(February 1 – written by Dave)

We enjoyed the night in our stadium sized room, though the chaps out in the town square outside our window singing and playing the trumpet until 2:30AM will not be added to our Christmas card list any time soon.  I managed to capture a sunrise photo out our balcony window – wow, what a great hotel we had (other than the chappies).

We were trying to get out early but got delayed when Nancy spotted a missing screw from one of her bags – a victim of the bumpy roads since La Paz.  I have spares and tools but of course they are on the bottom of a bag and naturally in addition to fixing the problem, I also checked all of the other screws.  Problem solved, we moved out at about 8:15.  I was a little worried about city traffic but it was pretty quiet still – they don’t get up early in Mexico (maybe because they are all up late playing trumpets or the like – haha)

We didn’t get enough water for our bottles when shopping yesterday but this was not an issue as we had another dozen or more Oxxo stores on the way out of town.  I’m not sure that I get the business model for Oxxo but whatever it is, territory per store is pretty small.

Not everyone was sleeping in this morning.  The fellow in the photos below was jogging while kicking a soccer ball down the very uneven, busy highway.  He was pretty good actually, pretty much keeping up with us on our bikes.  I think that he was inspired by Mexico’s 1-0 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina in soccer last night.  It is always more fun being in a country when the home team wins – we got to watch the match on TV in our room, only because the one English channel was showing an odd movie.

The ride was pretty uneventful for the first 35k out of Pachua.  We were on a highway, not a toll-way, but the shoulder was great.  The last 20k was a lot more sketchy.  It seems like the toll-ways are a bit of crap-shoot these days.  Toll-way 132 was crazy – two lanes in both directions.  Our direction with zero shoulder, the other direction with a nice shoulder.  We had a bit of a white knuckle run to reach San Martin – the town on the north side of the pyramids.

Just before San Martin, we passed a major fruit and veg selling area.  We couldn’t resist picking up dinner supplies.  We know that Mexico supplies a lot of fruit and veg to the USA but we’ve seen very little until the last couple days.

We wanted to stop in San Martin for lunch but where having a hard time finding a place to eat.  No problem, another local came to our rescue.  This time it was a guy on a bike, in a cowboy hat.  He saw us and asked where we were from.  We in turn asked him where the restaurants were.  The language barrier prevented him from giving us great directions so he just hoped on his bike and told us to follow him – he knew a cheap and good restaurant.  And he was right.

Lunch was sort of “plate of the day” – they had no menu – we ordered one of each by pointing at what others were eating.  We had a massive spread of food, the two dishes below, a couple sides and pitcher of juice for all of $7 USD.  Trust the locals…

We eventually made our way to our hotel in San Juan Teotihuacan, The Posada Jade.  It’s a nice place but it feels a bit like we are staying in a room in someone’s house – which I think we are.  The room is odd, with a bathroom in front and bedroom in back.  The door to the bedroom is about 4 feet high!  The family is super nice however and has given us tips on the pyramids so we worked out the plan for tomorrow.

We rode right past the pyramid of the sun today but we’ll save that story for tomorrow.  I’m now off to negotiate use of the stove so that I can cook up some eggs for dinner.