Ephemerica

We thought while we had a moment in La Paz, we’d write a little post giving you an idea of what our days are like. We’ve kind of gotten into a routine on our biking days that seems to be working for us so far. As you might imagine, when we’re on the bike, most of our day revolves around biking and eating.

We usually set an alarm for about 30 min before sunrise (the time of which we keep track of via the GPS unit). We both like to snooze a bit, so we usually get up right around sunbreak, which has been between 7 and 7:15 AM. We then start about repacking our things from the night before. If we’ve been in a hotel, we don’t have to tear down and pack the tent, sleeping bags, etc., but usually we’ve pulled more things out of the bags—so the packing time ends up being the same whether we’ve camped or are in a hotel. Then we take care of breakfast. If we’re in a town, we usually look for a restaurant serving some kind of huevos (eggs) with beans and tortillas. If we’re camping, we cook up some instant oatmeal (which we’ve been able to find in Mexico thus far). Then we secure all the bags to the bikes and hit the road, usually around 9 AM. Sunset is shortly after 6 PM, so that gives us 9 hours of daylight to get whereever we’re going for the day.

The stops come pretty frequently at the beginning of the day’s ride, as we peel off layers of clothing and put on sunscreen. Eventually, we get warm and get a rhythm going, stopping for occasional water, more sunscreen, or to give our hands and butts a rest. Usually by noon we’re ready to stop for lunch. So far our lunch staple has been peanut butter tacos (PB is difficult but not impossible to find) made with flour tortillas. On our last lunch before la paz, we tried spicing it up by adding a banana to the taco, so we may continue this where we can find good produce.

There are occasional bouts of conversation on the ride, but a lot of our dialogue goes something like this: “car up”, “car back”, “it’s clear now”, “should we get off the road?”, and “my butt hurts”. So far our communication on the bike has been sufficient to keep us from getting run over.

If we are biking to a particular destination, we’ve usually been arriving there by mid-afternoon. If we’re staying in a hotel, we go put our stuff in our room, and then it’s time to forage for food. Mid-afternoon is a bit early for some Mexicans to eat dinner, so we’ve been the only people eating in some restaurants. Sometimes we’ll just get something to tide us over, and then go out later on when most of the taco stands and such open up.

If we’re camping (not at a designated site), we start looking for campsites about 2 hours before sunset. When we find something good, we try to look inconspicuous until the road is clear, then we get off the road and go to our hiding spot. Then we go about the business of setting up camp and cooking dinner. We brought a lot of camping freeze-dried meals with us, which are starting to run out, so we’ve had to start cooking things we’ve found in Mexican supermarkets. Mac and cheese, pasta and spanish rice are our staples thus far, although we’ve been adding quesadillas as well (any suggestions for camping meals are welcome!).

What we do before we go to bed depends on how tired we are. Sometimes there are things worth exploring in town (like internet cafes!), or we’ll both do some reading, or I’ll spend time downloading GPS data and recharging the bike computer. Then we go to bed around 9-10 PM, and start the whole thing again the next day. It can get a little monotonous at times (especially when riding for 7 days straight), but both Cindy and I agree that it beats the heck out of sitting at a desk all day

Posted by Matthew on February 17th, 2007 | Filed under: General, Mexico