03/20 Moderate winds again today which made for some easy riding. I’ll be in the mountains and hopefully out of this 90 degree heat with 80% humidity. I was used to it in Florida but when I was riding there it was on a 25 lb mountain bike; not on a 150 lb touring bike.

Nothing crazy on the ride today. You can tell the tropics are getting close. Lots of green trees everywhere. Great roads for almost the entire day. Wide shoulders are so much better to ride on. People have been very friendly for the last few days. Lots and lots of waves from people passing by. For the first time a police truck gave me a honk. That was kind of cool.

A little after I got here there was a knock on my door. Pete, a bicycle tourist riding from San Diego to Bolivia, heard from the front desk lady I was here. We’re heading the same way but I kind of want to hang out tomorrow and relax. Not 100% if I’ll do that. It’s hard leaving a room with an AC, Internet, cable TV and a place to buy beer next door.

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02/24 Back in my tent for the first time in a long time. I missed it. Had it not been for the (Spanish speaking) bicycle tourists I met here at the ruins I’d be in a motel. After a pretty decent climb to the site here at Xochicalo I pulled up the place where you buy tickets and saw 2 fully loaded touring bikes leaning against the wall. Mazatlan was the last time I saw another touring rider so I was kind of excited. I paid the $51 pesos to get in and went to check out the ruins and see if I could find the bike riders.

I spotted them after a couple minutes. They are Marten and Karin from the Netherlands. They are on their way from Alaska to Bolivia. I knew they’d been in Alaska because they have a big old thing of bear spray attached to one of their bikes. They had already gotten an OK to camp up here right next to the museum so I went off to explore the ruins since they’d be here for the night.

What an amazing place. Basically the entire top of the (huge) hill was leveled and a city built on top of it. The area where the ruins are is much larger than I thought it would be. I grabbed some pics and then headed back to the museum.

I didn’t want to impose so I was going to head back downhill to a motel but Marten/Karin were cool with me camping up here too so I stayed. The people that run the site let us pitch our tents in the parking lot on a grassy section so that’s where we are–camped next to some old Mayan ruins.

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12/16 Yesterday I hung out in Ciudad Constitucion and didn’t do much of anything except relax and work on my web site a bit. It was so rare to actually have a working internet connection in the room. Usually I have to go sit outside. I saw Roland and Belinda ride by about 3pm but they didn’t see me. I met them back up in Alaska. They are on their way to Argentina too. The 3 guys I ran into for the last couple days passed me too. Maybe I’ll see everyone in La Paz.

La Paz isn’t too far so when I left this morning I figured I’d be looking at a Friday arrival. Today was an easy day of riding, minus a headwind, so I’ll probably end up there on Thursday. The big challenge of the day will be to get a ferry ticket to Mazatlan.

Didn’t see much of interest on the road today. There were a lot of roadside memorials though. Some of them were pretty elaborate too. I did notice one thing that I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on earlier. There are no mailboxes…anywhere. Or if there are I’m not seeing them. I don’t even think any of the buildings alongside the highway have numbers on them. Weird. Maybe everyone has to drive into the nearest town if they want mail?

3 large, carnivorous dogs came tearing out of a yard while I was riding peacefully down the highway. I yelled at them and they decided I wasn’t worth consuming. My Dog Dazzer failed me again. I really need to find a nice bamboo stick.

People were acting kind of stupid today. This happened twice– I’d be riding down the road when an 18-wheeler would come up behind me and another vehicle would be approaching from the front. Instead of just maintaining their speed and maybe moving over to the right just a little, the cars would slow down and almost come to a complete stop right before they got to me. So now the truck can’t pass and has to slow down to a crawl. If they would have just kept going they would have only slowed down the truck for a few seconds.

Camping out in the desert was a no go thanks to fences on both side of the road. About an hour before dark I finally had enough riding for the day and asked the owner of a ranch/market if I could camp there. No problem. So here I am in my tent with goats, roosters, dogs, cows and donkeys all running around.

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