Welcome to the Jungle

We camped just past Miahuatlan on our first night out of Oaxaca, at the foot of a big climb. The next morning our hosts' dogs helped us get an early start, so we were done the first steep 13 kms of the climb before the heat of the day. We really enjoyed rolling through the pine forest and beautiful ridge top towns like San Jose del Pacifico, so the last bit of climbing to the 2750 m summit went fairly easily. We should know better by now, but we always hope big descents will be purely downhill - unfortunately for us, this massive descent to the ocean was made even bigger by 3 steep uphill sections. With the extra climbs we probably decended a total of 3000 m of steep narrow road that was really fun to ride, if a little hard on our brake pads. By the afternoon we had dropped into the jungle again, and were surrounded by banana trees and hot humid air. In one of the last towns before Pochutla we met Matt and Michele, and rode the last ~30 km with them. We were the first cycle tourists Matt and Michele had encountered on their ride that started in Mexico City. M&M are from Montana so the 4 of us spent the night wondering how people live in such a hot humid place and trading tips on how to cool off - Matt won by actually standing in the ice freezer in the OXXO conveniance store down the road from the Bomberos where we stayed.Read more