Ephemerica

We are on the mainland and back on the bikes after a long (16 hr) ferry ride from La Paz to Mazatlan. We went the cheap route and didn’t get a cabin for the overnight ferry. The cabin might have been worth the extra money as we ended up sleeping on the floor in the “salon” section because the seats were pretty uncomfortable. It wasn’t the worst night’s sleep we’ve gotten though.

Mazatlan was pretty chaotic, especially for a bike. In the US people are extremely polite about waiting in lines and order. I remember a ski trip with a German exchange student who was amazed by how everyone formed a neat line to get on the chairlift because in Europe everyone just piles into the queue. This piling in takes some adjustment. We are definitely not used to biking through traffic this way. There are lots of people riding around town on bikes from whom we are learning how bikes fit into the the madness and trying to emulate them.

When determining our route from Mazatlan to Mexico City, we had two options. The first was to ride straight up on a road that contains a section called “the devil’s spine” to Durango, then head through what our guidebook calls the Colonial Heartland containing lots of mining towns. The second was to ride south a bit to Tepic, then head inland through Guadalajara and the state of Michoacan. Michoacan has been described as having similar terrain to the Pacific Northwest and also having much in the way of culture. Plus, we’d get to go through the city of Tequila, where most Tequila is distilled.

We decided on the second route, though we were a bit worried by our guidebook’s warning that the road from Mazatlan to Tepic is the “world’s most dangerous road for cyclists.” We thought we’d check it out and take a bus if it was too crazy. Well, the road out of Mazatlan was pretty busy and nerve-racking but there was a wide shoulder after we got out of the city proper so it wasn’t too bad. There also happens to be a new toll road that we decided to check out on the advice of a trucker who said there would be a shoulder on the toll road but not on the free road. We had heard that bikes are officially not allowed on toll roads, but that no one enforces the rule. So we took our chances and had a great stress-free ride to Rosario. The one small drawback that we found on the toll road is that there are no services between towns and there are very few towns accessible from the road, only every 50-70 km. Given the distance between cities is about a day’s ride anyway, the easy ride on the road more than makes up for the lack of services.

The highway map of Mexico that we are using has the tollway as a broken line from about 20 km out of Rosario to Tepic. We guessed that this indicated the road still being built. Sure enough, after riding most of the morning, we lost our beautiful toll road and were forced back onto the free road with no shoulder and high traffic. Before long, however, we found ourselves riding next to the newly constructed toll road, all painted and ready to go and only separated from the free road by a small concrete ditch. Although it was closed and possibly not even finished yet, we briefly discussed the idea of crossing over. We decided we would ride on it until someone told us otherwise or until it parted from the free road. The ride was pretty sweet with the road to ourselves. The Mazatlan to Tepic ride went from the most dangerous to the safest and we were enjoying ourselves immensely. We did have to stop every once in a while to walk the bikes over piles of dirt meant to keep cars from using the road, but it was a small price to pay. Eventually, however, the toll road veered away from the free road. As we reluctantly headed back over to the free road, a couple of the highway workers started yelling at us, pointing to the new road and shouting “a Tepic!” Matt went to find out more. With assurances that we would be able to exit at our next town, we were easily convinced to stay on the empty toll road. We found the road in varying stages of completion, but we only had to leave the highway for a fairly well packed dirt road a couple of times to get around not completely finished bridges. I worried that the highway workers would find us to be nuisances but they just smiled and waved when we passed them. There was some local bike and pedestrian traffic on the road along with a random not official looking car or two, but mostly we each had our own lane and were able to ride side by side instead of single file for the first time on the trip so far. We have two more days to get to Tepic, and we’re hoping that our luck using the toll road holds out.

Posted by cindy on February 23rd, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico