March 8th, 2004

Dear Diary,

I awoke calmly at 7:48am completely rested, a very unusual occurrence. This could be attributed to having slept almost all of the previous day and night. The fever is gone and I tiptoe out of the hotel room letting the sleepers sleep while I change my rear tire for a younger model. I am not awake enough to avoid braking two tire irons in the process.
We have talked to Nathaniel and decide to take separate roads. After some preparations we hear off towards the south on Hwy 200 leaving him behind. The road is straight and there are crazy amounts of traffic, the tractor-trailers all have two trailers and there is no shoulder. This is going to take some getting used to. We’re buoyed by thoughts of meeting Johanne’s mom and sister who will be flying into Puerto Vallarta to visit us.

The countryside is decidedly more tropical than what we had seen so far in Mexico. As our sweating bods move down the road we amuse ourselves by making the trucks honk and then snickering like ninnies. The fun wears off though because the traffic is so loud that we can’t communicate unless we’re screaming. A little later a big yellow box truck passes us and pulls over. Two women in long dresses are waiting for us on the side of the road. They insist that we pull over to talk to them. One of them takes Johanne’s hand while the other one talks to me. They talk in a hypnotizing monotone; it takes all my concentration to understand what this woman is saying. Johanne and I both have that bad feeling and after exchanging a few words in French we escape the grasp of these two women and resume the road. We hope to find a hotel or some other safe place to spend the night. Just as the sun is setting we come upon a ranch. We pull in and make the acquaintance of Doña Concha, her husband Christian and a whole slew of kids. They invite us to dinner and tell us about a French couple who were biking too and had stopped here a couple months ago on their way to Chiapas.

The crazy news is that they were more loaded down than we are, almost impossible to believe but they carry a full size guitar strapped on top of their saddlebags. Doña Concha and her husband tell us that the women we met on the road were gypsies and that if we had waited any longer they would have robbed us blind. We head off to bed happy to have enjoyed the company. We have a bad night. There are big fluorescent lights above our tent that prevent us from sleeping almost as much as the still muggy air. We move the tent away from the building to a breezier spot just in time for Johanne to get hit with some hardcore vomiting and diarrhea. She is up until at least four in the morning. At six Christian is out driving the tractor around our tent. We’re not going anywhere today. Johanne isn’t throwing up anymore, but she can’t eat either and is very tired and weak. We stay at the ranch for the whole day. Johanne sleeps as much as she can with the comings and goings of farm workers not to mention the branding of the cows with an old-style red-hot poker. In the evening Johanne is a bit better and the kids break out a piñata which we take pleasure in smashing to bits (relax boys and girls, that’s how it works).

The next morning we head off down the road again. The road is still extremely straight and the traffic still stressful. We manage to find some shade slightly away from the road to spend the hot hours of the day. This has become a necessity, as the heat is seriously hot between noon and three or so. We have decided to adopt the ‘siesta’ rhythm for as long as the weather stays this hot. We make it to a town in the evening and stop in a hotel. We spend the next day there, giving Johanne the time to recuperate properly before setting off again.

In the evening we come upon another farm and once again ask if we can set up our tent. Our hosts offer us beer and green mango and then take us on a horseback ride. We ride through the long grass in the fading light. There is a stream snaking through the farm and animals all about. What a treat, we would have easily stayed longer after an evening like this but we are to meet with Johanne’s mom and sister in Puerto Vallarta and must keep moving. We enjoy a hearty, if humble, meal of beans and tortillas with the family but bad things come in threes. They offer to sharpen our knife and scrap the blade on a grinder, their dog bites me in the leg, and my helmet’s visor gets broken when one kid decides to take my bike for a ride.

None the worse for a little bad luck we take a family picture, horses and all, and head off in the early morning mist.

We head towards Tepic, thinking to camp somewhere about thirty kilometers past it. However the day is extremely hot and we spend almost all of it going up. We have lunch on a farm under the shade of a tree. An old man sleeps under a stand of very tall bamboo as we play guitar and do our best to re-hydrate. The hill continues and we arrive in Tepic after only 52kms of riding. We find a hotel, clean our crustyness, and go to bed early, ready to get up with the sun.

We hit the road earlier than ever before, hoping to avoid as much of the days heat as possible. We ride up a hill out of Tepic, the city is covered in a thick layer of fog and the countryside is covered in pine trees. The landscape is beautiful, you could almost say…Canadian. In the late morning as it starts to get hot, we are stopped by a cop. He seems to think that it’s illegal to bike on this road and tells us we absolutely must take a bus or taxi for the next 70kms or so. We head towards the next town seriously considering taking him seriously. We spend three hours in a restaurant in the town of Compostella and decide to disobey the lawmaker. There is a slight ascent after the town and then we spend the rest of the day going down. We scream with joy as we whip down a full 25kms of slope. I keep imagining myself looking at this wonderful descent through a bus window and kicking myself. The road snakes down out of the soft green mountains, we’re going so fast that cars rarely pass us unless we stop to drink. It can be great fun to break the law.

Where’s the beach?
Our map shows a road running right along the coast, but we don’t see the beach for two full days. We have mastered the routine of early morning rising, afternoon relaxing, and riding till nightfall.

Puerto Vallarta
We arrive in the outskirts of Puerto Vallarta, and I phone our friends with whom we will stay. I have to leave a message and we head on towards downtown. A guy we don’t know flags us down on the side of the road calling us by our names. It’s my friend Brenda’s boyfriend who we hadn’t yet met. In a short time, we are swimming in the ocean near his house. Happy and ready to take a week or relaxing out of the saddle. Gustavo and Brenda live right by the beach. We spend our time going for walks to the nearby village, going for long swims, and reading swinging from a hammock. Johanne’s mom and sister spend a week with us. We relax and enjoy this time together, eating out occasionally and enjoying the beach.