03/06 Other than it being really hot nothing too exciting happened today. Still riding up and down the hills but none of them were that bad. There was one nice stretch where it was flat for a couple miles.

Acatlan is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Lots of street vendors in the market area around the central square. The motel is OK but there are a lot of mosquitoes in the room and they keep biting my poor feet. I still have that mosquito netting that I bought up in Alaska and could actually fit it over the bed if need be.

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Weather in Puebla when posted:

Temperature: 24 °C, Humidity: 27%, Wind Speed: 10km/hr, Cloud Cover: scattered clouds

03/05 Tequila! The manager of the motel hooked me up with a (substantial) shot which I couldn’t say no to because its rude. He and his buddies hanging out in the lobby had a great time ribbing me about staying in the motel (it’s a sex motel but it was only US $9). They thought for sure I had a woman stowed away in my panniers and kept telling the manager to charge me by the hour.

It’s confirmed. There’s definitely something up with teenage girls here. I rode into town and wanted to find a bank so I asked this girl walking on the sidewalk where one was. My ability to ask this question in Spanish has proven successful in the past. She completely ignored me and kept walking. I suspected there was a cultural thing going on at this point so I tried an experiment. I found another girl by a bunch of taxi cabs and asked her where the bank was (even though I could see it a few blocks further down). This one was a little younger and even though she ignored me too she cracked a little smile like she wanted to say something but couldn’t. To complete the experiment I asked an older woman (40’s) where a motel was. She stopped and helped me out without batting an eye. The couple guys I asked when I was trying to find a laundrymat helped out too. I ended up finding it but it was closed which sucks because the heat is causing some ripeness in my clothes.

This town is messing with my pretty good sense of direction because there are two big dried up river beds that people actually use for roads. Even when I was given directions to the laundrymat the guy said follow the river up and turn left. It was a little weird.

Great ride today. I actually rode on reasonably flat land for a while. It was so nice. Hit a military checkpoint and rode through without a problem. Had a great Hawaiian hamburger for lunch which worked out well because of the climbing after that.

And the coolest thing of the day happened after I’d left the town of Xochihuehuetlan (try saying that 3x fast). A guy on a motorcycle rode past me and motioned for me to stop. He handed over a cold bottle of Gatoraide and wished me luck on my trip. How nice was that?

I noticed a couple days ago that the Tekkon external battery I use to charge my laptop/batteries is on its last legs. It won’t hold a charge at all but luckily I can still use it when it’s plugged into an AC outlet to charge my laptop. This sucks because its what my solar panel charged so now that’s useless too. I’ll hang onto it until I can find an AC adapter that my laptop can use and then send my solar panel to my Dad (head’s up Dad ).

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