Por todo mal, Mescal. Por todo bien, tambien!
We leave Oaxaca on a high, being equipped with some proper conversational Spanish, yay! Time to put this into practice while visiting Jesus his family in Mitla, a historic little town just 40 kilometre out of Oaxaca.
Meeting Jesus his family in Mitla
Who’s Jesus again? Ok, hold on… When we stayed with Carla and Jonathan on the Baja California, Jesus, Reina and their two kids came driving by selling “Alebrijes” from the trunk of their car. The most amazing bright colored mystical creatures are made by his grandfather and the rest of his family. We buy a cute cactus with flowers and hummingbirds and tell him about our cycling adventure. He reacts very excited and ensured us that we have to stop by his family when we pass through Mitla. Equipped with his details we continue our journey. Once we reached Oaxaca we contact him and he immediately sets-up everything for us to stay at his family in-law. And so it happened that we cycle into Mitla and meet Jesus’ father in-law on the main square. He guides us to their house in his tuc-tuc and we have a delicious home made Mole for lunch. Reina her mother prepared this local delicacy together with her sisters, who spent days to prepare a few kilos with over 40 ingredients. Its a real taste sensation! After lunch we are joined by Reina’s mum and sister, her husband and their little cowboy Iker to the historical religious site with very colourful geometrical buildings. Afterwards our crew of six squeezes into the tuc-tuc to race to the mescal factory. This ‘factory’ looks more like an outdoor playground with some really funky devices. We meet Jesus’ uncle and cousins who just created an underground oven to cook the agave hearts. Afterwards the hearts go to the ‘crusher’, a sort of merry-go-round with an actual horse pulling a heavy stone. When the juice is extracted it sits fermenting in tubs and is distilled in an ancient chemistry lab. A very similar process to Tequila, but if you ask the people here, Mescal is ‘mejor’, better than Tequila. And we have to agree with them when we taste the different mescal variants of the ‘La Costumbre’ artisanal factory, so we take some for the road.
We join the traditional Sunday family dinner at grandmother’s house. Grandma has seven daughters, two sons, and numerous grandkids. Such a cheerful and nice family and we feel super welcome! Its a special experience to be part of a Mexican family and share a delicious tamales meal together. A tamale is a corn starch based filling with, in this case, herbs wrapped in corn leaves. During dinner we talk about many different topics, thank god we speak a bit of Spanish – thanks again Marco! We have an absolute blast hanging out with this large family. We are treated to a home-made hot ‘chocolatito’ before going to bed, truly mesmerised by the kindness and hospitality of this amazing family. Especially when realizing that they are not making a lot of money, but are some of the most generous people we’ve met as they share everything they have. We have a heart-warming feeling when we leave the next morning. Reina’s dad guides us back to the highway in his tuc-tuc and enthusiastically waves us goodbye.
Guarded by the army and Telenovela dramas
We have a big day ahead with almost 100km, considerable climbing and tremendous heat, but with amazing sights over the endless agave fields. We are fuelled by some peanut butter sandwiches but what really speeds us up are the growling dogs that chased us down the road. We find a small hotel in a quiet town we thought, until we go out for dinner and bump into army trucks and patrolling army men with massive guns. A bit intimidating to say the least. Nevertheless, the tortillas taste good and we are refuelled to get back on the bicycles for another big day. When we get off the bike for a cold juice a number of things are a little out of the ordinary; a girl with ‘everything sucks’ on her rainbow t-shirt, chickens doing the dishes and a bunch of people jumping on our bicycles to take photos (including the sweaty helmet…). Haha, just another day on the whike. When we continue the climb seems to be never ending in the burning heat, but we make it to the top and find a nice place to recharge our battery. We watch an episode of Telenovela, the local soap series, with the ladies at the restaurant. We pitch into a wedding scene where the groom gets arrested and the bride bursts into tears. We both laugh, realising we are still on our honeymoon and know exactly who we married as we spend 24/7 together and rode 8,500 kilometres facing some severe challenges. Even though we shed some tears when the going gets tough, we still get going and smile while having type 2 fun together.
Chaos – cycling into a riot, but receiving a helping hand
The next morning we have a strong headwind and push forward. We make it to Tehuantepec and see a lot of black smoke rising up from the centre. We think they are burning trash and cross the bridge without worries. When the women and children start running towards us we are alarmed. Its chaos. Cars try to turn on the middle of the two-lane bridge, a lot of honking and people yelling. We stay calm and try to get back as soon as we can. Minutes later we are on the ‘right’ side of the bridge and stop at a restaurant to assess the situation. Facebook updates us with the latest news as the restaurant connects a laptop to the tv to get the live news; someone picking up bullet shells… Ok, this just got real. We find out that someone got shot and there is a riot going. The waste collectors set a truck on fire and one person got killed. All of a sudden we are joined by Marco at our table, a fanatic cyclist who offers us to stay at his house. A bit puzzled by what is going on all at the same time we need to question him a bit further. Its all good and we learn that his wife works in wind energy at Iberdrola, what a coincidence!
We roll our bicycles into Marco’s yard with pool and chill area and join him to pick-up his daughter Valeria and friend, Lucy Sherlyn, from school. These two witty girls speak perfect English and it is great fun to learn more about them and the family. Miriam, Marco’s wife comes home for lunch and cooks a tasty pasta which we enjoy with all of us including Marco’s sister and mum. We absolutely love how family life works in Mexico, its such a close knitted community and it feels great when we are being invited to be part of this phenomenon. In the afternoon Marco suggests get coffee in the centre of town. We are a little hesitant, isn’t that where the riots took place and is it safe to go there right now? They were absolutely certain and so we join them. A strange silent atmosphere is hanging over the main square as we walk by. About eight police cars are lined up on one side of the burned-out waste truck and some workers hang out in front of the city hall on the other side, while there are stones scattered on the street and still waiting in small piles… We get the shivers and are happy to leave this post-riot scene. Later in the afternoon we try to inject some self sealing slime into our inner tubes, which turned out to be quite a challenge. We had so many punctures since Mexico City, we really wanted to get this sorted! It requires some good will and four people getting their hands dirty before it was time for a plunge in the pool to cool down. We go for a late dinner at a local place and have some delicious Tlayuda’s. When we return home we are exhausted and fall asleep in the hammocks.
Cycling friends are the best
Marco and his cycling friend join us on the super hot ride towards Chiapas. We are stopped along the way by a local reported who interviews us about our trip in Spanish – read it here, thanks Faustino Romo Martinez for featuring us! After some 30 kilometres friends of Marco come by to refuel us with Gatorade and after a photo series we explore the largest windfarm of Mexico: 2.4 GW. Miriam works around here as well and her daily work is portrait in a super cool movie by Iberdrola, click here to check it out! We’ll write a separate blog on this windfarm as this is clearly one of the most significant renewable energy projects we have come across on our journey. After a joined ride of 45 kilometres, Marco and his friend head back home and we continue to a recommended hotel a bit further down the road. We look back upon a great time together and even made plans to see each other again in the future! We have a nice dinner and a good sleep before we head into Chiapas, the very last province of Mexico before we enter Guatemala. Its a long ride of 120 kilometres, but we enjoy the breeze that propels us in between the never ending windfarm. We have lunch at a tiny village where the ‘tile of wisdom’ tells people that a Coke should be part of every meal, luckily they have water as well. We finally enter Chiapas and the town we stop to sleep looks a bit questionable with its barred shops and people hanging on the streets. We decide we should ‘lay low’ and don’t do go out, other than buying some nachos with salsa for dinner at a nearby gas station – the real high life! The next two days are hot and we need considerable amounts of water to keep going. Although the views from the road are not as spectacular as before, it is getting greener and stacked with mango trees, yay!
Tasting Chiapas pride: coffee!
We reach Tapachula, the last town in Mexico, after a 40 kilometre morning ride and visit a coffee factory in the afternoon. We meet with Pedro at Cafesca and he explains us all about the freeze-dried coffee they produce in the factory. Compared to the artisanal mescal factory this is like going to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Endless halls with steel and advanced technology. We enter the freezer and realize that we’ve been living in 35 degrees as we freeze our asses off! Wow, it’s an energy consuming process, but the end result is some really high quality freeze-dried coffee that tastes much better than the regular instant coffee. Its good to find out that most of the energy they use is produced by a biomass boiler with local feedstock. After our tour we hitch a ride to the mall where we do some gear replacement shopping and taste a local brew at Pedro’s own coffee place, yum! At night we read up on the border crossing into Guatemala, a BIG mistake… We only read terrible stories from people having a hard time at the border being harassed. We hardly sleep and when we get on our bicycles we’re anxious and are prepared for the worst. It turned out to be smooth sailing; friendly officers pointing us in the right direction, money exchangers with excellent rates and friendly people interested in our bicycles. Wow, quite a different experience than expected. A good lesson not to go blanc on negative stories, as most likely you’ll only read about these and never about the positive ones!
After two months we are a little sad to leave Mexico, the country of heart-warming people, culture and food. We absolutely loved it here and we will be back some day. Now its time to do some country hopping over the next few weeks! Guatemala, we just crossed your border 🙂