We made it!

Just a quick note to let you know we made it!  Fantastic to ride into Mexico City yesterday afternoon and find it in full festive mode celebrating the children's 'Day of the Dead'.  There are photos and much to tell but it's been full on to celebrate the ride, see the city, box the bike, organise gear and now I'm at the airport ready to fly to see son Nick and family in Florida.  More very soon - Mexico has been fabulous - a revelation given the negative press it usually receives.

In haste

Viv

Melting in Mexico

Buenos Dias!

I'm sorry 'So long' has been so long.  We are now in mainland Mexico on a rest day in a pretty little town called Ajiji on the shores of Lake Chapala and it's the first time that sufficient energy and connectivity have coincided for many a day.  Just when we thought it would all get easier with many miles already banked in strong legs, humid heat introduced a whole new challenge that has been hard to manage; we've arrived in camp fit for little more than shower, eat, rest.  And I guess we're at that strange 'so near and yet so far' stage where thoughts are already turning to the joys of home yet mixed with sadness at the end of a rich, intense experience and the prospect of some difficult farewells.

Baja California became evermore beautiful, wild and peaceful as we rode south to finish in the lively port of La Paz.  Often parallel to the sea, the road was genuinely 'rollink hillz' and exhilarating riding enhanced by sightings of dolphins, soaring seabirds and amazing forests of cacti and palms. 

Cacti strutting their stuff

Camps were informal and memorable; the local priest in one small town offered us shelter in the the church grounds and we woke to a glorious sunrise and the uplifting sounds of morning mass.

Rain on our final day on the peninsula meant we rode into town looking ready for the kiln and the next day our 18 hour ferry crossing to Mazatlan was overcast and photos disappointing.

Approaching Mazatlan, a small island white with guano

Mazatlan was the beginning of a different Mexico.  The warmth and welcome of the people has been delightful since we crossed the border but this was developed tourist territory with all the hassle and bustle we had been happy to avoid.  It was fun to leave on a small water taxi, nursing our bikes nervously, to begin the ride south to Puerte Vallarta. 

Cosy fit for 7 bikes, 7 riders and the Captain!

And this was where the heat, humidity and mosquitoes hit hardest.  At the first turn of the pedals everything seemed to liquefy even early in the day; by mid-morning it was a battle to stay hydrated, sane(?) and un-bitten.  Inevitably we have to ride some major highways and the burning tarmac, noise and fumes from the traffic topped off with heightened anxiety can be pretty taxing.  To help us cope our accommodation on this section has often been in hotels on riding days, some very basic but some with air conditioning and a pool :-))

Still in our cycling kit...

As well as resorts and beaches there are huge wetlands where half the world's supply of shrimps are farmed and fished.  

I loved the calm, slightly surreal atmosphere of these watery plains.

Three days ago we left the coast, turning east towards our final goal in Mexico City.  We climbed over 4000 metres in the first two days through dense tropical and eventually pine forest.  It was great to feel the temperature and humidity drop, smell the lush, fresh greenery and see the drapes of Morning Glories in every shade from deep blue-purple to vibrant turquoise.  

Since Mazatlan we've been joined by Mexicans Geraldo and Jose, both ardent cyclists, immensely and justifiably proud of their country and keen for us to enjoy the best of it.  Geraldo is a gifted mountain biker who now coaches the young Mexican team for Olympic qualification and is an influential figure in all aspects of the country's cycling activities.  Both men have given unstinting support to us in so many ways and it's great fun to have them along.

It's time to say 'So long' again and attend to the increasingly derelict kit I like to call my laundry!

Just one more picture of a typically colourful Mexican town and I think this is probably the penultimate posting until we reach Mexico City, inshallah.

Oh, and a pretty Mexican coffee.

And finally, these figures are macabre to see but made in the spirit that life is just one brief episode in the whole and death to be celebrated, not feared...

Till quite soon,

Viv x

Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah, nous sommes a la plage!!!

I had a highly romantic vision of the Baja California with azure sea, white sand and all the things the brochure promised.  Leaving Mexicali in throbbing heat to cross grubby salt flats, featureless but for a few skeletal remains of long-abandoned projects was not in the script.  It's been a seven day stretch, starting down the east coast where things steadily improved and two nights camping on the beach, swimming in the soft warm waters of the Sea of Cortes brought the dream a little closer.  It was fun to watch pairs of pelicans fishing industriously; floating on my back watching frigate birds glide elegantly above was a perfect antidote to sweating away the miles on the bike.  Temperatures have often been in the upper forties centigrade even in the morning.  Don't mention the mosquitoes.

Salt flats south of Mexicali

Entry to the southern region.

Getting greener

Cactus forests on all sides as we go further south.

White sands at last.

Camping on the beach.

They're far faster and more agile than their rather gawky shape suggests.

The road from San Felipe across the peninsula to Guerro Negro on the Pacific coast is yet to be completed and included an 'exciting' section of rough dirt on our way to the middle of nowhere.  The camp site was posted as Rancho Laguna Chapala and we arrived in high hopes, unfortunately a few millennia too late for the lagoon.  Undoubtedly the grottiest place we've camped and the total absence of any competition was evident in every sphere.  Guerro Negro itself is a centre for whale watching in the season but other times a desolate place, its only saving graces a good coffee shop and a hotel bed for the night!

Travelling off the beaten track is what I love and the occasional physical discomforts are entirely compensated by everything I see and, above all, the people I meet.  In the absence of any public sites, Victor, the General Manager of a huge tomato and cucumber growing project, generously allowed us to camp on his land.  His wife offered us the facilities of their beautiful straw-built house, made us cold drinks while we waited and the little boy showed us around, confident and sociable, aged four.  It seemed a hostile environment for such water-hungry plants but underground resources are the key and the climate allows for two crops a year.  Victor employs three hundred workers and explained that he has twenty big supermarket customers; between them they demand fifty different types of packaging....

Camping at Victor's - the tent the only thing without a fly....

Each day of the trip is only possible because of my bike yet it hardly gets a mention!  Last rest day I cleaned it, changed the oil in the Rohloff Hubgear, replaced the back brake blocks and adjusted the chain and that is the first serious maintenance since I started over five thousand miles ago.  Apart from pumping the tyres, cleaning the chain and the occasional sluice down it has required no attention whatsoever and runs ever more smoothly.  Marvellous.

On the road in the early morning.

Anxieties about riding in Mexico have been allayed so far and drivers have been consistently considerate. The next few days take us down to La Paz on the east coast of the peninsula and from there we take the ferry to Mazatlan and, hard to believe, begin the final three weeks of the tour.  

It's strange to think that autumn is upon you and difficult to imagine mellow fruitfulness!  

So long

Viv x

Cartoon-lands!

My preference would be to climb in the cool of morning and descend in the afternoon but that's not always how the land lies and there is much to be said for starting the day with an exhilarating downhill - three times in the last section, wahoo!  The long slog up Mingus Mountain in the heat of the day is not easy to forget especially the discovery that it was far from over at the road summit.  Another 3kms of even steeper, rough dirt track to camp seemed unnecessary.  A quietly beautiful site with huge, aromatic Ponderosa pine trees soothed our indignation and the prospect of hurtling out of camp and snaking down for seven miles in the morning positively cheering!

Down it goes...

As far as the eye could see in the low morning light.

Bike trails tend to wander so we've ridden very few but an exception this week was through an ancient granite landscape with features called 'dells', strongly reminiscent of the tors on Dartmoor and well worth a bit of traffic-free dalliance.  The trail eventually delivered us on to a highway across the Arizona desert and that's where things turned cartoonish.

The dells 

I must report that Roadrunner is disappointingly smaller than I'd imagined and extremely camera-shy but Wile E Coyote is indeed prone to disaster and sadly most often seen squashed on the road.  The Saguaro cacti are weirdly wonderful and apparently it's about seventy-five years before they put out a second finger - no wonder they point defiantly skywards!  The classic three-finger image would be approximately two-hundred years old and inside that green, prickly, juicy-looking exterior I'm told there's a skeleton as hard as a regular tree trunk.  It took a bit of time to get my eye in for the desert but gradually I could pick out and enjoy the amazing variety of cacti and grasses, the beautiful range of subtle, soft colours and stark, weird shapes.

Seguara cactus

Other roadside cacti

Statement entrance...

We have a rest day in Yuma when we'll be rejoined by Isabelle, hurrah, this time with her partner Pascale, taking the French Connection to a noisy six, and five guys variously from the U.S., Australia and Germany.  We then continue south to cross the Mexican border, the U.S. done and dusted and just three thousand kilometres to go.  I'm looking forward to hanging close to the coast down the Baja California - it's been a long time since we saw the sea.

Next post from Mexico!

So long

Viv x

Rocking on....

So many amazing rocks - The Canyonlands, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon!  Not many words this time but I hope the pictures tell the story....

This one literally.  The petroglyphs are roughly 2000 years old, of Navajo origin and called 'The rock that tells a story' and now popularly known as 'Newspaper Rock' 

Green River Canyon has been carved by millions of years of erosion and the unusual pale rim is a layer of hard sandstone formed from ancient coastal dunes.

Canyonlands of Utah

Shy but perky.

This colourful floral display was unique along the road and lifted our spirits no end!

One of the impressive natural arches near Moab.

Another one!

The twins.

Monument Valley was magnificent.  It was unfortunate that we fell into a horrible tourist trap where a firm called 'Gouldings' have sewn up every aspect of the visitor 'experience' in the most exploitative way.  Although a rest day we had to camp in a hot and desolate sand pit at the top of a steep climb; the only place to eat was expensive, the food unpalatable and the final straw, it was dry!  Biking in a hot place requires at least the occasional cold beer, especially on a rest day!

Yep, that's John Wayne...

So many layers, so many colours...

We took an early tour to catch the morning light on the extraordinary sculptural forms; this is 'The Thumb'

Mexican Hat

Elephant Feet 

I've tried to resist 'awesome' but 'The Grand Canyon' truly is!  We rode all round the southern trail, stopping at the major viewpoints and each revealed new topographic wonders under the huge skies; groups of raptors displayed serenely, drifting in the thermals; pairs of Ravens tumbled and gossiped.  

Happy day!

I've struggled a bit to comment positively on American culture but the National Parks are brilliant.  Staff are friendly, enthusiastic, seem genuinely pleased to share information and facilities are scrupulously maintained including immaculate compost toilets.  Best of all, signs are discreet, their tone expecting compliance, not loud and authoritarian assuming misbehaviour.  With few exceptions people are respectful.

I had a reverie as I rode yesterday about why I find this often arduous trip so rewarding.  It is a mirror of the school holidays of my fifties childhood.  So long as I stay out to play on my bike all day with friends, appear on time with clean hands at stated mealtimes, look after my own stuff and behave respectfully, it's pretty straightforward!  There's even the occasional tricky adult to negotiate like the camp ground marshal that made us move our tents from the shade at the edge on to a small scorched patch of earth in the middle of a deserted four acre campground 'in case we put other people off'....

Time to stop.  So long until the Arizona Desert!

Love

Viv

Getting warmer

If this post is a touch haphazard it is because we have just completed an eight day stretch, riding more than a thousand kilometres over the Teton Mountains, in and out of Flaming Gorge and a dizzying amount of climb and descent, much of it in gusting headwinds; the brain has been alternately frozen and fried.  We're now in Utah and since we left Montana we've zipped through Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado with ever changing landscapes of high dessert, mountain, forest and now the spectacular canyon lands.

Yellowstone National Park was a fabulous highlight and four of us hired a car to make the most of our day there.  Francine is a wonderful organiser and had us breakfasted, equipped with a fine picnic and on the road by seven.  We did the recommended circuit backwards, starting at an almost deserted 'Paintpot', a heaving, bubbling volcanic area of hot pools, steaming vents and beautifully coloured salt crusts.  It was magical in the morning light and looking across to the mountains beyond we could see herds of bison grazing peacefully. 

Next the Yellowstone Grand Canyon with spectacular falls and extraordinary rock formations showing the ancient folds and striations, all the different layers eroded irregularly over millennia.  In a ramshackle nest on top of a central pinnacle an osprey preened, apparently oblivious to a fascinated audience and eventually swooped effortlessly away towards the falls.

The Osprey

The finale was 'Old Faithful', a geyser that erupts generously, predictably and frequently, the perfect feature for a tourist attraction!  The whole of Yellowstone is an ancient caldera with geysers, acidic pools, seething  mud and all the lively characteristics of an active volcanic area.  It was mildly unnerving to learn that the entire floor heaves up and down measurably every year. 

We liked some of the smaller geysers performing modestly away from the crowds

The 'Morning Glory' pool 

Speaking of volcanoes, I recall almost daily a moment from the Africa ride.  About halfway through Ethiopia, a normally affable Dutchman became ominously quiet, his expression suggesting a dark interior dialogue.  At the routine rider meeting one evening our leader once again described the next day's route as having 'rolling hills'.  The Dutchman erupted.  'Rollink hillz - zeez are not rollink hillz, zeez are bloody mountainz' and in a wonderfully John Cleese moment said it for us all!

Back in the USA!  Wildlife sightings have included a caribou bathing, a fluffy caramel-coloured baby bison and otherwise humbler critters - three indeterminate snakes, many prairie dogs outnumbered only by rabbits, a few skunk, a bald eagle, pairs of softly spoken grey jays, several ospreys; I remain utterly moose-less.  We went through the village of Dinosaur, so called because it is in the centre of an area where some of the earliest fossil remains and prints have been found.  In true American style they've maxed out on the dinosaur theme and malevolent looking plastic replicas lurk everywhere dwarfing gardens and forecourts.

Caribou  

Here in Moab the temperature is in the thirties and it's hard to credit that less than a week ago I crushed ice as I stuffed my tent in the morning and we were all frozen to the marrow for the first couple of hours riding despite layers and hotshots.  Heat is now going to be the biggest challenge and early starts and ample fluids essential as we head on south to Monument Valley.  I'll return to the canyon lands in my next post when I've sorted yesterday's photographs.

Millimetres matter on a bike.  I'd had a few odd twinges in my back and neck and the other evening realised that the cleat on my left shoe had slid backwards.  I picked and scraped the hard encrusted mud out of the Allen key sockets sufficiently to get purchase but to no avail and in the morning asked Liam, our good-natured mechanic, if he could have a go.  Before 6am, still on his first cup of coffee, he not only solved the problem but lent me a 'courtesy' shoe while he did so!

Bit rowdy but very comfy...

And that must be all for now.  Once again, posting was delayed for technical reasons but our next stop is in Flagstaff, in a hotel so with luck Canyonlands and Monument Valley will be up soon.

So long

Viv x

A weather post cast....

'Excitingly variable' proved provocative to the weather gods and no sooner had I posted my last blog than they tried us on cold, wet, relentless!  After two days the sun finally shone and steaming quietly over a treat of huckleberry pie and coffee, we watched the storm clouds head off towards Calgary whilst we would go south towards a wide blue yonder.  With about 40kms to camp we set off cheerfully but with increasing urgency as blue turned to black and deep rumbles warned of yet another storm and this time all the stops were out.  Deafening thunder, massive jags of lightening, first lashing rain then huge hailstones driven by a ferocious wind caught us unprotected on an open road over a high wide pass - took me right back to Rannock Moor but on an American scale!  Eventually the truck came and pulled us off and we discovered that behind us, even the sweep had hunkered down in the ditch!   The upside was that attempts to wash my grubby jacket had proved futile but the hail worked like a washboard and beat it back to almost clean!

This section is called, I believe without irony, 'Ride to the sun' and began in a marvellous mountain area in the National Glacier Park bringing us into Montana.  When the rain stopped, the temperature dropped.  Even prepared for the cold and climbing hard it was difficult to stay warm and I was introduced to 'Hot Shots' by the Canadians who tuck these magic little sachets into their shoes and gloves where they emanate a gentle warmth for several  hours; such comfort.  The Logan Pass was spectacular and we were extremely fortunate to go through on the last day of clear skies before smoke drifting from literally hundreds of wild forest fires shrouded everything in acrid haze.  When visible the sun has been a strange blood orange orb in a pewter sky - the photo doesn't show the colour but hopefully conveys the atmosphere.

Montana began with serious cowboy country, massive ranches, horses, guns, whips and hats.  We've ridden out of First Nation Flatfoot people's lands into Flathead country and seen beautiful examples of traditional crafts in museums and shops.  And Casinos everywhere.  

    Spot the fake!

It's been two short, three-day riding sections divided by a peaceful rest day in Kalispell, a pretty town with old painted wood houses and we're now in the state capital, Helena, before an eight day blast to Moab. There we'll have two rest days to explore Yellowstone and celebrate the halfway point of the trip.  Riding wise I'm happy to report that I think I've finally achieved a degree of equilibrium and am able to push as hard with the right as the left!  Wariness went to the winds on the morning the thermometer said minus two degrees C as we rode out of camp and for the first time I can remember ever, windchill made the downhills more challenging than the ups.  It's fun to be riding strongly again.  

The group is down to a hardcore sixteen now and has found a comfortable, functional way of being together.  We've been blessed with the addition of the company accountant, ostensibly to oversee the border crossing back into the U.S.  He collects unusual car plate numbers and has all the interpersonal skills that that implies... It's been a wee bit testing for us but he's off on Monday.  Two more sectional riders join this evening and more down the line, which gives a nice fillip to the core group.

A few signs....

    Hmmm.....

That's all for now, so long,

Viv x