Arriving in Teotihuacan a cyclist chased us down. Raymundo escorted us to the pyramids and invited us to his home and said we could leave our bikes at his place while we went into the city. Raymundo and his wife Rosa Norma hosted us for a night before and a night after we got back. More wonderful people!

We spent a week visiting incredible Mexico City, probably the world's largest city with close to 20 million inhabitants. Despite the warnings of everyone (as is common for any large city) we didn't have any trouble. No trouble in the streets, no trouble in the subway, no trouble on the buses. We felt comfortable walking and using the subway returning home the last night even though it was after 11pm.

We have now arrived in the land of phenomenal Meso-American cultures, and will find can't-pass-it-by ruins for the next few months. Our final approach to the north of Mexico City took us right up to two major archaeological sites, Tula and Teotihuacan. Then, smack in the middle of Mexico City are the ruins of the main temple of the Aztecs. We visited Tula first, then Teotihuacan and the Templo Mayor, but I'll describe them in their order, rather than ours.

In Querétaro we visited with Dulce and Andrei, whom we'd heard about from our Dutch cycle-touring friends Dick and Els. We had a delightful evening and day with them enjoying the area and hearing their stories. They're now temporarily retired from bike touring - and have a delightful 18-month-old named Emiliano and are living the life of a young family. From 1998 to 2001, with nearly no resources, they traveled from Querétaro south through Mexico, Central America, and South America all the way to our destination, Ushuaia. Unlike us, they had scarce resources and had to earn money along the way. Click here to read their whole story in both English and Spanish and see their pictures.

Queretaro was yet another delightful, interesting, old city, with cultural events and music on every corner, and a 500-year-old church on every block. We spent a couple of days taking it in and hearing Andrei and Dulce's stories. And Andrei took us (along with new Belgian friends Lorenzo and Sarah) on a tour of the city.

(Esta historia es debajo en inglés y español).

In Querétaro we visited with Dulce and Andrei, whom we'd heard about from our Dutch cycle-touring friends Dick and Els. We had a delightful evening and day with them enjoying the area and hearing their stories. They're now temporarily retired from bike touring - and have a delightful 18-month-old named Emiliano and are living the life of a young family. Here is their story, in both English and Spanish.

 

The Story of the Cyclonauts of Mexico, from Dick and Els' Website. Translation to English in Blue.

La Historia de los Ciclonautas

   read more here... lee mas aquí... »

During the next couple of weeks we visited three other colonial cities: San Miguel de Allende, Dolores Hidalgo and Queretaro all which have important connections to the Mexican War of Independence back in 1810. All the cities benefited from the silver mines; Wonderful churches and other colonial buildings were built as a result of gold and silver mining in the area over 250 years. The cities all were places that fought the Spanish for the right to govern themselves.

San Miguel has the most active interesting plaza. I sat in the plaza and painted well into the night. While drawing I listened to various musical bands serenading the people hanging around the plaza. San Miguel has a large gringo population that has retired to this area and has influenced the culture of the area. As a result there is a huge library with wide selection of books in multiple languages, a very active art community and more old women beggars then any place else.

As we came in to Guanajuato, we were 5 kilometers (2 miles) above the center of center of town with million dollar view. We stopped at the first of many famous old churches. “Templo La Valenciana” A church built by a miner who promised if he made it rich he would build a church. The miner found the mother lode which produced 20% of the world silver plus gold, nickel and lead. As a result of his promise he built “Temple La Valenciana” which contains gold and silver ornated altars, carvings and giant paintings.

Here it was the end of March in Mexico and we had been riding for two months. The weather was great: no rain, the temperature was perfect somewhere in the seventies, sunny. All the things a bicycle tourist would want. But the wind kicked up every day around 11:00, a couple of hours into our day and hearing traffic difficult to hear in windy conditions so we decided to take a quiet dirt road which someone had described as a beautiful ride and “a good training road”. Um.. sounded interesting. We headed down the road not knowing what it was going to be like but we did know it would get us to Guanajuato.

It was a wonderful road with all the things we love. It wound its way up through a forested canyon on a good dirt road. There was so little traffic that we could let our minds wander or put on our head phones and rock to music as we rode.

We're in Tula today and visited the ruins of the Toltec capital here (from about 800-1100 A.D.)

We've come quite some distance from Zacatecas - down through a pretty stark countryside and over a big mountain into the Bajio, another major silver producing area and the birthplace of the Mexican War for Independence back in 1811. We worked our way through the cities - a day for riding, a day or two for visiting - Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, San Miguel de Allende, Queretaro. Then we rode down toward the famous ruins of Tula and Teotihuacan near the Valley of Mexico. We're almost in the middle of Mexico now!

As you can see by the picture, we've been riding through some pretty agricultural areas and seeing some mountains - both quite a treat. And we had our first rain the other day - a decent thunderstorm. Tonight in Tula it really poured, with violent thunder and lightning. After 2 1/2 months never even thinking about rain, we're going to have to get re-oriented. And we're mighty happy to be in a hotel tonight! I think we would have been washed away.