This blog gives an overview of our experiences cycling from Mexico City to Oaxaca via Puebla – if you’re interested in doing something similar we have a much more detailed logistics and route planning blog available here.
Cycling in cities is never great fun (unless perhaps its Copenhagen or Amsterdam…). And, unsurprisingly, Mexico City was no exception. We deliberated for a while whether we should just take public transport out of the city into the countryside and then start our cycle, but a sadistic part of us wanted to see how awful cycling through one of the biggest and most polluted cities could be.
We started at about 10am from our lovely airbnb apartment, and our first 1km was on a joyous cycle path. I turned back to Knut and shouted “This is pretty cool!”. About 100m later the cycle path stopped abruptly and we were thrown out onto a three lane road. But our gamble with the mid-morning start had mostly paid off – the traffic wasn’t as bad as it could have been and people generally gave us a reasonable amount of space. But it was still tough – navigating through a city of 21 million people isn’t that easy – I had google maps on my phone in my handlebar bag blaring out directions, but it was kind of hard to follow. And then my phone spectacularly overheated and died making the navigation even tougher. In fact, impossible!
But we eventually made it out in one piece – just to get hit by a mini-tornado and nearly blown off our bicycles!
The plan was to get to a small town called Amecameca, but the first day back on the bikes in two weeks and the stress of navigating out of the city hit us hard. About 12km shy of our destination my legs just stopped working.
“I can’t go any further” I cried to Konstantin.
“Urm…” He looked on helplessly.
I got onto my revived, slightly cooler phone and desperately searched for a hotel. There was one! It was about 2km away, but it existed. We rocked up and checked in, collapsing exhausted on the bed. There was nothing else around for miles and we could not face the 2km cycle back down into the town for dinner (actually, back down would have been fine, it was the 2km hill on the way back we couldn’t face). So, it was a treat of microwave pizzas and a slightly soggy baguette for us for dinner. Living the high life!
Pizza and Mexican TV.
If we thought our first day back on the saddle was tough, we hadn’t seen anything yet. The next day we tackled the Paso de Cortes – a 1300m climb up to 3700m, and by far one of the toughest cycles I’ve ever done (at least to this point, we’ll see how I fare in South America!). Me and altitude don’t get on well. At 2500m I start feeling a little woozy and already get pangs of headaches – so add 1000m on to that and you have a pretty poorly Janneke. I tried to get into my plod – stick the bike in granny gear, head down and up you go, but it was tough. I would try and make it 1km without stopping, and 400m along I would have to pull over panting to the side of the road to try and get my heartbeat down. I started segmenting it into 500m ‘sprints’ (not going to lie, we were doing 2-3km an hour), and slowly but surely we got to the top.
Before the pass we passed lots of farms
One of many rest stops on our way up the Paso de Cortes
And oh my, was it worth it. One of the most stunning views in our whole time in Mexico – the two unbelievably awesome volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl (easy for you to say…). We set up camp just before an almighty thunderstorm opened the sky and threw lightening all over the silhouettes of the imposing volcanoes. It was pretty special. And pretty bloody cold.
Cycling past Popocatepetl
And cycling towards Iztaccihuatl
Morning sun on Popo
Camping in the shadow of the volcano
We had thought about spending another day up on the pass but my altitude headache got progressively worse through the night and I couldn’t face another night of tossing and turning, so we started to head down the 1300m. That must of been fun, I hear you say. Alas, no. For some reason the Mexicans have only paved one side of the Paso de Cortes. The downhill was a very rocky and sometimes sandy (more annoying than always sandy, because it hits you when you don’t expect it) road zigzagging its way down the mountain. I’m not great at downhills at the best of times, but add in the fact that every so often your wheels would give way underneath you while gravity is doing its best to pull you down, well, it was pretty stressful. I’ll admit, there may have been a tantrum or two.
We got down in the end and got to the very cool town of Cholula, outside of Puebla. It has the worlds largest (by volume) pyramid in the world – but it hasn’t been excavated properly as there is a very pretty cathedral on the top of it built by the Spanish. We spent half a day in Cholula and then went to play tourist in Puebla as well. Both were very worth visiting.
The church in Cholula
View over the stormy volcanoes from the church
The amazing library in Puebla (one of the oldest in the Americas)
Some of the amazing graffiti in Xanenetla, Puebla
And some more!
The next few days weren’t particularly notable. In fact, I’d go so far as to say they were a bit rubbishy. The whole area from Mexico City to Puebla and beyond is really built up. The last time we’d been cycling on the Baja we had to prepare not to see a town for 150km, but here it was just a seemingly endless urban sprawl. We quickly realised wild camping wouldn’t be on the cards without quite a lot of effort. The roads were also just a lot busier – lots of speeding cars, lots of buses pulling in without looking out for us, and a LOT of speed bumps. We met some lovely people in the small towns we passed, but I did feel at times I’d lost my cycling mojo. This wasn’t great so early in the trip.
Very friendly restaurant owner who was super excited about the fact we were on bikes and that now his restaurant had international visitors!
Our friendly neighbourhood policeman
Enjoying a marching band in our lunch break
Then we arrived in San Gabriel Chilac. A small village you would hardly notice on the map, but one of the cutest we visited in Mexico. They had gone BIG on the flags for the Semana Santa Easter celebrations and the place looked gorgeous.
Colourful flags in San Gabriel
Beautiful town of San Gabriel
We went to find dinner in the early evening and struggled. Nowhere was open. We eventually found a place where we couldn’t work out whether they were setting up or packing away.
“Are you open?” we asked in Spanish.
“Yes”
“Food?”
“Yes”.
As is the way in a lot of these very small family run eateries there is no menu. Sometimes they have just one thing cooking and you just get what you’re given. Here they had a selection (just listed verbally), but there was some confusion about our level of Spanish – so they rang up a friend who spoke English and he translated for us. It was very sweet. Even when there is a language barrier smiles and a lot of gesturing can get you quite far.
The restaurant
Tucking into some tacos!
From feeling like I’d lost my mojo the day before, these lovely little experiences made me realise again why we were on this trip and why cycling is so awesome. It is really unlikely we would have come through this town in the van, and if we had, we probably would have been cooking for ourselves.
Despite these lovely experiences, we still had some mojo-crushing cycling to do – heading out from San Gabriel Chilac onto the federal highway. These roads are actually pretty awesome – they are almost brand new and have very wide shoulders on them that act as quite good cycle paths. But they were so HOT. Unbearably hot. Google suggested there would be a restaurant at about kilometre 50. As we sweated away up another slope, I kept the image of a beautiful cold sprite in my mind. The speedometer clicked up to 49km. Just round this corner. 50km. Hmmm. Okay maybe the next kilometre. 51. Hmmm. Where is it? Mouth watering. 52, 53, 54. It didn’t exist. I felt another tantrum coming along….
We stopped under a tree.
“This is just awful” I said to Konstantin
He grunted in reply.
I’m not great in the heat. But Konstantin goes full caveman. I can only get grunts and silence when Konstantin is overheating, which given the average temperature through the day was about 35 degrees meant our conversation was quite limited.
I lay down under the tree.
“I’m not moving” I declared.
“Grunt” Konstantin agreed.
Our lunchtime collapse spot
We actually fell into a light doze (a siesta if you will) for two hours, getting roused every ten minutes by the engine brakes of a massive lorry blaring past. By the time we woke up it was 2pm and the temperature hadn’t really changed at all, but we felt a little bit more alive to keep moving. The next day we gave up on trying to be cycling heroes and checked ourselves into a spa. Literally living the high life!
Chilling by the pool!
At this point we only had two more days to get to Oaxaca, so we went for the non-scenic easy option – heading back out on another federal highway. These do the job, but they feel a bit functional. I love it when the cycle ride is part of the experience – the fact you’re out for five hours is a joy because you’re immersing yourself in the environment. Five hours on a federal highway is about spending five hours getting from A to B. It’s exercise, which is great, but it’s not experience.
Big hard shoulders, but no protection from the sun
No cyclists allowed…ah well!
We split our two days of highway in the town of Asuncion Nochixtlan. It isn’t the best sign when you cycle into a town and the police station is abandoned and has a burnt out car in front of it. But we didn’t really think anything of it. Later in our hotel we sat trying to chat to the hotel owners and they explained that there was some really big Easter celebrations in the town and we should stay a bit longer. So we googled the town. Turns out the night before there had been some pretty major protests and two people had been shot. The town had been the scene of riots in 2016 where X people were killed, and some burnt out cars had been left as a memory of that protest. A day before we arrived in the town the police had attempted to remove these cars and there had been a massive demonstration that turned violent. Suffice to say, we decided not to stay for the Easter celebrations. As we cycled out of the city the signs of the protest were everywhere.
Burnt out bus on our way out of the city
From the protests in 2016
The remains of the protests were quite obvious
Eventually we made it to Oaxaca City. Generally we sing the praises of Mexican drivers – they’re considerate and they give us space. Not in Oaxaca. We cycled along the bus lane, which, unsurprisingly, is only for buses, and had taxi drivers cutting us up, honking at us, trying to creep past it when there literally wasn’t enough space. Mostly I can take this in my stride, but when they actually were not allowed in the lane and they’re acting like they rule the road, it’s a bit bloody annoying! We found out later that there is no driving test in Oaxaca – you just go to the licensing office, show some ID, and they give you a licence. It was very evident in the driving skills!
We made Oaxaca City our base for three weeks, enjoying the Easter celebrations for our first weekend and exploring the beautiful city.
Guess where?!
Awesome street performance in Oaxaca
Those Catholics don’t do things by halves…
One of the many cathedrals in Oaxaca
Street art in Oaxaca
Our local organic market where we spent many an afternoon!
We watched the Good Friday procession through the streets of Oaxaca
We then spent two weeks at the excellent Posada del Sol language school, improving our Spanglish with our great teacher Esteban, and generally taking some time to relax (update blogs, speak to family, watch three seasons of Vikings…!).
Our host family in Oaxaca!
The city was beautiful and had a really lovely vibe (something that’s hard to capture in pictures), so it was just nice to wander around, eat amazing food, see cool street performers and really immerse ourselves in the culture. We visited the amazing Monte Alban and joined an excellent tour in the Botanical Gardens
Oaxaca is famous for its foods, and there was some interesting stuff for sale in the markets!
Visiting the awesome Monte Alban
The gardens
Cactuses in the botanical gardens
Some agave (and other plants) in the botanical gardens
Eventually though, we needed to get back on the road – it was time to head to the coast! Read all about it in our next blog.
We also have a separate blog – available here – that goes into much more detail about the logistics and the route for anyone planning to do something similar.