Cycling Mexico: a Sensory Experience

Current Location: Hualtulco, Oaxaca, Mexico
Distance Cycled to Date: 7899 km
Longest Ride Time to Date: 7 hours, 11 minutes
Time spent in this coffee shop this morning: 5 hours
Time planned to spend in this coffee shop this morning: 1 hour

We wanted to bring the experience of cycling Mexico to all of you who are unable to have the joy of it yourself. It's a constant adventure to all 5 of our senses, and we thought that so many of our day-to-day encounters get forgotten. So here is a typical sensory experience.

Sight: You'd imagine that most of our days we are constantly taking in the beautiful scenery as we bike through mountains, and along a beautiful coastline. However, this usually isn't the case; most of the time riding is spent staring at the pavement, a few feet in front of you. It almost makes you dizzy as it blurs by quickly, but you need to stay focused, because you constantly are dodging objects in your way. Reflectors, broken car parts, holes in the pavement, but most of all dead animals. This is what you see all day long. I don't know how many times I've been sure I would have nightmares from the various half-decayed carcasses I've witnessed. From song birds to vultures, armadillos, possoms, raccoons, some raccoon/pig hybrid, pigs, rats, mice, bats, snakes, frogs, iguanas, lizards, chickens, goats, donkeys, cows, and horses. These are a selection of the dead animals you witness, daily. People don't bother to move them, so you've got to keep your eyes on the road.

Sometimes the animals aren't dead either - you've really got to watch out for these ones, because they're a bit more unpredictable. Chickens and turkeys wander across the road, and cows and donkeys use the road's edge for grazing. Sometimes they'll jump in front of you, and sometimes they won't - you really need to watch out for the big ones. Farmers even use the highway to herd their cattle or goats down, in which case you just need to get into the ditch. A bicycle is no match for a stampede of cattle.




The piles of garbage in the ditch seem to always appear, no matter which state we're in. Quite often they're smouldering and smoking, or else just collecting into a bigger and bigger pile. It seems that they don't use garbage dumps here - I guess, why would you when you have a ditch? Occasionally we do get to look up, and catch a nice view. If it's not in the middle of a downhill stretch, or an uphill stretch, and there's a good size pullout, we'll even stop to take a picture. Otherwise, it's just head back down to the pavement, back to the blur.

Smell: Most of the time, this is closely related to the dead animals that we see. You know that you're getting closer to a big one as the stench increases. The length of time it's been dead seems to determine the distance you can smell it from - this is one smell that you don't really get used to. It never is pleasant. However, the burning piles of garbage aren't that bad. They bring back fond memories of campfires and roasting marshmallows.

We sometimes get hit by really weird, random smells too. We'll be biking along, and then suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, one of us will call out "Mmm! Rhubarb crisp!". And sure enough, both of us can smell it. Or ichiban. Or Froot Loops. Just in the middle of nowhere. And we both smell it, and talk about it later. Those are the good smells. Better than the dead animals.

Sounds: Imagine a mix of a farmyard, and a freeway through a busy city. That's what we hear. Dogs barking, roosters crowing, buses whizzing by, horns honking, turkeys gobbling and donkeys braying. People yelling out in Spanish. That's a day cycling in Mexico. At night, the sounds all remain expect that you can add in very loud waves crashing. And add in people singing and loud music playing. Everywhere...

Touch: Numbness. After most of a day cycling neither of us can really feel our pinky fingers. They go numb. The pavement is sub-par, by Canadian standards at least, and this means that our joints are constantly being jarred as we vibrate along down the road. We also feel the sweat dripping down our backs and faces as if we were in a sauna. And very soon into every day our butts are about as sore as you would imagine after biking every day for 4 and a half months.


Taste: We go in phases: for instance, the Baja was Tortilla Phase. The Mainland has been Peanut Butter Sandwich Phase, and so every day we taste this for at least 2 meals. (Of our 4 to 5 meals a day). Other than the few 'tasty treats' that we get from time to time, our diet really is pretty bland. However, as we mentioned in our last entry - you do need to be careful with those tasty treats. It means that not every day is a holiday on this trip. We do however drink a huge amount of pop. Often up to 2 litres each a day, throughout the day; we do taste a lot of Coca-Cola.


And that is what we experience, through all 5 senses on a daily basis.

We're in Hualtulco now, which is a funny little place built just for tourists. It provided us with a nice, safe beach to camp on (filled of course with people singing and music playing), and now a coffee shop with wireless internet. We don't mind these tourist-style places at all. We've been biking for 15 days in a row now, even with the sick days we've still been able to make a bit of progress. The last few days have been record-setting in ride time, and we're looking forward to getting to the ruins of Palenque and taking a day or two off.