few days, and took off to the mountains for Eloxochitlan.  It was raining and the road across the valley was totally mud mud muddy and it took 2 hours just to slog through it.  I finally hit the carretera and went rose up into the clouds.  3 or 4 hours of huge mountains and cold rain later I arrived cold, wet, and hungry to the town in the clouds.  I asked around for a restaurant and was directed to a house that was a quai restaurant.  They fed me caldo con carnitas y unas torillias bien calientes, un cafe, y frijol.  Oh gosh was it good.  It was getting late, around 3, which doesn´t sound all that late but when you´re looking for a place to sleep it´s good to get there before dark.  They directed me to a place where rooms were for rent, but there were none available.  I explained that I only needed a tiny space for my tent, and they put me up in a back room that was full of power tools, but it had a bed.  I slept like a baby.  In the morning I got my things together and headed out, the room ended up being free.  Breakfast at the restaurant house, an exchange of info, and some delicious gorditas later and I was on the road again to Molango. It took 3 hours slowly winding down rocky dirt roads in the mountain to get here, but here I am.  Again, apologies for the random and kind of crappy story telling, I´m in medio camino and I want to make it to Lalotla tonight.  It´s foggy, so we´ll see.  And, here are the photos.

Meztitlan

Yesterday I did a straight drop from Atotonilco down towards Meztitlan, a tiny little town in a valley between a ton of mountains.  I was headed to see La Laguna San Cristobal, but I never got there.  After riding down a dirt road for what seemed like an eternity, I came upon some dogs.  Not very nice ones.  The one dog chased after me while her pups ran in front of my bike, and in an attempt not to run them over, I hit a ditch and took a spill.  My camera flew off my bike but it´s just fine thank god, and I flew off it too, right into a bunch of dust and rocks.  Keeping my wits about me I spun around so I could kick the dog if it came by to bite me, but luckily it just ran away.  The bummer part about all this is that I snapped my front rim and I´m stuck in Meztitlan for a minute while I get a new rim.  I found a bike shop that has one the same size as mine, which is completely lucky, and I´m having them put the hub and spokes from my old rim onto the new one.  It might be done today, but it might not be done until monday.  If that´s the case then I get to pay for a few more nights at the hotel.  It´s a really beautiful place with extremely nice people that are feeding me, driving me around to get bike parts, and being very helpful.  It´s 200 pesos a night to stay there, which is somewhere around 18 dollars, so it´s not the end of the world at all.  I went to a really old convent this morning that´s on top of a mountain.  It´s the most goreous place i´ve been in a long time, maybe ever. 
    The convent sits on top of a mountain overlooking the town of Meztitlan where it was built in the 16th century.  It´s made of rocks and cement and all of the archways are painted with intricate designs.  I steped into the plaza and looked out over the mountains covered in clouds and the valley filled with farm land.  Mass was in session and the chanting spilled out into the air around me and gave me the chills.  Inside, there´s a large courtyard and staricases that rise up into the second level of the convent where there are corredors, archways, and paintings on every wall.  The music kept going and I completely forgot about my bike problems.  I could spend all day up there just watching the mountains.  What amazing luck to be here in this beautiful place.  There couldn´t be a better place to be stuck.

 Here are some photos of the descent and of the valley and the convent.

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

DF a Pachuca a Atotonilco

Yesterday morning I hit the road to pachuca, some 55 or so miles from Mexico city.  There was a lot of stopping for directions, a lot of chatting, a lot of wrong directions, and a whole lot of riding.  I got two flat tires within the span of 10 minutes, which drove me a litle crazy, but gave me an opportunity to rest in the shade.  Right now I´m in an internet cafe where two small boys are play fighting and the decibles are reaching uncomfortable levels.  Pachuca is a pretty fresa city where everything costs a whole bunch and there are a lot of snazzy looking things to buy.  There were, however, some awesome earrings that were cheap that I wish i had bought.  There will be more.  There are so many places to visit.  I find myself wishing I could write my blog entries as I was riding my bike because in that mindset I have so many great things to say.  Tomorrow I´ll start recording my thoughts with my nifty voice recorder.  I have an awesome collection of Mexican noises to sare with you all when I get back.  I didn´t bring the cord for transferring my sounds t the computer.  Should have thought of that.  This morning I woke up, had some breakfast, and stretched a bit.  I got a pretty late start, somewhere around 9:30 is when I left.  I think I needed to just take my time though.   I got a pretty silly sunburn on the outsides of my calves and on the backs of my arms.  Somehow I forgot those places existed.  I did use sunscreen, and oh man am I glad I brought it.  I hit the first section of mountains today and it was awesome.  Super super super awesome.  And beautiful.  And exhausting.  I climbed from 6562 feet in Pachuca, to 8727 feet in Mineral del Monte in about 2 and a half hours.  I hung out in town for a while, and then got on to a really sweet descent down into Atotonilco.  Good thing I´ve got sun glasses, I must have been hit by a hundred bugs.  That´s the story of te last 2 days.  I´ll conjur up some more inspirational and ethereal words for the next post.  And now for the photos.

to Pachuca

In the mountains to Mineral del Monte

Cactus

At a rest stop where you can pray to the virgin Guadalupe

Alley way in Mineral del Monte

An unusual house outside of Mineral del Monte

Omitlan

Borregos

My 10 dollar hotel room...the light actually makes it look nice. It´s really quite terrible.

plant.  Como se llama esta planta?

Last free post

Oooooook.  So I head out tomorrow and I went on some great adventures today with Sol. Gracias chica, gracias.  We went to the Castillo de Chapultepec where there are really really great things to see.  I bought a cell phone (because everyone, and I mean everyone has been trying to convince me to).  So, I did it.  It was only 25 dollars, and i have 100 pesos ,which is a lot of text messages, on it.  It will be nice to be contactable by people that I meet and whatnot for sure. Que mas? That´s pretty much it for now word wise,  but I have un chingo de fotos to upload.  So enjoy.