Week 124. Cycling through wind-farms. We are at the narrowest part of Mexico right now: only 200 Km between Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Even though there is a mountain range in the middle, the wind is coming from Atlantic coast and blowing here on the Pacific coast like crazy. Smart people built many wind-farms in this region. Luckily to us, we get mainly tail winds, but the wind direction changes multiple times per day and cycling through the howling wind is not as easy as we wished it to be. Our week looked like this: Day 1 to 4 – waiting for strong winds (up to 120 km h) to die out; Day 5 to 7 – actually cycling. Up next: climbing back to the mountains and none of us is ready for that!
Mexico
Grounded by Wind
Grounded by wind. We reached region of windfarms and it’s been windy. We talked with many locals about the winds here and they kept telling us it’s normal. Until yesterday. Even the locals agreed, that the wind is out of hand: powercuts, howling sounds and truck traffic grounded by the fear of flipping over. In additon to this, it’s cold and locals are wearing their coats. We decided to wait for couple of days more…
Quiz: Tulkus Favourite Fruit
Quiz Friday! Here is Tulku enjoying a cold coconut. Tulku loves all kinds of fruits and vegetables and she’s eager to try new ones. We have problems keeping her form trying jelapeño peppers as they are everywhere here in Mexico. Despite all this, Tulku favours some fruits more than others. Question: What is Tulkus favourite fruit ever?
A Coconut
B Tuna fruit (Cactus fruit)
C Apple
The winner will get a personal kilometer as well as a place in our Hall of Fame (http://on.fb.me/1JAdFTC). The quiz ends on Monday (00:00 GMT). The winner will be announced on Tuesday(ish). The winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries.
Week 123: Cycling Soconusco Coast
Week 123. Cycling Soconusco Coast. This 20 km wide coastal strip is known for it’s fertile soil and banana and coffee produce. We know it as ‘frustrating coast’. At first we named it ‘3rd most boring road on Earth’, later the scenery changed, so we changed it’s name to ‘3rd most windy road on Earth’. To make the situation worse, Mexican road engineers decided that the new road will go straight through every hill there is, while the old road conveniently goes around each bump. The tricky part is that the old road is used for the opposite direction traffic. And yet what frustrates us the most is that just a month ago we were cycling 70-80 km per day on even harder and hotter conditions, and now we’re struggling to cycle 40 km…
Meet Cesar Vazquez Mazariegos
Meet Cesar Vazquez Mazariegos! He greeted us, when we were looking for a place to pitch our tent in a village so small, that it even didn’t have a name (the map named the village after the nearby brigde). “Come, you sleep at my house tonight,” said Cesar and invited us in for the night. Cesar had some cool stories to share, from working in gold mines in Guatemala to making a career in Mexican govermental agency. Also, we now know that cows in Mexico cost 10 times more than in Ecuador.
Quiz: Can Stove Building
Quiz Friday! Here is our brand new self-made subsitute cooker (and Sven in the background). We are waiting for the spare part for our main cooker to arrive from overseas. Even though we love Mexican food, there are some long stretches with no food services on our route, so we had to come up with other solutions. We present our alcohol cooker made from soda cans. You need 2 cans to make one cooker. Question: How many cans did Sven use until he finally made one decent and working cooker?
Hint: It took 10 hours of work to achieve the result.
The winner will get a personal kilometer as well as a place in our Hall of Fame (http://on.fb.me/1JAdFTC). The quiz ends on Monday (00:00 GMT). The winner will be announced on Tuesday(ish). The winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries.
Week 122: Stove Trouble Again
Week 122. We started cycling again, yay! We made it to the next town, 50 km away, yay! And then the life got in our way again, and we’re stuck in this town now… To be more precise: our trusty Primus cooker broke down and well… No cooker = no food = no cycling, I guess. So while we were figuring out how to solve the cooker situation (Primus Equipment is sending us new parts for free, yay to them!), we are exploring local Mexican cuisine. And there is a lot to explore! So far our experience waries from ‘Oh! SPICY! Give me water!’ to ‘Why on earth did you eat a whole jelapeño?!’ to ‘What is that? Oh, tastes gooooood!’ to ‘Are you sure there are no bugs in this meal?’. Yup, in this corner, Mexicans eat bugs. Also, so far we haven’t seen any buritos or chili con carne for sale anywhere…
P.S. In those rare spare moments when we’re not eating or breaking stuff (and calling it fixing), we went to Izapa maya ruins and found out that this stone in the picture is a 2000 years old compass.
Quiz: Goodbye Procedures
Quiz Friday! Here we are, waving goodbye to Kira’s parents on New Years Eve. As most of you know, Kira’s parents visited us for Christmas. We spent 2 great weeks exploring Yucatan peninsula. Sadly (or not), the trip came to an end and we had to say goodbye. Question: How many minutes did the goodbye waving continue?
The winner will get a personal kilometer as well as a place in our Hall of Fame (http://on.fb.me/1JAdFTC). The quiz ends on Monday (00:00 GMT). The winner will be announced on Tuesday(ish). The winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. Kira’s parents are excluded for taking part in this quiz.
Week 121: Mexico City
Week 121. This week was eventful: 2 different time zones, 3 different climate zones, lot’s of steps and lot’s of sights. We waved goodbye to Kira’s parents, visited set of newest James Bond movie (also known as Mexico City) and came back to our bikes. We dusted them and now we’re getting ready to continue our big trip with our slow speed. Well, we might climb some more steps on some ruins before…
Week 120: Learning about Maya Culture
Week 120. Learning about Maya culture. Also, learning to take selfies! When we started our trip ‘selfie’ was not even a word (or was it?) and we spent last 2 years in countries where selfies aren’t that popular. Naturally, when we saw a sticker on the floor marking ‘selfie zone’ in this Maya museum, we understood that we need to step up our game in order to fit in the modern world. So here you go!
Boundless Biking 