The end of the road

Sunday May 19th - Monday 20th May

The end of the road came suddenly, and unexpectedly. It was in Guadalajara. I think I can even remember the exact moment. I had been recovering on the good vibes, but hard floors, of the Casa Ciclista (Cyclist House) in Guadalajara. I had arrived with the plan of spending a few days there, before charting the next part of my course south towards my goal in Guatemala. It was my third or fourth night there, and I was trying to get comfortable on my excellent, but thin sleeping mat. All of a sudden a curious awareness broke over me, and I sat bolt upright in bed. That was it. I had ridden far enough. I had reached the end of the ride.

A moment of clarity it may have been, but it still took me a few days to understand how I had arrived at this point. I already knew that my time was becoming limited by the approaching rainy season. By June it would be very wet, and by July the rain really would set in, making cycling somewhere between unpleasant and impossible. The road ahead was also a bit tricky. The states of Michoacan and Guerrero had reputations for crime, to the point where even premium and tourist buses were being held up and highway road blocks. Cycling those roads seemed not quite worth the while to me, even if the risks were still lowish. And then there were the distances. I had a long way to ride. Thousands of kilometres still. I was going to have to ride much, much faster than I had been doing, and have many long days in the saddle.

So I was going to have to put my bike on a number of buses, to make up time and distance, and to avoid shadier parts of the road ahead. The parts I did ride were going to have to be quick, and potentially wet. Once I did get to Guatemala, I was then going to have to turn around and bus all the way back up to Mexico city to fly out. I would be spending more time taking buses than riding my bike! And then I understood. The thing I loved about bike touring was taking my time, and enjoying the ride. Being able to go where I wanted, stop where I wanted, for however long I wanted, and do whatever I wanted. Freedom, in a word. And to reach Guatemala, I would have to give that up.

Of course, I had run out of money by that stage, so that was an issue too, but I figure that if the desire is there, you can make almost anything happen. But my desire, more precious a resource than gold (mostly), was exhausted. I had reached the end of the road, and I realised I was already in the last days of Blue Steel.

My 3290th kilometre turned out to be my last

The end of the world

Friday May 17th - Saturday May 18th

I could be accused of creating a false sense of suspense here, considering this title, the ending to my previous post, and the intervening time until this one. Particularly when the only real villains were a broken spoke and my very own lethargy in updating this blog. In my defence, there were an awful lot of mini-tornadoes in this next part of the ride.

Of course, the logical sequela of my broken spoke, was an out-thrust thumb. At that stage my only real option was to hitch a ride to the nearest bike shop that could fix my wheel, before it was too badly bent out of shape to fix at all. I found a ride after an hour or so, and my brief new friends took me to San Juan de Los Lagos, where I was assured my cyclogical needs could be met. Indeed they were, and for cheap! I think it cost me 35 pesos (about 3 bucks) for the new spoke and the labour. I asked about where a penny-pinching cyclist could rest up for the night, and the cycle guys told me there was a place on top of the hill that cyclists and other travellers used. I struggled up the hill slowly, glad to see the new spoke and a straight rim spinning faithfully again.

The place on the hill turned out to be a refuge run by a church, which catered for anyone on the road or without a home. I was glad for the roof, less so for the cement floor and the ambiance. It was a strange experience, as the place seemed to essentially be a homeless shelter. So my company for the night was a homeless person, and some giant rat thing that scurried around the cement floor, occasionally venturing near enough to me to necessitate me shooing it away.

No muy lujo

"Welcome wandering brother"

The pre-dawn light, a sleepless night, and a bland breakfast in the homeless shelter that next morning were sobering. Whereas such a night would previously not have troubled me much, and made for a good story, that day it simply felt tiring. I remember thinking that if I had had somebody to laugh at it with, perhaps it would have been different.

Nice view though

Up before dawn, feeling like a rool cyclist for once.

Wheels spinning as the sun rose, I set off down the hill with one spoke shining brightly in the sun's early rays, and 71 gleaming only dully. The road stretched out almost uncaringly in front of me, all 130km to Guadalajara. I wasn't sure if I'd make it in one day, but I was going to give it a nudge. After stopping at an Oxxo for water, I lingered at a local tortilleria to enjoy the smell of freshly made tortillas, before tucking the usual half kilo into my panniers, and heading for the highway.

The road was long and straight. What seemed like only moderate undulations in the road were actually long and tiring. The landscape was deceptive through its sheer scale and uniformity.

Lejos

However, behind every duplicitous horizon there was a smiling face of a local who would ask me what I was doing, and offer me at least encouragement, and often snacks. Mexico being Mexico, they usually offered me beer too.

Goodies from strangers. Thanks Mexico!

After the halfway mark of the day, things began to get strange. Suddenly, mini-tornadoes started popping up either side of the highway. The hot and restless wind working on the loose soil of the plains sent columns of coppery-brown spirals winding often hundreds of metres into the air. They appeared, and disappeared, sometimes spinning on the spot, sometimes rushing across the road in front of me. I had visions of Martian landscapes in my mind for some reason.

The air was thick with heat. SOS boxes, at first reassuring, turned out to be uniformly empty, broken into, and destroyed. Scorched earth bordered the highway in places. What had happened? Where was I? I felt like I was at the end of the world, or some other planet at least.

Surely it wasn't that hot... maybe my bike computer had heatstroke.

Help?

Help indeed. These boxes did provide a little welcome shade though.

Scorched earth

And the road stretched on...

My legs pushed back against the strange and heavy atmosphere. I was worried the conditions might end my day early, but for the moment I was feeling ok. In fact, with some musical motivation and Mexican Gatorade on board (no, not beer), I was actually feeling pretty good. If this was the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, I thought, I'd be fine. As long as I had my bike. And a machete maybe. Hm, there might be a movie in that...

Looking up, a moment of peace

Nothin' says class like C-K-L-A-S-S

A particularly classy sign signalled the proximity of a big city. The ride had turned out to be much longer than I had thought - 150km instead of 130km - and I had exhausted my strength to make it to the edge of Guadalajara, in the 11 hours from sunrise to sunset. It was a long last hour, squeezing the last light out of the day, to make my way through the dense outer layers of Guadalajara, towards its soft, creamy centre. At last the lights of the happy home of Casa Ciclista Guadalajara shined on me, and I had reached my destination, and the end of the ride.

Culture bottle (Three states in two days)

Thursday May 16th - Friday May 17th

After chilling in Zacatecas, I hit the road again. One of my favourite ways to travel, on a bike on otherwise, is to decide on the day, what it is I'm going to do that day. And so it was that I woke up on Thursday, not knowing whether I was going to get on my bike, put my bike on a bus, hitch, or... stay another day! The first option won out in the end, and I set out on what looked like a long, but gentle downhill ride to Aguascalientes.

I enjoyed the semi-desert landscape, although after a while it got a little monotonous. I was more preoccupied by a sudden bout of nausea and stomach pain that came on just after having a snack that morning. A similar thing had happened to me on the last of the 5 days ride to Durango. I was beginning to wonder if my stomach was finally feeling the toll of the interesting and varied foods I had been sampling. This would be disappointing, because I had reached the conclusion by that stage in my trip, that I may actually have intestines of steel. I hadn't had more than mild stomach upset from eating anything in the last year and a bit of touring the Americas. I would eat anything, including any kind of street food, only taking caution by drinking filtered/purified water in areas where people didn't drink the tap water.

I unfurrowed my brow, downed a cocktail of ciprofloxacin, omeprazole, and metoclopramide, and continued on, only mildly dismayed at the thought that now my Mexican meals might have to include not only lime, salt, and chili as standard, but also antibiotics.

Yay!

Don't mind if I do... ("Rest area")

I never got tired of seeing these "prolonged descent" signs

After a while I began to feel a little better, and continued on. I was pretty psyched to hit the 3000km mark of my ride. I had taken my time by most bike touring standards, but damn it if it didn't feel good anyway. I enjoyed some nice prolonged downhills, and racked up the 120km mark for the day on entering Aguascalientes, the capital city of the state of the same name, after leaving the state of Zacatecas earlier in the day. Aguascalientes again blew me away. It was so beautiful. Stunning colonial architecture, ornate gardens, and really cool vibe to the centre and surrounding bars and cafes.

Not bad Aguascalientes, not bad.

Someone actually more heavily loaded than me. Believe it or not there is a motorcycle and a person under all that. (I had to get close to even see them though.)

After chowing down on a meal that included nopales (a type of cactus), I was again reminded of how rich the cultural variety is here in Mexico. Across Mexico, from state to state, and even from city to city within the same state, so much changes. Different words, expressions, and accents colour the language. Food varies in terms of dishes, but also in variations on the same dishes, or even types of tortillas! And of course the people too; attitudes, appearance, ethnic makeup, and dress, all vary greatly.

Perhaps because of this cultural variation, people liked to ask what the comida tipica (typical or local food) is in Australia. I almost cringe when I get asked this now, because the most typical food I can think of is Vegemite and Tim Tams. Our beloved barbecues are certainly not unique, and our meat pies and fish and chips come from our English heritage. Perhaps the most interesting things to eat in Australia are those brought by immigrants, in the form of delicious Italian, Greek, French, Indian, Sri Lankan, Thai, Indonesian, Chinese, and Japanese food (although the list is of course much longer). I guess all of the above is a reasonable response to the question.

I rode out of Aguascalientes mulling these thoughts, still concerned that there was a uniformity to my own culture that stood in stark contrast to the diversity I saw around me in Mexico. Food, accents, language, clothing, and culture really don't change that much across Australia, I thought, and the variety we do have is all recently imported from other countries. My musings were interrupted by yet more nausea, and I had to stop and rest near a store. My water bottle caught my eye, for no apparent reason, but as I looked closer, I could see disturbing blotches of white, grey, and even green through the semi-transparent blue plastic. I looked inside. Yep, they were definitely inside the bottle. I shook it, and poured the water into a transparent bottle. It was disturbingly cloudy.

It looked harmless enough...

...or was it?

No it was not.

In hospitals, we use bottles filled with culture medium (tasty bacteria food) to grow, isolate, and test antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria. I realised that I probably hadn't washed that bottle properly in almost the whole year I had had it, and was in the habit of keeping an electrolyte solution (which included sugar) in this particular bottle. It would sit there with this liquid in it all the hot day, and some of the night before I refilled it. In that moment I realised I had basically been keeping bacterial culture medium, in ideal conditions, in my beloved blue water bottle. I had been growing, isolating, and ingesting, a small but significant amount of bacteria each day I had cycled since I started using electrolyte solution - somewhere on the road from Mazatlan to Durango. Now the bouts of nausea and abdominal pain made sense. Although perhaps in the tradition of Australian doctors who like research, no-one was going to give me a Nobel Prize for drinking this bacterial solution. I just felt stupid. And a little ill.

I threw the bottle away and rode on. I was still mildly nauseous, and still preoccupied by our lack of cultural diversity. Why was it this way? I wondered...

Cogitation was interrupted when I crossed over to the state of Jalisco, the third state in two short days, and where I was planning on finding a town to stay for the night, somewhere down the road. This planning was further interrupted by my wheel making a strange sound, some time later. After checking the bike, I realised I had broken a spoke. I did not have the tools to fix it, and I was in no-man's-land, between towns, and it was getting late. I could try to ride further, but I had seen what had happened when my friend Greg tried to do the same - it just led to more broken spokes, and a bent rim. I was stuck.

Hitch and ride

Monday May 13th - Wednesday May 15th

After Durango, I had been told some parts of the road south were potentially a little unsafe for a cycling extranjero such as I. People had suggested I hitch or bus through these parts instead, to avoid having to stay the night in a less than ideal spot. Although I wondered if these dangers were overstated, as they often are, I had had fun hitching with Norma and Cynthia, and had no problem skipping even potentially unsafe parts of the road. So when I set off from Villa Union, it was with this plan in mind.

I started cycling that day, largely because I felt like it, figuring I could ride a bit before sticking the thumb out. I was enjoying the ride so much that without realising it, I actually went past the place I had been told was good to hitch from... by about 15km! I was having a rest in an abandoned gas station, when a truck pulled up. I had a chat to the two guys, both called Guillermo,  who told me where I was, and ended up giving me a lift to the next town, Sombrerete.

One of the two Guillermos. Thanks guys!

After lunch and a rest there, I once again put the thumb out. It took a couple of hours, but a friendly dude on his way to Zacatecas stopped and gave me a ride. It was an interesting ride. After we had both had a couple of beers, I began to wonder about the wisdom of being in a vehicle with someone drinking and offering me beer. We drove through a rainstorm, which I was glad not to have to ride through, and my driver stopped drinking by then, so I felt more relaxed. He told me he was a bus driver, and that not long ago, after stopping his bus at a small township nearby, was horrified to see a number of headless bodies, lined up by the side of the road. He said it really shocked him, and that this happens sometimes around there. Although he said it was only people mixed up in the cartels that this happened to, he understood my decision to not ride this part of the road.

We arrived in Zacatecas, where it was cold and a little rainy. I cycled into town and found a hostel, after not having any luck with my (admittedly last minute) Couchsurfing requests. I ended up staying a few days there, being a little sick, but also impressed by how beautiful the place was. It was a stunning old colonial city, and I never thought I would hear myself say something like that!

The street the hostel is on

The main cathedral

Detail of the facade

One of many nice alleyways

One of many nice streets

A statue in one of the many  parks

View from the hostel. Not bad.

El pasito duranguense y el canguro

Thursday May 9th - Sunday May 12th

El pasito duranguense is a dance not actually from Durango, but Chicago. The large contingent of people from Durango there apparently invented it, and enjoy it, just as those actually in Durango do. I think you can tell from watching a few videos that the people of Durango are just darned fun. They are also very kind and welcoming. They accepted my contribution - the kangaroo paw - with remarkably good humour. I think my step fits in roughly where they do the caballito at 1:17 in this video, but I'd have to show you for you to understand :) Above all I just had the most amazing experiences in my 5 day dance with the wonderful people of Durango.

I arrived in the city of Durango tired and dirty. I must have looked quite a sight in my dirty white ambassador shirt, helmet and loaded bike, sitting in a plaza waiting for my Couchsurfing host to arrive. I don't know who stared more - them at me, or me at them, because I have never seen so many cowboy hats outside of a theme party or western. It was kinda of cool actually, there is a real legitimate cowboy culture in Durango, and these sombreros are 100% tipicos. This is probably why Durango was a hub for Hollywood westerns back in the day.

In any case it was nice not to see any other extranjeros around, but it did mean I drew a few more stares than usual. The very agreeable Ulises arrived, showed me where he worked, and then directed me to his friend Norma's place, where I could rest while he worked. We all ended up meeting there later on, drinking until late and crashing on the floor. In fact, because Norma, who lived with her sister Cynthia, was also a CS host, we decided it would be easier if I just stayed there.

Eucalyptus trees are all over the americas. Weird.

The next day I took a stroll around the city. Durango is quite beautiful, but I think I enjoyed more the amount of cowboy hats I saw. They're everywhere. It's actually normal for gents here to wear them. How cool! There were also a lot of cyclists. In fact, I ended up running into one of the cyclists I had seen in the mountains, and he invited me to the night-time bike ride that they have every Thursday, which was that night. I had a super time riding around, seeing the city, and enjoying being with some cycle buddies. Being able to ride around safely at night was a uniquely fun experience too. Afterwards, Gallegos, as he likes to be known, took me to a great hamburger place and shouted me dinner. What a guy!

Zoom zoom zoom

Gallegos, his daughter, and I

Cyclo gang! Watch out streets of Durango

Norma and her sister Cynthia were such wonderful hosts, and looked after me like I was family. I felt super lucky to be their guest. Amongst other things, they took me and another friend Loreto for a hike into the surrounding hills of Durango. We walked along the shore of a dammed river, and enjoyed the beautiful semi-desert surroundings, and even a pine tree. It was really cool. Later that night we went out on the town in Durango, where amongst other things, I attempted to invent a dance step we decided to call the Kangaroo Paw, to do my country proud. There was much laughter.

Cynthia and Norma, intrepid both

Desert flowers

Loreto, Norma, y yo

¡Hermanas hermosas!

Ulises, Norma, and I

The next day, Saturday, I was due to leave, and Norma and Cynthia had to go to a nearby town, where Norma gives talks to the local people about environmental and sustainability issues, which she studies. We were going in the same direction, so we decided to hitch together before going our separate ways. While on the back of a truck, Norma said that I was welcome to come along to the town if I wanted. It sounded like a good idea to me, so instead of continuing down the highway, I went to Villa Union with the girls.

Hitching is much, much, easier with pretty girls

That Saturday and the following Sunday in Villa Union, I met some of the most wonderful people I can remember meeting in this trip. I was welcomed into families homes, fed lovely home-cooked meals, waited on attentively, chatted to for hours, and invited to stay even more. It was really humbling. Also, the adults and children who Norma gave the talk to were interested, smart and attentive. I told them a little about Australia, and our native animals, and showed them some Youtube videos. This was fine until one of them got oddly graphic, and the kids started asking some funny questions.

Norma giving a talk to some of the locals

Afterwards, we were invited to have have dinner with some friends of Norma's. The dinner almost ended in solicitacions of matrimony for my dear brothers back home, after I showed the family photos on Facebook.

The next day we took some of the local kids out on a educational walk and talk tour of the countryside, studying the flora and fauna, and sustainability issues to do with farming. The kids really paid attention and didn't get bored. I couldn't believe it. They wanted more at the end!

I'm so disappointed this is the only photo of a cowboy hat I got. Imagine the guy on the left, and then multiply by a thousand, and in a city. It was bien padre.

The kiddies and Norma

Later on, in the afternoon, Norma, Cynthia, and their friends took me to the nearby El Saltito, a stunning waterhole where some of the scenes of The Mask of Zorro were apparently filmed. The water was warm and beautiful, so I got down to my undies and jumped in. I was the only one. Sometimes being extranjero is kinda fun, because people just assume you're weird, and understand when you do stuff like that.

You can hardly see El Saltito from the road

But it's there!

and it's beautiful

Less beautiful :/

Swimming there in the waterhole, and floating under the stunning arched trees, which felt like a cathedral, was up there with the most striking experiences I have had on this trip. It was just so beautiful and peaceful. Afterwards, being a little excited with all the swimming and jumping, I starting climbing trees (with my clothes back on) and was accused of being a koala by my new friends. This was of course silly. I wasn't climbing eucalyptus trees.

The only cathedral I could be happy in

Looking up

Nice way to finish the day.

We got back to town, had some beers and tacos, and eventually crashed out. We said our goodbyes the next morning, as the girls had to go back to university Monday, and I had to get back on the road. Before I got going, I was asked if I could stop by the kindergarten to talk to the kids about what I was doing. They asked a lot of questions, and were strangely interested in my camping mattress. It was heaps of fun!

At the kindergarten.

Kids being hilarious kids.

Chuy! Thank you so much

After the visit to the kindergarten, and after running into a new friend, Chuy on the road, I started cycling again just plain high on the experience that I had, and on bicycle touring in general. Firstly, the hospitality and kindness I had been shown by everyone I met left me speechless. Add to that the fact that I had had amazing experiences, met great people, made friends, gone on walks and bike rides, talked to local kids, and gotten to know a small community... so much and in only five days! It was an experience I could not possibly have imagined and will not be able to soon forget.