03/17 The big hill ended up being bigger than I thought. The weather was favorable which helped. Cloudy with a nice cool breeze makes for good climbing weather. The ride back down was fun but the scenery wasn’t quite as nice as it was for the last couple days. Had 2 dogs run after me but a dirty look scared them off. I think my dog Dazzer is broken. I don’t even try to use it any more.

Tomorrow might be a short day because the Pacific Ocean is just a quick 30 miles away and I might not get to see it again for a long time. The city of Salina Cruz is a little out of the way but there might be a side road that gets me back onto the highway without having to ride back up the same way.

Saw K/M having lunch at the side of the road which was nice because they left an hour before I did so I didn’t think I’d see them all day. We met up again in town and looked for a place to stay. There’s a motel but we wanted to see if camping at the police station was possible. It was but the places available to pitch the tent were kind of exposed for my taste and the wind is brutal so I rode over to the motel and got a room. K/M were going to stay but the wind drove them over here too. It was so strong I saw it blow the tin roof off a shack. We had to ride into it for a little but luckily we were in town before it got too bad. There’s a big lake at the edge of town and I rode over to check it out but it doesn’t look like any of the land along it is developed. My dreams of staying in a lakeside cabin in Mexico might have to wait.

GPX Track

Went over to Los Guachimontones after class and took a tour of the ruins with the Director of Operations for the school, Wouter and 2 other students, Sarah and Steve. The circular stepped pyramids were interesting. The biggest one had a little story behind it. Back in the day when they were building the nearby highway they needed some rocks. Well it just so happens there was a huge pile of rocks sitting right nearby so they started grinding them up to use for the road. Not sure how much time passed but they eventually realized that the rocks they were grinding up were from the pyramids that date back to as early as 300 BC. Oops. Not as bad as when they used to burn mummies for use as firewood but still.

There was a playground there and during some of the games the winners would actually have to honor of being sacrificed. The game was like basketball but they’d used their hips to move the ball (not sure how) and they scored by placing the ball in either corner of the opposing team’s “end zone”.

After the tour we headed over to a great restaurant on a lake an enjoyed some margaritas and dinner. Took a while to get back because rush hour in the 2nd largest city in Mexico is brutal.