In July 2022 I decided to ride a Bicycle from the northernmost point in Alaska, to the very bottom of Argentina. Known as the Pan-American Highway, this is the furthest distance that you can travel continuously upon dry land on the planet.
In my travels prior to this entry I worked my way down through Alaska, Canada, before following the Pacific Coast Highway southbound through Washington, Oregon and California. I spent Christmas living and working on an organic farm in San Diego, before crossing the border into Mexico at Tecate. In my previous blog post I recorded my most recent experience, pedalling down the Baja peninsula to La Paz. The events described in this entry kick off in March 2023.
I spent a few final days staying in Tuly’s warmshowers in La Paz, Baja California Sur. In just a few weeks at the bottom of the peninsula I had met more fellow bike travellers than in all eight months of my travels beforehand. Lots of opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas, the telling of tall tales, and just taking it easy with people who had the same crazy idea as myself.
Surprisingly, this point at the bottom of the Baja peninsula felt to me like a logical point to bring my supposed journey to Argentina to a halt; I had reached a sort of geographical dead-end after going down the Pacific Coast for so long.
In terms of an emotional journey of self-discovery and personal improvement, I reckoned that I had pretty much reaped all of the benefits of that kind: eight months living more or less alone in a tent provides an overabundance of opportunity for introspection and reflection. I had concluded that I have spent far too much of my life trying to protect myself from other people hurting me, by keeping my distance and my life and its associated vulnerabilities private and guarded. Giving in to social anxiety by avoiding potential dramas, which in turn prevented people from having the opportunity to warm to me, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When you are travelling alone on the road you have no option other than allowing yourself to be emotionally vulnerable, or risk missing out completely on the experience. I had absolutely thrived on the kindness and generosity of complete strangers, and came to realise that I really needed to transplant that energy into my own life. Gratitude, generosity and emotional vulnerability are incredible feelings to experience.
Ironically, heading off alone on a bike completely solo had led me to resolve that I really needed to stop doing so many things alone, to share my life with people and take joy from the experiences of others, instead of tucking myself away. I suspect a few people reading this are thinking something along the lines of ‘no shit sherlock…’
However, for someone who would have definitely described themselves as a socially avoidant introvert beforehand, this revelation was nothing less than titanic.
With this major shift in personal philosophy behind me, I felt like I had reached a sort of closure, an emotional full stop in this story of my life. I was at a bit of a loss in terms of whether I should even carry on.
From now on this trip would consist of riding for the sake of riding; A cheeky bit of bog standard tourism, combined with a whole lot of hauling myself across the terrain.
After umming and ahhing over what I really wanted to do, I finally resolved to catch the ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Time to get the wheels turning again.
The boat was a bog-standard car ferry affair. I would be travelling overnight, arriving in Mazatlan in the morning.
I moseyed around the aft observation deck for a while, watching the coast recede in the afternoon sun with several other passengers. Afterwards, I hunted down the café for a hefty buffet, before finding a quiet spot in the passenger compartment to roll out my bedding between the seats.
Over the night I felt a distinct prickling sensation all over my body, but I assumed that I was just the pickling of sweat as a consequence of using my sleeping bag indoors. It wasn´t until I arrived, settled into my hostel and took a shower that I noticed that I was absolutely covered with bites.
Bummer.
Later, I opened my Kindle to read and a bed bug crawled out.
Shit.
Somehow that bed bug had gotten ensconced in my Kindle, which was tucked away in my pannier, which had been sitting on the deck beside me. I had to assume that they could be in absolutely everything. Annoyingly, I had redistributed most of my luggage afterwards, so now all of my bags were potentially suspect.
I’d heard all the horror stories. People getting PTSD after stripping the house bare, fumigating everything, only for the little bastards to come back again and again. I immediately fired off about 20 different google searches. HELP!
Heat; Treat the affected areas with a high temperature. I needed to wash absolutely everything, but most importantly, put it in the laundry dryer at a high temperature to wipe out any eggs that might be concealed within. I made the walk of shame down to the reception desk to give them the good news. They immediately sprung into action, emptying the room of guests and cranking the heating up to the maximum. Two days of (hopefully) cooking the little parasites.
Having stripped down to the only clothes which I knew for certain to be uninfested, I bunged everything else into the laundrette. No chance of getting any of it back before tomorrow. I had to pick through my remaining belongings and search every single crevice that could be harbouring a bedbug. Apparently electronics are a classic hiding spot, so I stripped down my phone, power bank, solar panel, kindle and dug around inside all the usb ports and headphone sockets.
I never did find any sign of bedbugs. Finally I just laid everything out on the rooftop in the sun to be irradiated with a couple of hours of UV, and hoped for the best.
Welcome to mainland Mexico!
Eventually, having returned my operation to some semblance of normality, I managed to get out for a bit of exploration. Mostly set up as a beachfront party town, Mazatlan also had an interesting historic centre with a beautiful cathedral. Big views out over the rocky coast too.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t receive more than a lukewarm experience at the hostel from the guests and staff, having brought about their infestation, so I decided to get a move on sharpish.
I found myself faced with two main options of routes to take down the Mexican mainland, climb up to Durango and then follow the mountains, or stick to the coast. Both had their merits. I figured that I had spent plenty of time on the beach recently, so Durango it would be.
This involved riding the famous Espinazo del Diablo, the Devil’s Backbone. A beautiful, twisting road of 200 km with 2800 m of climbing. More or less my idea of a perfect road riding stage.
I regularly found myself pinned to the last gear on my cassette, gasping my way upwards. Seriously hot weather too, well into mid to high 30s (80s Fahrenheit for my American friends, that’s your one pass). By the middle of the day I was forced to take regular pauses under the shade of individual trees, before pushing on a short distance to the next one. Moving gradually in a stuttering fashion, wondering what kind of a masochist would consider this ordeal ‘fun’.
On one of my nightly stops I decided to splash out on a hotel, in one of the last villages in Sinaloa, El Palmito. I settled into a lovely little place with a fantastic view out over a valley covered in a patchwork of small farms. I decided to head out in search of a beer or two.
The tiendas were crowded with 20 or so youngish, perhaps a bit rough looking characters. I moseyed over, bought some liquid refreshment, and began to tuck in; I found a nearby restaurant and settled in for the evening.
Ended up drawing a bit of attention from the local lads. Practised my shit Spanish, which rapidly turned into requests for me to karaoke a Spanish song. Unfortunately I could only really manage “Mi gustas tu” by manu chao, which pretty much killed the mood for several minutes.
They did a much better job, belting out corridos filled with references to El Chapo and the local cartel.
I later found out that this upland region of Sinaloa is a major producer of Marajuana for Cartel Sinaloa. Perhaps these guys were all just working in the logging trade? Or were they more of the agricultural type?
Whatever their story, I didn’t have anything approaching a negative experience with any of them. Riding a bike up a mountain with all your belongings seems to earn you a certain degree of respect in Mexico. I received plenty of exclamations of chingón (badass) during the evening.
The next morning I jumped on the bike and pedalled my way above the treeline, revealing a vast mountainous vista for miles around. Now there was nowhere to hide from the sun, but the exposure brought wind, which on balance worked out better.
Unfortunately, it turned out that my phone repair in San Diego hadn’t been entirely successful; moisture had somehow gotten into the lens, and now photographs shot with the front camera came out misty.
So I’m afraid you are going to have to take my word for it regarding the scenery and please pardon my overuse of selfie shots for the remainder of this entry.
Taking a midday break in the shade.
Beautiful views all around. Unfortunately my damaged phone camera was letting me down a bit. It turns out that riding a bicycle over a smartphone is actually a bad idea…
The next few days were just classic adventure cycling. Beautiful sweeping mountainous climbs, barely any traffic and quiet villages with friendly locals. I can see why this road is often considered Mexico’s most beautiful.
It’s certainly no secret; Gaggles of motorcyclists were out playing on the sweeping curves, flashing past while I gradually chugged my way onwards.
I took a moment to recall how this adventure was originally supposed to be a motorised affair. Back in 2015 I was in the middle of working at my first teaching job overseas in the Republic of Korea. It dawned on me that I could travel all over the planet on my motorbike, stopping to top up on cash every now again by taking on a teaching job. I doubled down on that dream, investing in a career in education that would facilitate the lifestyle indefinitely. I subsequently returned to the UK to get a decent teaching qualification, and, after 9 months of sleep deprivation, stress and hazing by both staff and students alike, otherwise known as a PGCE course, I made it through. Without doubt the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I spent the next few years consolidating, building experience, cash reserves, and hopefully an attractive CV for international schools in the future.
Along the way I switched to cycling for travel purposes; it’s so much cheaper, there are far fewer mechanical needs, it presents less of an exposure to death or disability, and you arrive at your destination physically tired and ready for bed, instead of having spent a whole day essentially sedentary, with tired eyes and a headache. The final straw was having a speeding driver ram my motorbike from behind, while I was joining the tail end of a queue at a roundabout, sending me on a brief airborne adventure, before winding up pinned underneath my own machine. I figured I would cut my losses and switch to pedal power.
Eventually the road more or less levelled off into an arid, undulating terrain with plenty of ranches populated with horses and other livestock all over the place. The climate had changed significantly compared to the coast; everything was orangey-brown, dry and dusty.
The town of El Salto seemed like a bit of a dump; a stark, dusty town of unpainted concrete houses, streets lined with trash, discarded street food and dog shit. I passed through as quickly as possible, only stopping long enough to collect supplies and cash, feeling a bit conspicuous standing at the ATM.
Passing through farmland means barbed wire fences all along the roadside, which means having a hard time finding a hidden camp spot. The last two hours of daylight are always a bit pensive, since I do need to settle for something somewhat urgently. Fortunately the ranches gave way to a small nature park filled with pine trees. The barbed wire fence continued, but there was a raised earth bank running alongside, which offered just enough depth for me to tuck myself back a bit on top, concealing my tent from passing traffic.
The next day I started getting data on my phone for the first time in days. Immediately assumed my well-practised position of elbows on handlebars, both hands holding my phone in front of me, while munching through the last few miles.
Having spent the best part of a year watching the world go by at such a leisurely pace, being able to just vegetate with YouTube, catch up with people online, or check out places to visit in the upcoming town while riding was a real treat.
Eventually I came over a rise and found the city of Durango laid out in front of me. It was time to exchange the peace and quiet for city bustle, history and culture for a while. Hot showers, a soft bed and cold drinks were calling.
I settled into ‘El Rincon de Jesusita Hostal’, a beautiful airy building with an ecclesiastical heritage. Proceeded to carry out my usual housekeeping routine of taking a shower while dancing on my dirty bike clothes, before hanging them up and swapping into my dry set.
After living this adventure I now know that I only really ‘need’ two sets of clothes in the whole world.
For the first time since crossing the border into Mexico I was well away from the beach and its associated culture. The dress sense of locals was noticeably more conservative, nobody was showing any skin on their legs, or wearing open toed shoes, despite the dry heat.
I walked into a shop in my standard off bike rig of shorts and flip flops, and the lady behind the counter visibly recoiled in shock.
Jeans and trainers appeared to be the standard for mens casual wear. I did my best to blend in, dropping in at a mall to pick up some running shoes to go with the jeans I had picked up to go clubbing with Tommy in San Francisco. The alternative was to use my clipless bike shoes, which were really unsuitable for walking paved city streets for any length of time, feeling like they were always on the brink of causing a rolled ankle.
Despite the dry heat, the city was very walkable, with lots of beautiful colonial architecture to gawk at. All pedestrian traffic crowded along the shaded side of the street, squeezing its way past the various stalls and handcarts selling food, drink and knick knacks.
Much of the colonisation of Mexico was originally driven by demand for mineral exploitation, Durango included.
All of this historical mineral wealth led to the construction of a lot of rather ornate buildings, including several churches and a substantial cathedral. This, combined with the warmth of the inhabitants and the cheerful cuisine gave the place a real southern European atmosphere. If someone had told me that Mexico existed somewhere in the mediterranean, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
A bit of colonial architecture in Durango.
Durango is famous for two things, scorpions and movies. Due to guaranteed blue skies and a dusty, frontier vibe, it has been used extensively for well over 50 years as a destination for shooting flicks, particularly westerns. John Wayne really helped put the place on the map, but it has also been graced with such A listers as Clint Eastwood, Audrey Hepburn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford and Leonardo Di Caprio. In total something like 150 movies have been shot on location.
There is a permanent ‘western village’ set just outside of town. Originally used for filming, it now mostly serves as a novelty attraction to put on shows for visitors.
Cowboy chic is a very popular style around town. Lots of guys out sporting riding boots with spurs, elegant shirts tucked into jeans, and various incarnations of the stetson hat on top.
Since I had hugged the Pacific Coast riding down the USA I had completely missed out on this sort of thing. I certainly hadn’t expected the old west myth to be such a big hit south of the border, considering it is such a patriotic staple in the USA. However, I guess once you take a look at the rugged origins of many communities in this region it begins to make a lot more sense.
I wonder how the average Texan might feel about their counterpart in Durango?
As for scorpions, You couldn’t go very far in town without finding a myriad of examples soaking in bottles of Mezcal (agave liquor), embedded in candies or impaled upon a stick. Plenty of food for thought when you are intending to wild camp in the same environment from which they were sourced.
I met up with a local girl, Iovanna, and after a couple of dates I relocated from the hostel to her house. Apparently this was on the condition that I didn’t mind dogs too much?
I wasn’t in a tremendous rush to head back out into the sticks again. Several groups of bike travellers, whom I had met while staying in La Paz, were now working their way up the hill towards Durango. Waiting for them to catch up in order to have a couple of pints in town didn’t seem like a bad idea.
In the meantime I was in for a crash course in Latin music, food and culture. I learned all about Luis Miguel, Selena, Shakira, Molotov and many others. Iovanna was very happy to show me the ‘real Mexico’ around town, popping into small, local restaurants, parks and viewpoints over the city. We even did the classic Durango tourist thing and visited the Wild West set outside of town to watch the shows.
I had been hoping that I would be able to blend in a bit in Mexico, having worked up a reasonable tan under the sun. Unfortunately, the gringo aura was so strong that even Iovanna started getting people speaking to her in English whenever I was nearby.
Iovanna shared her house with seven large dogs. The house would probably have been better referred to as a kennel with two humans living in it. The vast majority of her pooches had been either rescued from negligent owners, or the streets. When I arrived one of them was battling a distemper infection. The animal lay beside the bed with a high fever, barely able to move and panting constantly. It made its toilet where it lay and could only lap up food and drink placed directly under its nose.
I grew up in a cat family, and while I’d spent some time around dogs and dog owners, I’d never done more than an hour or two at a time alone with one before.
The first thing that I had to come to terms with was the substantial combined muscle of seven hungry dogs at dinner time. With that much force you just got carried along with the crowd.
Iovanna’s approach to feeding them involved placing a huge bucket of rice and chicken in the middle of the kitchen floor, stuffing some vitamin tablets in, before a wall of dogs rolled in and enveloped her, usually knocking the bucket over in the process and sending chicken breasts skidding across the floor, hotly pursued by hopeful pooches. Invariably, this led to a snarling brawl, and a lot of shouting.
The only place where the dogs could relieve themselves was on a yard out at the back. This very rapidly became carpeted with turds and reeked of stale urine. Unfortunately, the only window in the bedroom opened directly out onto the patio, so the presence and direction of the wind became an important factor.
Having made their business outside, the dogs came in and tracked it all over the floor and furniture in the house.
I was essentially staying rent-free, so I figured it was fair enough for me to carry out my share of the chores, and to buy the groceries. Cooking for and feeding the dogs, cleaning the poo courtyard, floors and furniture of the house became a regular part of my days living there.
Bedlam.
These two were just the loveliest pooches. Never caused any drama and were very well behaved out on walkies.
It’s a hard life!
I implemented a couple of changes. At meal times I would lock the dogs out on the three separate patios around the building and only release them in batches to take turns eating, before returning them, prior to sending in the next group. This took a lot of coercion, deception, and, when all else failed, bodily carrying individual dogs out to their doors.
Sasha, a beautiful German Shepherd, was probably the most intelligent of the lot. She rapidly developed a strategy of tucking herself away when I started herding out the other dogs, refusing to budge. Upon scooping her out of her hiding spot she would urinate profusely. I usually tried to take care of her first, before she noticed what I was up to.
Sasha was a real sweetheart with me most of the time, which really amused Iovanna; she reckoned the dog had a crush on me. Unfortunately, she had developed a habit of indulging in the range of flavours offered by the excrement of her housemates, before coming back inside and trying to give me a kiss (Sasha that is, not Iovanna).
Dan, Heidi and Ray arrived in town after a week or so. We promptly settled to go out on the piss. I made the error of bringing the cheapest Mezcal I could find (in a plastic bottle, always a good sign), which, in addition to the other bits and pieces, got us absolutely trollied.
I had spent a lot of time with Dan and Heidi in Baja, but Ray was a new face. Seemed like a very easygoing bloke.
The big talk around the table was the next stretch of our route to Zacatecas. The state was part of an ongoing turf war between the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, and the road had been the scene of several recent shootouts between the police and the sicarios. Other riders had reportedly been stopped by the cartel on the road, typically met with a 4×4 full of sicarios fully kitted with body armour, helmets and automatic rifles. By all accounts the interactions had been polite and respectful, with riders warned that this area was not recommended for tourists and advised to pass through quickly.
Dan’s philosophy was that he didn’t want to be the one to meet them when their patience finally wore out, so he opted to skip the section by taking a bus. I wasn’t so sure. So far I hadn’t yet missed a single bit of road that I hadn’t been obliged to, and several cyclists had already passed through safely without being targeted.
Eventually we resolved to turn in for the night. For some stupid reason I had decided to ride into town to meet them by bike, and on the inebriated return journey to Iovanna’s I managed to crash it. Smashed up my glasses, helmet, and somehow in the process I wrecked the front wheel bearing.
Not my finest hour. I hadn’t had a road crash in years.
I was lucky to not have broken any bones. This could have easily been the ignominious end to my journey right there and then. What a stupid thing to do. Biking and boozing don’t mix.
I had plenty of time to lecture myself over this while I waited for my new pair of glasses, and the parts to repair the front axle to be shipped over from the UK.
I had already stayed in Durango for two weeks, and at this point I was ready to get rolling again. Now I was stuck in place, waiting.
The daily routine settled back into a steady cycle of putting food in one end of a dog, before scooping up the resultant excrement from the other.
I could tell that Iovanna was not doing well in her mental health. It usually took a full half an hour of encouragement to get her to leave the bed and get ready for her work. Some days she just didn’t make it, and called in sick. I tried my best to lift her spirits up where I could.
It was obvious that the dogs were not being walked on a daily basis. Starved of mental stimulation or exercise, they were hyperactive most of the time. I tried my best to get every animal out of the door. Many of the pooches didn’t appear to know how to behave on the lead. Worse, the guy holding the other end had virtually zero experience with this sort of thing.
Ginger was a royal pain in my ass. She was about 40 kilograms of uncooperative bloodhound. When and where she wanted to go, she generally went. She spent most of her days out on the front patio, barking at the street in general, or at other resident dogs in particular. One time she managed to slip out the front gate, immediately shooting off down the street, seeking out a neighbouring dog and directly sinking her teeth into it.
It was therefore with a degree of trepidation that I first ventured out with her on the lead. Right from the start she pulled really hard. We sort of made it work in our own fashion, eventually reaching the park without any serious dramas.
That was the moment when she caught wind of another dog.
It turned out that she had in fact been keeping the vast majority of her strength in reserve, because at that moment she suddenly lurched forward with single-minded intent and broke free. Somehow, she ripped right through the snap hook which connected to her collar and was now accelerating her bulk towards her hapless target. I found myself impotently holding the now limp lead, feeling like I had just inadvertently sat on a nuclear launch button.
It took far too long for me to catch up with her. The scene was a turmoil of snarling and biting, the owners of the other dog screamed, kicked and tried to drag her off. I managed to separate her jaws and get a firm grip on her collar, while the other party gave me a hell of a tongue lashing in Spanish. I didn’t understand a word of it, but I got the gist; Most irresponsible dog owner on the planet.
One night Iovanna wanted to introduce me to a legendary Mexican dish, Mole. Like much of Mexican food, it has its roots in pre hispanic cuisine, and can be found in all kinds of regional variations with anything between 20 to 30 different ingredients.
I wasn’t able to finish everything on my plate, and so I followed the house practice of placing it on the kitchen floor for the dogs.
Iovanna jumped up and yelled at me ‘¡NO Eso tiene chocolate!’ ‘Come again?’ ‘It’s got chocolate in it!’ I rushed to drag the plate away, while three dogs struggled to gulp down the last of the brown sauce.
Oh god what do we do now? I had heard before that chocolate was toxic to dogs, but had no idea that the Mole contained it.
Off to the vet.
The next day, Ginger and Milo seemed completely unaffected, but Morgan spent most of the day lying on his side looking poorly. We went out to visit the vet again for any more ideas. When we returned he was lying in a pool of his own diarrhoea.
We resolved to try a different vet, more of an animal hospital. I scooped Morgan up in a blanket, and popped him into Iovanna’s car, before racing across town.
When we arrived I jumped out and went to fetch him from the back. He wasn’t moving. I picked him up and his head dangled lifelessly, and vomit poured out of his mouth.
We took him into the hospital, but it was clearly too late.
We both took it very badly.
I was absolutely furious with myself, because the one job I had given myself was to do right by the pooches, and now I had poisoned one. Iovanna didn’t blame me at all, but got very low. Eventually she resolved to buy two new puppies.
These weren’t rescue dogs, and I told her that surely more dogs weren’t going to magically make her feel better, at least not in the long run. I’ve heard of people in difficult relationships having a baby thinking that it will somehow bring love into the family, but the reality is that it’s a very demanding commitment, requiring a strong team.
So we ended up with two puppies, a Belgian Malenois and a Pug. Very shortly afterwards Iovanna went and got yet another puppy, another pug.
She opted to take care of them on the bed, which became their toilet. For me that was too much.
The constantly deteriorating, chaotic environment, the never ending chores required to maintain it in something approximating an acceptable condition, and the guilt from what had happened with Morgan really got to me after a while. Being stuck in place, waiting, is not something that I’m very good at at the best of times.
I needed a break, so I decided to explore down the coast, visiting the spots that I had opted out of by choosing to ride up to Durango. I caught a bus back down the hill to Mazatlan, before taking another overnight to Puerto Vallarta.
What a beautiful beach city. Much nicer aesthetically than Mazatlan, although there were more foreigners and fewer locals. Tourist Mexico is a very different animal to traditional Mexico, you can’t go five minutes without a guy walking up with a basket and soliciting a range of products in ascending order: ‘Vape?’ ‘No’ ‘Weed?’ ‘No’’ ‘Cocaina?’ ‘No’ ‘Chica?’ Give me a break mate.
Puerto Vallarta. Personally I much preferred the scenery to Mazatlan, but it definitely had more of an expat/ spring break vibe.
The only people I really spent any time chatting to were a couple of American expats. They were happy to tell me about how I was going to be dismembered at the earliest opportunity by Mexicans, if I wasn’t careful. They complimented my (awful) Spanish after I briefly spoke to a local, and I rapidly ascertained that they had picked up virtually nothing of the language, despite having lived exclusively in Mexico for well over a decade.
After Puerto Vallarta I took another bus to Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco province and the second largest city in Mexico. Home of tequila and Mariachi music, Guadalajara is a significant cultural centre in the country. I explored for a few days, soaking up all of the sights, sounds and flavours, before catching a ride back to Durango. My bike parts were arriving and I was eager to get my pedals turning once more.
A bit of Guadalajara.
I practically skipped to the DHL branch, got my parcel and zoomed back home to the house. Diligently watched several YouTube tutorials (I had never tried servicing cup and cone bearings in my life beforehand), and then got stuck in. After an hour or so of faffing I ascertained that I had stripped the thread on the axle, totally ruining it.
Words that don’t need repeating here were said.
Off to the mechanic… Could anything be done?
Well as it turns out, my bike uses a conventional threaded axle, used universally on bikes for about a century. Due to my lack of familiarity with this mechanical task I had sat waiting for weeks to get the version sold by Thorn in the UK, when in reality I could have just repaired the damn thing in a day or two in virtually any repair shop on the planet, or scavenged the part from any old bike wheel for peanuts.
Another painfully stupid ‘learning exercise’ in my life…
Time to move on?
I hope that I haven’t painted Iovanna in too bad of a light in this piece, because really she is such a wonderful person with a big heart and the best of intentions. The average treatment of street dogs in Mexico is absolutely appalling, and she is doing her best to get as many lives as possible into some kind of acceptable living condition, using every resource that she has to hand to achieve this. These days it seems like many people try too hard to paint themselves as squeaky clean warriors for justice all over social media, whereas Ionvanna is actually out there getting stuck in.
I said my goodbyes to the canines and thanked Iovanna profusely for all of her hospitality. It was time to get back to the mission. All of my fellow bike touring mates had come and gone, and were now far ahead of me, working their respective routes down the country.
I cannot describe how good it felt to have the wheels turning again. After six weeks of inactivity I was totally free and back on the road. I rapidly discovered that my fitness had gone down the toilet after such a long period of inactivity. Riding a bike in temperatures in the mid 30’s of celsius was always going to be gruelling regardless of the enthusiasm pushing me from the inside.
I made it to the village of San Francisco del Mezquital by the early afternoon. The next stretch would take me directly up a mountain, so I decided to call a halt, to wait a few hours and then sneak a wild camp in on the edge of town. It was a beautiful little historic village, and I decided to hang around in the central plaza. All of the Mexican pueblos (villages) that I had visited in Mexico had a large plaza in front of the entrance to the local church. It usually made for a nice, green, shaded public space where you can rest on a bench and kill an hour or two.
Invariably, in such a small neighbourhood, I would draw a fair bit of attention with my loaded bike. Rosina pulled up in her car and asked if I had anywhere to stay. She had just popped back from the USA to visit her family. Apparently they had a whole empty house here in which I could spend the night.
She insisted on taking me out for lunch and then driving me up to visit the local water park outside of town. She got us free entry by lecturing the receptionist about how I had cycled all the way across the whole of North America, just to visit their town!
Gracias Rosina!
Later got taken out for drinks with her family. We just set up plastic picnic tables and chairs on the cobbled street. Folk would casually wander over, sit down and chat for a while, before moseying off about their business.
I asked a couple of them about the cartel; should I be worried on the road ahead? ‘Absolutely not, you aren’t on their radar whatsoever’. Supposedly the cartel was mostly interested in keeping goodwill amongst the local pueblos, functioning as a local law enforcement of sorts. They told me a story about a time when someone robbed a store and the cartel hunted them down, stripped them naked and made them walk around the town in shame.
I’m not going to pretend that these organisations are squeaky clean advocates for justice, this part of their territory is a main supply route, and so it is in their interest for things to run smoothly without any resistance from the locals. I found out much later that the province of Zacatecas was ranked 4th globally for murder rate in that year. So I’ll try to temper the rose-tinted traveller’s wanderlust a little.
Rosina was keen for me to stay another night with them, however I had to beg to be excused; I had only just started moving for the first day in a long time, I really needed to make the earth turn under my wheels a bit in order to feel like myself again.
She gifted me a couple of insulated bottles, which I filled up with ice cold water from the fridge. Having cold water to drink while hauling yourself up a hill in the blazing sun is a game changer!
Following the Trans Mexico Bikepacking Route, the next few days were nothing but hard slog. The first day involved some serious elevation gain, paved roads switchbacking their way up the slopes, the second took me onto the gravel. For the first time since Baja I was getting some ‘good honest adventure cycling’ off road.
Wouldn’t want to be stuck out here without water.
Camping is no worries when you know it isn’t going to rain.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. Flat tyre. Crap. Took the thing apart and did the usual business with the patch kit. Jumped back on the bike and rode a bit more. Flat again?! I repeated the action. Same issue five minutes later. I pumped up the repair again and unscrewed the pump from the valve. Unfortunately, in the process it had loosened the valve core, which promptly ejected itself when I removed the pump, and all of my hard won inflation got dumped out in an instant.
For whatever reason my repair wasn’t holding, and clearly the tyre sealant in the tube had completely dried up over the last couple of months. I tried walking for a while, but that didn’t get me anywhere fast. I pumped up the tyre, jumped on and rode for several minutes before it went flat, before pumping up again. Every now and then the pump managed to unscrew the valve core, leading to a couple minutes of work being blown back in my face. Truly this had to be one of the most frustrating ways to make progress in the blazing sun. I must have repeated this some twenty times or more, before I finally made it to civilization.
I’ve heard that many of our world’s religions were first born in the desert. For my part, I entered it as a moderate, and came out as a fanatical, foaming at the mouth apostle, for tubeless tyres.
I managed to get a lift to an auto repair shop in San Juan de Michis, where they sorted me out with a hefty, automobile sized patch, distressing the tyre with an angle grinder beforehand. It held air! FINALLY, back in business. I topped up on water and food, before rolling a short distance up a hill and pitching camp in the first roadside ditch that I found.
I got a message from Iovanna in Durango. Apparently Sasha had spent the last few days waiting by the door for me to come home. Heartbreaking.
The next day I had my first really decent day of puncture-free gravel riding since Baja. After spending the morning toiling along under the blazing sun, I finally reached the pueblo of Suchil, and made a beeline to the nearest tienda with promises of cold beer to be found within.
Next task, I sought out the nearest taco truck and did my best to empty their refrigerator.
My repetitive packed lunch fare of tortillas smeared with either cold refried beans or tuna and cheese had really lost any kind of appeal by this stage. Thank goodness Mexico has one of the most wonderful cuisines on the planet. Perhaps only South East Asia can compete in terms of the quality you receive for so little money, served on a plastic picnic table.
Having regained some sense of humanity once more, I resolved to intersect with the paved roads and make rapid progress on the remaining stretch to Zacatecas.
Suchil had other plans. Before I could begin to turn the pedals I found myself with a camera and microphone stuck in my face, conducting a TV interview, in Spanish, on the state of Durango in general and Mexican food in particular. The resulting video is something that I find really painful to watch…
No longer burdened with dignity, it really was time to get moving again.
Instead of immediately joining the main highway, I took a quieter road to the south, heading to Sombrerete. Several of the road signs were riddled with bullet holes.
At one point I somehow managed to make a wrong turn, sweating my way up a big hill for an hour and a bit, before checking Google Maps and realising I had been a prat. I undid all that hard work in about 5 minutes of descending, before topping up with water and setting off again in the right direction, riding about an hour before finding a concealed roadside spot to camp amongst some thorny bushes.
For me the best part of travelling solo by bike is camp life. I love pottering around doing all the little tasks and solving problems. Getting my Kindle out to read, editing videos on my phone, or just lying down listening to music and watching the sky change over the hours before falling asleep.
Making plans, breathing life into dreams, revisiting memories, or not thinking at all. Just existing, letting myself become part of my surroundings.
I knew I was going to be soon back amongst the traffic and fumes. The dodgy stretch of road, with its Cartel activity around Fresnillo, was in the very near future.
That night I heard several long bursts of automatic gunfire. It sounded like a couple of mates having fun shooting into the desert, rather than a violent exchange. Still, rather unsettling.
The next day I met up with the main highway. The peace of the desert was replaced by the roar of heavy vehicles and a noticeably hotter metalled road.
I could now enjoy a smoother riding surface following gentler gradients. From here on I really cracked on, making short work of the intervening kilometres.
It was all going well, until I felt the front tyre go flat, again. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. I went through the motions, took the front panniers off, did the business with patches and the pump, before reassembling everything. Filled with dread that I was about to repeat my earlier experience, I pedalled on for 10 minutes or so, before the unmistakable slackness and wobble indicated that the tyre was deflating. My repair had failed again.
Fed up, unwilling to go through the faff all over again, I rolled up to a sheltered bus stop and stuck my thumb out. You might find yourself waiting a good hour or more to catch a ride as a male in the UK, but here, on a notoriously violent road, I got picked up within a minute. Gracias Mexico!
The driver dropped me off at an auto repair shop, where the mechanic applied a hefty patch. I told him about how my patches just weren’t sticking, so he took a look at my puncture kit. It turned out that the scrap of sandpaper that I’d been using for the past year of touring, plus a couple of years commuting beforehand, had become so smooth that it could no longer properly abrade the inner tube in order for my patches to stick. Oops.
San Juan De Michis. Miles from anywhere, but crucially had an auto repair shop to sort out my puncture.
‘Good honest adventure cycling’ Enjoying finally having a drama-free ride in the dirt.
Bullet holes in road signs were cute in the USA. When you are traveling in a region with the 4th highest per-capita murder rate on the planet it hits a bit different.
Bog standard roadside camp. An awful lot of my wild camps would look something like this. Concealment from passing drivers takes priority over sweeping vistas.
On the way to Sombrerete.
Was hauling my way along the highway in the sun when this guy pulled up. I guess I was somewhat apprehensive given the cartel situation on this road, but he gave me fruit! What a great bloke.
Hitchhiking to the next repair shop. Fortunately it was only about 5km down the road.
After all the hype I never actually saw any sign of the cartel. I stopped briefly for lunchtime tacos in Fresnillo, supposedly the most crazy-dangerous town on the road, before finishing the last stretch to Zacatecas.
Zacatecas was even more architecturally impressive than Durango. I will let the photos do the talking.
Zacatecas, founded in 1546 to exploit the mineral wealth in the surrounding countryside. Filled with beautiful colonial architecture funded by the aforementioned.
From Zacatecas I resolved to remain on the big road, rapidly covering the ground to my next stop, Aguascalientes.
Here I managed to score some accommodation with Victoria, who took me out to explore the surrounding area with her mates Jorge and Ximena.
Santuario del Cristo Roto, or Sanctuary Of The Broken Christ, with Jorge and Victoria. The photo fails to convey how enormous this statue really is.
Aguascalientes.
Run into this chap while riding from Aguascalientes to Leon. Had a relaxed natter for a few minutes before heading our separate ways.
Leon, Guanajuato.
I didn’t hang around too long, since I had planned to meet up with Steve & Aston in Guanajuato. Fellow bikepackers, from the UK, who I had met in La Paz. You can be fully immersed in the local culture, but the sounds of your homeland just become progressively more appealing the longer you are away.
As soon as I saw the city I immediately knew that I wanted to stick around for a bit. The place is absolutely stunning. By the time I reached my hostel I had already resolved to sign up for Spanish classes the next couple of weeks.
Guanajuato city. A favourite for North Americans travelling to study Spanish abroad.
What a lovely spot to hang around for a couple of weeks.
A very famous and prestigious university in Guanajuato. You could probably show any Mexican this photo and they could tell you in which city it is.
I had done my best to plug away at virtual classes on my phone while riding, but this was a poor alternative to intensive, face to face tuition.
Getting stuck into Spanish class felt like taking that first sip of a cold drink after being out in the sun all day; I surprised myself by how desperate I was for it. For the first time in months I was being cognitively challenged. I realised that I was having more fun than I could remember having in a long time.
Outside of my classes I greedily soaked up the history and culture of Mexico, spending my evenings going out meeting people and practising my (still pretty awful, but improving) Spanish out on locals, trying (and mostly failing) to dance Salsa, exploring the range of sensations offered by the cuisine, and getting a taste for Mezcal.
After around a week I got roped into yet another TV interview. I still completely failed to understand about half the questions, but perhaps I acquitted myself slightly better than before.
I was having a great time. It dawned on me that rather than simply being worn out from life on the road, I had been starving myself of a stable, intellectually stimulating existence, full of people who didn’t permanently vanish from my life after a couple of days.
The romantic notion of solo vagabonding around the world had collided head-first into the reality of psychology. We are intelligent, social animals that thrive on challenges. Living alone in a ditch by the roadside after spending all day spinning my feet round had been neglecting those emotional needs.
I didn’t really want to go back to live in the UK, to wake up in Sussex one morning wondering if it had all really happened.
I decided that since I was thriving on Mexican life, and having so much fun learning Spanish, that I really ought to search for a job somewhere in Latin America, in order to remain immersed in the adventure.
My priorities completely changed overnight. I began industriously hunting for a teaching job from my hostel, applying to positions in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. While English teaching jobs in language centres are widespread overseas, as a licensed science teacher I could expect to earn a lot more working in my science specialism. This limited me to looking at international schools, which typically only crop up in the capital cities of their respective countries.
And that was it. Suddenly a planned end was in sight. I was looking to finish my riding in Mexico City. CDMX (Ciudad de México) felt like a natural milestone; a large full stop marked on the map in the centre of the country.
Leaving Guanajuato, I felt strange getting on the pedals again, knowing now that this was the last leg. It was bloody hot riding the highway. The tarmac radiates heat from below, creating a bubble of hot air hovering over the road. I got in the habit of pushing until about 1pm, then taking 3 or 4 hours out of the heat of the day, before carrying on in the cooler evening. We in the UK tend to joke about the Spanish having midday Siestas, but the idea of trying to do any kind of labour outdoors in the mid to high 30’s of degrees celsius sounds like a wholly miserable experience.
I did my best to spend these afternoons holed up in a roadside restaurant or bar. When there was no chance of that, I had to make do with a sheltered bus stop or a convenient patch of overhead vegetation.
It took a whole day of riding to get into Mexico city from the outskirts. With its population of 22 million, the metropolitan area is an enormous sprawl upon the landscape, ranking something like the 7th largest on the planet. The city centre itself exists within a bowl-shaped depression, leftover from when the Aztecs built its ancestor, Tenochtitlan, upon a lake. The barrios (neighbourhoods) around the outside of this bowl are apparently the dodgiest parts, so I didn’t want to hang around. In order to gain entry into the city I was forced to ride sketchy, shoulderless roads crowded with fast-moving, murderous traffic.
One for my Canadian readers; Tim Hortons? In Mexico??! The day before I entered CDMX. Very busy roads without much respite.
Once inside the bowl, I was able to seek out a bike lane, which followed the route of an old railway line. I took a deep breath and reset to a more leisurely pottering pace for the remaining distance to my hotel.
Priorities included getting some kind of white dress shirt and tie for Zoom interviews, setting up my small room as a sort of office, researching the schools, and responding to screening questionnaires using computers in a nearby library.
Although Mexico was at the top of my list, I had reservations about living and working in CDMX. Having spent so long just trying to get into the city by bike, it was clear that pursuing outdoor hobbies in a natural setting would be challenging. The air quality and constant traffic noise wasn’t great for me either. Eventually I narrowed down to two jobs in Cali, Colombia, and one in Quito, Ecuador.
Discussing my teaching philosophy, ambitions, professional strengths and weaknesses felt totally surreal after being essentially homeless for so long.
The hotel had been one of the cheapest around. Perhaps a telling detail was that they offered visitors an hourly rate.
Unfortunately, most of my neighbours seemed to be visiting solely for this hourly rate, and invariably wound up loudly going about their business at the exact moment that I was carrying out my Zoom interviews.
The outcome? I would be heading to Ecuador in August. The Amazon rainforest, snow capped volcanic peaks, cloud forests, and the Galapagos islands and more were all waiting for me.
Hopefully I could make some serious progress in my Spanish and go some way towards making back a chunk of the money that had evaporated over the course of my journey.
One door had firmly closed, another was beginning to open.
Now I had a deadline for which I needed to get together a range of documents; apostilled police certificate, degree certificate, and university transcripts. I needed to get back to the UK and start the ball rolling. The carefree free-wheeling life was rapidly disappearing in the rear view mirror.
I made the most of the remaining time in and around Mexico city, exploring Aztec ruins and loading up on Mexican cuisine, before packing up my bike and heading down to Cancun.
Cancun was alright, but Tulum was in a different league. Azure warm turquoise waters, with a backdrop of ancient Mayan ruins on the cliffs behind.
Teotihuacan, the largest settlement ever built in America in its time. More or less a contemporary of the Roman Empire in Europe. In the same way that many European states have identified themselves as successors to the Romans, when the Aztecs (Mexica) dominated this region a millennium later and built their city of Tenochtitlan, they made sure to parody the grandeur of the former.
Xochimilco party boats. Apparently this is a must when you visit CDMX!
The Aztec ‘Sun Stone’, in the National Anthropology Museum.
An awful lot of Spanish Colonial architecture in CDMX is built directly on top of destroyed Aztec buildings. Here you can see a church constructed right on top of an Aztec temple, using stones scavenged from the destroyed buildings. A pretty clear message to the vanquished from their conquerors.
Motel interview set-up, cobbled together from a selfie stick and other bits and pieces. My neighbours always seemed to be going at it right when I was on a call…
Every cyclists favourite job, getting a bike packaged up for a flight…
Mayan ruins in Tulum. This has got to be one of the most incredible beaches I’ve ever visited; dipping your toes in the Caribbean, while Mayan pyramids loom above you on top of the cliffs behind.
The classical Mayan period started around 250AD. By the time the Spanish arrived in the Yucatan peninsula in the 16th century the Maya people lived in fragmented kingdoms. Unlike the Aztec, much of Mayan culture has survived intact to the present day in rural communities.
Tulum was a far cry from the treeless, boggy and mosquito ridden Arctic, from where I had started. I took a moment to reflect on the ground that had passed under my wheels since then, all the people who had supported me and offered food, shelter and kindness, without expecting anything in return. I have come to appreciate that kindness, gratitude and hospitality can have an incredible impact on people’s lives. My best memories from this trip all involved people showing me a kind of warmth and selfless generosity that I hadn’t personally practised to anything like the same degree before.
Having spent so much time solo I had no remaining appetite for living my life as an island any longer. You can certainly spend far too much time in your own head going in circles trying to figure out how to find yourself.
My conclusion? Share your experiences and resources with others as much as you can. You justify yourself through the positive impact that you have on the people around you. Taking joy in the lives of other people will take you away from banal worries about where your life is going. If you keep yourself moving in a generally good direction, one day you will look back and realise that you’ve progressed a great distance.
Well that’s everything since Alaska. I’ve written this last entry just over a year after the fact. While that episode of my life has been put on the shelf, many more adventures have since cropped up in my time here in Ecuador. Stay tuned for more.
Incidentally, if anyone reading this is interested in giving this lifestyle a go, I am planning to set off again from Mexico City around September 2025. I would definitely welcome some company this time around, and I assure you that I’m really a rather slow cyclist (yes, they do all say that).
Take care,
Chris