Wandering with Tedder and Tamara

This was a long day by Mexican standards, perhaps 450 miles. We got an early start from Oaxaca, heading north. The road was marked as a highway, and it was by Mexican standards. It started just above 5000 feet, and we crossed three ranges that were over 9000 feet. By the time the road started climbing, it deteriorated into rough pavement, sort of like a paved forest service road, and was as twisty as any road labeled “Old Highway $N” would be in the US.

It took us almost 5 hours to go the first 100 miles. We only stopped at the roadside a couple of times to give Tamara a motion sickness break- so it was basically 5 solid hours of riding.

After we came over the last mountain, I suddenly felt like I was in the true Mexico. I can't believe it took so long. The hillsides were completely covered in jungle. They weren't rain forests, but it was a true jungle- tons of undergrowth, no visible dirt. Not too far down the road was a road crew, taking machetes to the roadsides to keep the brush from taking over the road.

Once we got into the lowlands, the jungle turned into banana plantations (farms?) and other cleared farmland. There were a lot of small brush fires, obviously being used to clear land and perhaps fix carbon (nitrogen?) into the soil.

The flatlands were very, very windy. We had the bike at about a 15 degree tilt to compensate for the head/sidewind. We were going fast, and so the bike was very close to being flat out.

At one point, the highway was closed down. Up ahead as a dark brown cloud of smoke. We were escorted off the highway, but couldn't figure out any alternatives. We finally took a town road parallel, which eventually petered out into a country road- first gravel, then dirt and silt. We took this until we intersected the highway, then roamed to find an opening through the barb wire fence so we could get back up onto the highway.

We didn't have any luck finding an opening, so we kept going down the country road. It ended in about a half mile. There were a couple of locals just standing there- thankfully, Tamara was able to communicate enough that they helped us by hopping on bicycles and taking us back to the highway approach.

We still couldn't figure it out, since it was gated, so another local walked us to the highway, then down into a sandy wash, and onto the other side. It was open! We got up on the highway and started heading back towards the main highway.

About a mile down the road, we ran across a fence and guard post. Basically, it was the end of the highway. We attempted to speak with the fellow, but ended up turning around because all we could figure was that we were at the end of the highway (yeah). We turned around and followed the little highway the other way, since we didn't have a choice.

Eventually it led us back to the main highway. We jumped back onto it and got going again. Amazingly, when we reached the next toll plaza, the highway was closed in the oncoming direction. There was at least two miles of backed-up traffic- and we were definitely the only vehicle going in our direction. We lucked out, since the little highway was just a stub road to the PEMEX farm (I'm guessing).

A few hours later, we ran out of gas. We only had 150 miles on the bike, but we were out of gas. The combination of high speed and a brutal headwind was bad for the gas mileage.

After waiting a few minutes, a local on a bicycle came up. We told him how much gas, gave him $5, and he went two miles up the road for gas. When he came back, he had about three liters of gas and a dead iguana on his bicycle. I think the latter might have been a meal he found on the way. We paid him another $5, shook hands, and were on our way. I love the enterprise- $10 was a bargain for us, and he made quite a bit of money in the process too.

We decided to stop short of Palenque, in Villahermosa. It is a fairly 'corporate' town, mainly working people, especially for PEMEX and related industry. We decided to splurge on lodging, since we really wanted air conditioning and a quiet room, after not sleeping well in the past few rooms.

Tomorrow is on to the ruins at Palenque, hopefully some swimming, then back to the town of Palenque. Good times!