02/20 What a difference 2000 feet makes. The wind was still howling today but once I dropped down to 7100 feet it stopped being quite so frigid. I was still pushed around a little but I had a wide shoulder when it was the strongest so it was fine.

Busy day with siteseeing. The road from Chapultepec to here had some of the most amazing scenery I’ve seen so far in Mexico. The Sea of Cortes was pretty cool but when you start throwing massive snow-capped volcanoes at me there’s not much of a comparison. I’ll have to find out the name of the range I was riding by because it has to be huge. I’d guess the highest peak was at least 16,000 feet. Update: the volcano is called Popocatépetl and it’s 17,800 feet. It’s the 2nd highest peak in Mexico.

First stop of the day was the ruins at Xochitecatl. This area, on top of an ancient volcano called Cerro de Xochitecatl, was a ceremonial center and necropolis. The climb to get to the top was fun. I left my bike at the guard shack and went off exploring. The highest structure is the Pyramid of the Flowers. It’s about nine stories tall. The site had another smaller pyramid which was kind of neat because there were no stairs (there are now)–you would have had to walk the around the pyramid as the terraced steps wind up to the top.

Cacaxtla, another set of ruins close by, is supposed to have some nice murals but didn’t feel like climbing another massive hill so I skipped it.

Cholula, my home for the night, is a city right next to the much bigger city of Puebla. The first thing I did was ride over to the main square to see what was causing explosions so loud that they were setting off car alarms. Not sure what everyone was celebrating but there were all these guys dressed up in costumes firing off guns. It looked like they were re-enacting a battle. The noise was from the gunpowder that I watched them cramming into the muzzle. When those guns went off the smoke practically obscured the person shooting it and scared everyone even though you knew what was coming.

Once settled in a motel I walked over to see the real reason I came here: the largest (in volume) pyramid in the world. The Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl hasn’t been excavated so it just looks like a massive hill. It dates back to the 1st century B.C. Up at the top sits the Templo de Nuestra Senora de los Remedios which was built in 1594. The view was pretty impressive. Back at the bottom I walked around the base to see if I could get a tour of the tunnels beneath the pyramid. Nearly three and half miles of tunnels have been excavated. Crazy. The public can only go in about 1000 feet though. I found the place to get tickets to go in but it was closed.

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02/19 Boy is it getting chilly up here. Broke 9000 feet this afternoon. The air temperature is about 55 F but the wind was strong and much colder. If the sun wasn’t out for most of the day it would have been rough. I’m going to be hitting a road in a few days that dips back down to the Pacific coast at Acapulco. I could stay along the coast for at least a couple hundred miles before I’d have to climb back up into the mountains. That’s pretty tempting right about now because it would be a lot warmer.

The roads weren’t bad but traffic was heavier than I thought it would be on rural roads. There was also a surprising amount of garbage for an area that actually looks really nice. Off in the distance I could see snow on top of one of the mountains.

Found a cheap motel in town that has hot water and cable TV (US $8.50). After getting cleaned up I went out looking for some food. The first thing that struck me was just how many internet cafes there are in this town. It’s not a big place either. It was big enough for me to get something fixed that’s been driving me crazy for months though. The sole on my right hiking shoe was coming off so I was pretty happy to walk right by a shoe repair shop. The guy did an awesome job on the repair and he only charged me US $0.38! I gave him more since I would have felt guilty about only paying that much.

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The weather took a little turn for the worse so I decided to hang out here for another day. Maybe two. It gave me a chance to wander around town in the rain which was a nice break from riding. A bike shop caught my eye so I picked up some new handlebar tape since the cork was falling apart and no amount of duct tape was keeping it together. I ended up breaking the small blade on my Swiss army knife trying to get one of the old bar ends out though. Knives and I don’t seem to do well together.

I also found the camera I want to get. I just can’t stand not being able to take clear, sharp pictures of things like I used to be able to do. Anyway, here’s the beauty that I’m going to keep my eye out for: Canon PowerShot SX20 IS. The lens is fast (F2.8), it has a great zoom range (28- 560 mm) and it has shutter/aperture priority modes. I’m not crazy about the AA batteries but then again maybe they’ll be better in South America. Replacing a Li-Ion battery might be tricky. It’s smaller and lighter than the DSLR I had which also has its advantages.

I was also catching up on the news and it got me thinking about something. Without getting too deep I was wondering what other people think the root cause of society’s problems are? There are a lot of symptoms like poverty, crime, wars, environmental problems, corruption, racism, etc. But is there one thing that drives all this? Is it greed? Over population? Selfishness? Apathy? Hippies? Lack of morals (religion)? Fear? This bike trip has given me some new insight into how different regions/countries see things but it’s hard to put a finger on any one thing if there even is just one thing. The Contact form up top can send email anonymously–just make up an email address.

This morning I jumped in a taxi for the short ride over to Teotihuacan. The ruins there are amazing. I entered in at gate 2 which is right next to the Pyramid of the Sun. Everything is laid out along the Avenue of the Dead so I don’t think I missed anything. I even climbed up the very steep steps to the top of both giant pyramids. It was still a little hazy but the views were incredible.

02/15 I’m definitely getting a t-shirt that says, “I rode my bike in Mexico City and survived!” For some crazy reason I wanted to subject myself to more abuse so I rode right into the center of the city to visit Centro Histórico.

After checking out many of the crowded, narrow streets, almost all of which were filled with vendors, I headed over to the cathedral and the National Palace. Wow. Both buildings were quite a sight. The Metropolitan Cathedral, the largest and oldest cathedral in the Americas, was just immense. It’s hard to imagine how a building dating back to 1573 could have been designed so perfectly. Recent history is putting the design of many of the older buildings to the test however. Neglect and damage resulting from the magnitude 8.1 earthquake that hit in 1985 resulted in damage to many of the buildings. According to some people, some of the older buildings are even in danger of collapse. The government has been dumping a lot of money into restoring the area so hopefully the changes will help.

A quick plate of tacos and I was off to my next destination–Teotihuacan, home of the 3rd largest pyramid in the world, the Pyramid of the Sun. I just found out tonight that the 2nd largest in the world, the Great Pyramid of Cholula, is close to my route so I’ll have to stop and visit that one too.

The 30 mile ride to get here was nuts. Mex-85 is an absolutely chaotic road. The problem are the buses, taxis and vans that compete for passengers standing at the side of the road. There are 4 travel lanes and no breakdown lane so the side of the road turns into a circus. In some spots there’ll be a dozen passenger vehicles jockeying for position. Riding in and out of this mess is a good test of ones riding ability. At one point I did get to ride on a toll road and fortunately the operator that literally came running toward me as I approached the toll booth just wanted to show me where to walk my bike past it.

The town closest to the ruins, Teotihuacan will be my home for 2 nights. I’ll take a taxi over in the morning and check it out.

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