My first experiences with bicycle touring

We got up early for breakfast. Well, Brad got up and made breakfast. He is always early… Packing up our gear we tried to optimize our way of packing everything into the panniers. It will be a process over the first few weeks of traveling until everything found its place. We both carry only the essentials and only a few luxuries. Brad for example has a pillow and I have a second rain jacket. I don’t necessariliy need it but once we get to the colder mountain regions I will be happy to have it.

Not long after we woke up we were ready to go and hit the road again. I had to push my bike through the bushes and over rocks to reach the road. Pushing is actually much harder than cycling itself. I am already impressed about the weight my bicycle is able to carry. I definitely couldn’t carry all of that stuff on my back! Without food and water my bicycle touring equipment adds up to a bit more than 20 kg. (That excludes the tent but includes all the cooking gear for both of us.)

Learning from mistakes

As I started to pedal I realized that something was wrong. My feet touched my rear panniers on every turn. That wasn’t supposed to be. I gave Brad a signal and we stopped on the side of the road. He had a quick look and told me that I had put on my panniers the wrong way. Their forward movement had even caused my bicycle stand to get loose. A few adjustments from my experienced cycling partner and the problem was solved. He showed me what went wrong and how to put on the panniers in the right way. I guess I will keep that in mind from now on!

The art of shifting

According to Brad’s definition cycling on the Yucatán peninsula was on very flat roads. But it didn’t feel like it today. Growing up in the rhine valley in Germany I wasn’t used to any kind of elevation change. The rhine valley is flat. Really flat.

Today was a constant up and down and while I was mainly using gear no. 8 to 12 yesterday, I nearly needed the full range of my Rohloff equipped bike today (14 gears in total). Despite the effort it took me to pedal up small hills with “only” three percent grade it was good practising. With my old bike at home I never shifted through gears due to the fact that most of them didn’t work properly. With my new touring bicycle it was a completely different story. I learned that it’s best to shift the Rohloff inbetween pedal strokes when you don’t put pressure on the chain. If you stick with that it’s fairly easy.

How to travel the right way?

While cycling along the road and especially as traffic was getting less as we headed north I was able to look left and right. The whole area we cycled through was very rural. Despite the mixture of green shrubs nice yellow flowers were blooming next to the road. The occasional gaps in the vegetations were small side trails or entrance gates of ranches. Very often a sign told us “se vende” – for sale. Why were so many places for sale?

Our taxi driver in Cancún who picked us up at the airport had told us the sad story behind. People expected money from tourism and started to invest. Unfortunately all the income from tourism went to big spanish hotel companies like Riu or Ibero Star ( and it still does!). He used to work as a chef but is not anymore. The working conditions got worse and also the salary dropped with the development of too many mass hotels.

Cycling along lots of abandoned property reminded me of his words. I guess not many tourists travel as we do. Most of them just stay in their all-inclusive resorts moving from buffet to beach. We try to be different. Whereever we go Brad and I try to buy food from local families, we stay at small family-run places and go out for dinner in a small restaurant of a local family. It’s not only better for the local communities, it’s also much cheaper for us!

First impressions of rural Mexico

When you start cycling along the roads on the Yucatán peninsula, you will see lots of trash along the roads. It’s disgusting! For Mexicans it seems to be perfectly fine to just pull down the car window and throw out whatever they don’t need anymore. Especially before and after small villages you basically ride through the rubbish tip.

The Mexicans living in the small villages are very poor. The houses are mostly made of wood and corrugated metal, some are made of concrete. Everything looks very old and hard to maintain. the smell of wooden fires is present around all the villages. I guess a lot of people produce charcoal or burn some trash. Another smell that is very common in rural Mexico is the smell of roasted chicken. “Pollo” as it is called here is available to eat nearly everywhere.

Another typical sight in small Mexican villages are the dogs. Mostly they just lie around lazy, unable to move in the heat of the day. Or they wander around on the street in search of something to eat. Either way they are not very impressed by two gringos cycling past with big touring bicycles.

For most of the people in small villages we are a sensation. They all greet and give us a friendy “Holá”.

So far I have a really good first impression of Mexico and also my first experiences with bicycle touring are very good. But there’s still a lot I have to learn!