Go reader Benjamin Cunninghamand his co-cyclists are taking the Pan American Cycle Test for charity. They are halfway through their journey
IT WAS a 17-hour ferry journey across the Sea of Cortez from the Baja California Peninsula to Mazatlan, which is on mainland Mexico. As our support vehicle was deemed too big to board a regular passenger ferry, we departed La Paz for the mainland aboard a freight liner.
There were no backpackers or any other walk-on passengers making the journey - only ourselves and dozens of Mexican truckers. Leaving the Baja for the mainland brought us into the Tropic of Cancer and into the rainy season, which was set to be with us for the next two months. For the previous two weeks we had experienced the hot arid conditions of the desert, but since we entered the tropics this has been replaced by intense humidity and massive downpours, which are happening at least twice daily. The rain changed our daily routine quite significantly. The nightly downpours were so severe that attempts to camp ended in absolute saturation. This was not a problem as there are plenty of cheap hostels and hotels along the road to crash in.
Measuring almost 4,000km in length, the Pacific coastline of Mexico is the longest stretch of coastline of any one country on our route.
The most striking thing about cycling down the Pacific Highway of Mexico, other than its beauty, is the massive contrast between the poor and the wealthy areas. Modern tourist towns such as Ixtapa and Acapulco are, literally, only a few kilometres from the suburban ghettos and antiquated agricultural towns which we have cycled through.
Perhaps the town which provides the best feel and strikes the best balance that we have stayed in is Puerto Escondido. Located in the province of Oaxaca, it is a fishing village with world famous surfing beaches. We stayed in the Hotel Mayflower and met some interesting characters one might have expected to run into on the road in Mexico. The most eccentric of these was an American named Larry. Larry, a 50-year-old evangelical preacher from California, had left his life in the US and fled south. He kept the hostel entertained with midday conversations on politics and religion. With no intention of paying back any of his mounting credit card bills, he's wandering down the Pan American Highway at a slightly slower speed than ourselves.
Puerto Escondido was one of the first places we ran into a major backpacking scene and it was a great town to stop and relax for a few days. We had great fun with the group in the hostel and by the time it came to get going again, we left with another cyclist - Peter from Nova Scotia, Canada.
The distance from Puerto Escondido to the Guatemalan border is 650km or a five-day cycle. After being in Mexico for so long, it was with a sigh of relief that we entered another country. After four months on the road, we had covered 11,520km of the journey. This distance was covered in only the US, Canada and Mexico.
From Mexico onwards, the trip can be characterised by multiple border crossings. On October 13th at Hidalgo we crossed over the border between Mexico and Guatemala and into the sub-continent of Central America. This was our first of six border crossings that will take place over the next three weeks. Amazingly we will, without any delays, cycle in three countries in one day, as in the space of a day we will cycle from El Salvador into Honduras and through into Nicaragua.
At the time of writing, in El Salvador, we are approximately two weeks away from having completed the entire continent of North America and are halfway through the Pan American Cycle Test.
For updates and to donate to Aidlink see www.pacycletest.com