Ephemerica

We made it to Tepic…just barely. To finish the saga of our journey from Mazatlan—we rode for two more days on the nearly finished toll road without much in the way of traffic. Seemed like every other time we stopped to rest in the shade of an overpass, some highway worker was coming over to ask us about our trip. And it seemed that most of them had lived for some time in the US, and spoke some English. Again, everyone we’ve met has been very friendly and impressed by our journey (now we are telling people we are biking to Guatemala).

We knew that Tepic was at an altitude of 900 m, but we weren’t exactly sure how those meters were going to be doled out between Mazatlan and Tepic. Even though our last day to Tepic was short in distance (only 55 km), we knew that because we STILL hadn’t gained any altitude that it was going to be a long day. And both of us were definitely being adversely affected by the heat. I kept joking that I was waiting for us to arrive at the elevator that was going to take us up the mountain into town, but it never came OK, enough complaining…just go look at the elevation profile for our ride to Tepic, that pretty much says it all. Anyway, we made it to the outskirts of town just as we were losing light and managed to find a hotel.

Since both of us were feeling a little rundown (I’m nursing a cold now), we decided to take an extra rest day here. Tepic is the capital of the state of Nayarit, and as such has a pretty modern feel to it. There are a few things to see, like some of the government buildings, a cathedral (very beautiful, but we were too shy to take pictures), parks, and museums. We went to a couple of museums that featured some art and archeological artifacts from some of the indigenous people of Nayarit. The most impressive, to me, was some of the art from the Huichol people. Especially the “yarn paintings”, which are very colorful, and depict various figures showing the lives of the people. Outside the Palacio Municipal, there were a dozen tables of (presumably Huichol) people selling little trinkets in the colorful style, so the art tradition lives on to some extent today.

We’re going to head out tomorrow (still on the toll road, but with cars now) on our four-day journey to Guadalajara, and another 700 m of altitude. Hopefully our next post will tell of Aztec ruins, tasty tequila, and futbol-playing goats.

Posted by Matthew on February 27th, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico