Veracruz State (Nov 1 to 6)

On October 30^th I arrived in Cordoba in the Mexican state of Veracruz

November 1
Some Notes – I found my afternoon fairly unproductive thanks to a computer issue which is about as frustrating as it gets for me. I was able to get my Puebla State blog post posted and I uploaded 1,380 photos to Flickr this evening. While uploading photos to Flickr I continue working on my How to document your bike ride blog post. This post has probably been my longest post to write from start to finish.

November 2
Some Notes – A day of nightmares. My Dropbox cloud storage is full. I tried a free trial on another plan and discovered I inadvertently picked the wrong plan. Yesterday I deleted a bunch of stuff out of Dropbox to make room in the cloud instead of upgrading to more space. Dropbox did all sorts of stuff to my computer, including removing all my desktop files off my computer. And last night I left my computer on all night to finish syncing files to the cloud. When I went to bed last night my Dropbox sat at 1.7 TB. When I woke up it was 2.2 TB My plan is a 2 TB plan. Dropbox created extra folders and who knows what and the only way to create space was to empty my Dropbox cache except there was no way to empty my cache because my computer just recently upgraded to Windows 11. And the Windows 11 upgrade runs completely different than Windows 10. Supposedly the cache empties its self every 3 days but that does not help me today. So, I was forced to upgrade to another “expensive” Dropbox plan. Between yesterday and today pretty much a full day has been wasted. Dropbox you piss me off.

Much of my day was spent organizing my computer notes but I was able to get 1,421 photos uploaded to Flickr.

November 3
Some Notes – I started the morning with a Road Show with Brandon. I spent a 3^rd day in front of my computer. Tomorrow I will get on the road.

I finished writing and posting my How to document your bike tour or adventure blog post. I am also finally finally caught up on get my photos posted to Flickr. I had 344 photos left from yesterday to upload. This puts me at 36,329 photos for this bike ride so far. While posting my last photos to Flickr I was able to post my new Documenting blog post to 25 Facebook bike groups and my US Summary blog post to 12 Facebook bike groups. I started writing my documenting your bike ride blog post on October 9. I think this is the longest it’s ever taken me to complete a post.

I spent most of the evening organizing computer files. I am an excessive note taker. I have hundreds and hundreds of files and notes that have been collecting for years. My left hand is numb and my back is sore from excessive computer work these last few days. I am trying to get as much computer work done as possible in Mexico because I am pretty sure I am going to have Internet issues upon arrival in Belize.

I am going to push on tomorrow and see how fast and far I can get through Mexico over the next week or two.

November 4
Km’s Pedalled – 73.5 km’s pedalled and a 60 km vehicle ride

Destination – Tres Valles

Some Notes – I left the Casa Bonita Hostel today. It was a nice and quiet and cheap hostel except it was way too clean and because they clean everyday all day the place often smelled like chemicals.

I visited Cathedral of Córdoba, Iglesia de San Antonio and Parroquia De San Miguel Arcángel on my way out of town for some possibly better photos than my first visit when I arrived in town the other day.

Cathedral of Córdoba

Iglesia de San Antonio

Parroquia De San Miguel Arcángel

Leaving Córdoba in many ways it felt like I had entered Belize. Between sugarcane fields, tropical foliage and my favorite tuboos trees along the road I felt right at home and made pretty good time on my bike.

The weather continues to be perfect. I have noticed that the weather has been perfectly comfortable ever since leaving the Baja. For 4 months the weather 97% of the time has been perfect summer weather without extreme heat.

Late afternoon Luis Antonio pulled over. His English was probably the best English that I had heard in Mexico thanks to his 20 some odd years in the US. He noticed my Canadian flag off my trailer and had to stop. He had spent about a year in Vancouver right before the pandemic and was totally in love with Canada. He invited me to be hosted at his place in Tres Valles which was 60 km’s down the road. Something told me that this invitation was worth the truck ride. So, we threw my bike in the back of his truck and I took him up on his offer of a ride the rest of the way.

My left arm and hand have been numb since yesterday.

November 5
Some Notes – I was up by 7 am because Luis was getting a bull slaughtered (he’s a butcher). The bull was already dead by the time we showed. It was not my first bull slaughter. I later took a nap. I am not used to early mornings. Later I walked to the center of town and visited the Parroquia Cristo Rey church. While on my walk I got a call from Len Petter an old truck driving co-worker. It’s always nice to hear from Canada. Overall, a very uneventful and lazy day. Today I started noticing the humidity of this part of Mexico.

Parroquia Cristo Rey church. A very interesting church

November 6
Km’s Pedalled – 62 km’s

Destination – Linda Vista

Some Notes – Today was nonstop waves and honks from everybody on the road. My guess is close to 100 people waved and honked my way today. Early in my day my host Luis caught up with me on his motorcycle 21 km’s down the road to give me an unexpected $500 peso donation.

With my host Luis Antonio

I saw a beautiful specimen of a Harris’s hawk today with a chestnut brown back and black wing feathers. The chestnut brown against the black was very striking.

Pineapple fields

I was in my glory today as today was like biking in Belize. The flat terrain, tropical foliage and humidity had me in my happy place all day.

Bananas

There was lots of bananas, pineapples and sugarcane fields throughout the day. I made good time and kilometres throughout the day. I biked into Loma Bonita. The Loma Bonita area is famous for its pineapples. It is also the first town/city that I biked into that did not have a church in its town centre or any that I saw. In fact, I saw no churches anywhere in town.

Pineapples

Luis sent me some interesting facts about Loma Bonita. Apparently, it the biggest pineapple producing county, possibly world wide. And it’s the city of 3 lies. Loma = hill (It’s actually flat). Bonita = beautiful (It’s not). Oaxaca is the state that it is located in but geographically it’s more in the state of Veracruz.

Banana fields

I only got about 17 km’s further down road when I was coaxed off the road by locals for a beer. It didn’t take long for me to lose count of the number of beers that I ended up having. Good thing the owner of the bar said I could spend the night there.

Mexican shenanigans

Tonight I found myself in an interesting situation. I am sleeping on a bed in a back room of a bar that closes at 6:30 pm. I am told that if I exit the back door of the bar there are aggressive dogs on the other side of the door and they locked the front door. So, for all intent and purposes I am locked inside a bar by myself. Thankfully I decided to get a meal while I was in Loma Bonita and luckily, I have a piss bottle with my camping gear as I just finished almost a dozen beers and no access to a washroom. And thankfully I had a bunch of cookies on me to control the munchies after all those beers.