Wednesday – Minatitlan, Mexico

On the road again 🙂

As I expected I was up normal time and getting sorted out ready to go after posting a blog entry, I had written it yesterday but about two minutes before posting, the internet crashed 😦 Never mind, it was done now and I was soon packed and ready to ride around 9.30am.

Thanks a lot for putting us up Gary and Ivonne, it was nice to meet you and I enjoyed myself, you are great hosts and I like the frogs outside my bedroom window 🙂

Vincent had a meeting downtown and I followed him for a tad and we even joined by another Vstrom rider, a local, so Gary, you are not the only one after all 🙂

So, after following the GPS I navigated through the centre of Mexico City, a city of over 24 million people, more than in the whole of Australia!!!! It was not as bad as I thought, although there were bottlenecks occasionally. But, in the end I got to the north east outskirts and was free of the smog and traffic.

It was good to be on the road again, of course I had the toll roads to contend with, but that was by choice, today is a distance day. I did cover some road at a fast pace up in the 120kmh range which is allowed over here, well 20-30 over the limit is accepted if you are not being erratic or dangerous so when in Rome! 🙂 During the ride I kept on noticing the fields of corn, when they finish harvesting the cobs, they are dried out then chopped off at the base and left in heaps, I have no idea why at this time, but it is intriguing.

So, after riding up through the mountains as high as 3400m it was down the other side where it started to warm up, a lot! I was thinking of food when I passed another traveller going pretty slow, so I grabbed a photo and soon after saw a servo with a restaurant so although I did not need fuel I stopped for a feed, I figured the other rider was in need of fuel and would stop and my guess was correct 🙂 So, Lucy is from Colorado and just started riding for 4 months or so by herself. She is heading to Oaxaca (Oh Hacker) for a few days, so we chatted during lunch then parted, we may bump into each other on the road as she is heading south, like everyone else 🙂

Onwards through the afternoon heat, up through a mountain range and back down again, I spot a piece of flyover, coming from nowhere and going nowhere, maybe they ran out of funds?

I rode over this suspension bridge before more flat fast road until I hit a military checkpoint, they singled me out for some reason and tried to get me to open all my bags. In the end after pleading no Spanish they checked my tank bag and passport before letting me through 🙂

More fast riding and I managed to get through a rain shower without putting on the gear, it was not that heavy and it was warm enough to dry out, it is nice to have an all weather camera again, although it is not waterproof, so I still need to be careful. You can see the rain behind me in a shot I took while learning the new camera 🙂

So, it was nearly 5,30pm by the time I arrived in town and it was a crappy town too, I think it is just a support town for the oil industry which is big in this part of the country. I only picked this town as it was a fair distance from Mexico City and it left a shorter ride for the next day. But, I found a comfortable and quite cheap hotel with safe bike storage and booked in.

Of course the first thing I had to fix was the internet, this took a while until a hotel chap with some English and good computer skills understood what I meant and he rebooted the routers and everything was fine 🙂 I need to learn the Spanish for {please turn the power off to your internet router wait ten seconds and plug it back in 🙂 } 😆 Anyway, after a well earned shower and after answering emails I went downstairs for a beer. I had met a local chap outside when I arrived and he was interested in the bike and travel, he did not have much English, but I had invited him for a beer at 7pm. I had a beer and a great chicken schnitzel type dinner while listening o the footy, loudly of course the way it is done down here, this is soccer with a round ball 🙂

Well, after dinner I stayed for a few more beers with no local chap turning up but someone else did 🙂 Vincent turned up, he had spotted the same hotel so we had a bit of a chat again, it seems this may happen more often than not, as I like to ride a lot earlier but our hotel tastes are similar, that is cheap with aircon and internet and secure bike parking.

It was not a late night as we were both tired, tomorrow would be a shortish day to get to the city of Palenque where the Pyramid of the Inscriptions is located, only 3 hundred or so kilometres and an easy afternoon, although I wanted to get some washing done.

Day – 375 miles and 604 km
Trip – 40,214 miles and 64,718 km

Salud
TravellingStrom

USACanadaMexico

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