Puerto Vallarta day 3

This is a picture of me relaxing at dales appartment. i'm still feeling tired, but i think i'm going to leave tomorrow morning. there's supposed to be a 27 mile climb out of puerta vallarta so hopefully i'll get an early start.


mostly i´ve been reading, walking on the beach and hanging out on dale's roof drinking tequila. it's cool watching the sunset from up there because the ocean mirrors the sky and you can watch the water change from blue to green to grey to black as sky changes color. there is a pirate ship that takes tourists out for a sunset ride with free booze and you can hear their drunken revrlry drift up the hillside. at 9:00 the pirate ship shoots of fire crackers and they seems to be exploding right onto dale's roof.
my family is really worried about me biking by myself.
-jessie

Puerto Vallarta

I've been in Puerto Vallarta for a couple of days now. it's super, super touristy here, and the crazy thing is that it's not even tourist season. people tell me that the tourists don't even start arriving until november because it's too hot right now. it was weird riding into town. all these crazy american hotels, the shereton, holiday inn, burger king, costco, pizza hut. it was late in the day, and it started to pour down on us. plus, the roads are these crazy coblestoned insanities, and it was really hard to bike up them. the mexican drivers were super awesome though and kept honking and waving at us and flashing us the peace sign and thumbs up. i really think mexicans are so much nicer to cyclists than canadians and americans.
This is a picture of this hotel room we stayed at in las varas. that's peter looking through the bars of our glassless window. the place was super ghetto, and we ended up pushing these two beds together and all three of us slept on them. the "bathroom" was literally a cement hole in the wall with a spigot coming out of the wall and a 5 gallon bucket underneath. i think that was the sink, and then there was a shower head, and a toilet. once you took a shower, everything was wet, and then you needed to fill up the bucket of water and dump it into the tiolet to get it to flush.
this is a picture of this yogurt we ate that morning. it's called "lala", which is cool because that's what we used to call my sister Laura when she was little.
We were really into the hotel we got in Puerto Vallarta. here's a picture of me in the bathroom after biking throught the downpour. you can see that the shower has it's own divider so water doesn't get all over the rest of the room. sweet right? then we turned around and saw this sign on the door.
basically it says child prostitution is a crime.
We've been riding past some really pretty beaches.

I think the trip is falling apart a little bit though, so i am in low moral. i think after three months of traveling like this, there is a certain type of exhaustion that settles into your body and doesn't leave. i remember feeling like this on the appalachian trail. big pete packed up and went home to wisconsin (i think i spelled that wrong). Dale decided to rent an appartment for a month here in puerto vallarta. here's a picture of the view from his window.
and here's a picture from inside the place.
pretty nice, huh? probably this is a little bit crazy of me, but i just started feeling like i couldn't deal with anyone, so i told erik and young peter to go ahead with out me, and i'm just hanging out here with dale for a little bit. this morning dale and i were sitting in his new place drinking big pete's instant coffee that he'd left behind and talking about life. what a crazyness, huh? probably none of us will even stay friends when this is over, but for right now we're each other's best friends. i wonder how it will be traveling alone. i guess if i don't like it i can always catch up with the guys. it just started seeming exhausting to be around them. i wonder if we are all losing it. Dale thinks we wont finish. i hope i finish. i bet young peter will. he seems indefatigable. i think erik wishes he wasn't still on the trip. but he doesn't like the idea of giving up. he's really homesick though. i don't feel homesick, and i still want to do this, i guess i just feel tired of a lot of stuff. we'll see how the future plays out.
-jessie

San Blas

i´m super loving being in mexico. it is so, so awesome. all of these towns we're riding through have been so cool. outside of mazatlán we stayed in this town called Escuinapa, and it was just really awesome. we got in as the sun was setting, and it seemed like the whole town was just out and about, hanging out on folding chairs in the middle of the sidewalk or chilling in the town plaza. you never see that many people outside in US towns or cities. Erik and i went out for dinner, and i ate marlin. that´s pretty cool, huh? maybe i´ll be the first kid on the block to eat a marlin. it tasted great, kinda like a cross between lox and tuna. the next morning we ate breakfast in the market at this little food stand, and we got scrambled eggs with chiles and tomatoes, beens, cheese, a huge stack of fresh tortillas, and coffee for $6.
I got erik this giant wonder woman piñata for his birthday, and everyone has just been cracking up when he rides by, because he strapped it to the back of his bike. no one in mexico has blond hair like erik, and kids on the street yell, "Santi Claus!" when he walks by. it´s pretty funny. when i ask people to guess his age, they always think he´s 40 or 50. one day this guy thought he was peter's dad. then yesterday this guy asked me if he was my husband, and when i said no, he asked me if erik was my dad. ha ha...
so yesterday for erik´s birthday we stayed in this totally posh hotel with air conditioning, and there were white terry cloth robes in the closet and we got a bottle of white wine, cranked up the AC till the room was only 60 degrees, and took showers, and hung out in the white robes getting tipsy. it was like the most awesome thing ever. we kept just like cracking up because we felt so posh.
mainland mexico feels significantly cooler than baja, which is really nice. it´s super humid though. so still hot, just not as bad as baja. it´s a really nice change to go from the desert to this wet tropical environment. everything seems to just grow like crazy out here. huge flowering bushes with orange flowers, vines, wild marijuana plants, giant snakes, armadillos, and so, so many butterflies. the birds are really crazy too. i don´t recognize any of them, but some fly by with these huge elongated tail feathers that are at least as long as their bodies, and other ones seem to live near these marshy areas and they have huge pink feet and legs and black and white bodies. sometimes i look up and see whole swarms of dragonflies hovering overhead, and down along the side of the road are enormous yellow and orange crickets that are as big as two of my fingers put together.
it rains for a little bit everday, but it´s warm, so it doesn´t bother me too much, and afterwards it´s so hot that you dry off fairly quickly. it seems like a lot of places must just flood constantly. ok, hope everyone is doing awesome. the past couple of days i´ve been in a much better mood, and this morning i didn´t even have diarhea. yay! love,
-jessie

Mazatán

We had an 18 hour ferry ride from la paz to mazatlán. we got so, so bored. i think already conversation is pretty limited among the three of us. but an 18 hour ferry ride really stressed our meager conversation skills. we were talking about ways to entertain ourselves, and peter suggested that we ask the cafeteria for a 5 lb bag of sugar and some spoons and see how much sugar we could eat. there was nothing out there but the ocean. and the ferry rocked, and i felt nausious. we slowley made our way through several icecream bars, a bag of potato chips and the mexican version of hostes cupcakes, and then it got dark. we were hanging out on the upper deck and peter got really excited because off in the distance you could see lightning out on the ocean. we watched the sky light up for a while, and then peter and erik went to sleep out on the deck. i wandered around and watched families lay out blankets on the floor and curl up together. people slept on benches and under chairs. it was kind of like a mini homeless encampment that was slowly moving across the sea. eventually i passed out underneath this chair and was awoken by the guy asking me if i spoke spanish. he then told me that he had an extra bed in his cabin and i could sleep there if i wanted to. i told him no (seemed sketchy), but then later wished i´d said yes because the floor wasn´t that comfortable. around 4:30 i walked back up to the deck that peter and erik were sleeping on. it was getting pretty wild outside. we were right by the lighting, and the whole sky became illuminated every time a bolt of lightening shot into the sea. the wind started howling and the waves started getting choppy. peter got really excited and decided to videotape us on his digital camera, and so i held the headlamp (for light). we were all cracking up just because it was so insane, and the wind was blowing so hard, and then we hear a giant crack and this florescent light explodes off the wall showering glass everywhere, which immediately is blown all over the deck by the crazy wind. at that moment the rain started coming down, so we moved inside.
around 6:30 the ferry moved out of the storm and we go back on deck to watch the sun rise. we can still see lightning off in the distance behind us. i kept trying to take a picture, but once you´ve seen the lightning it´s to late to photograph it. i think i´m not meant to be out at sea. i´m not a natural born mariner. i´ve been off the boat for a while now, and i still feel nausious and like i have vertigo.
we met up with the other guys. they ended up having to hitch for a while because of the hurricane. but everyone is doing good. i got a hotel room for myself tonight. i´m just feeling a little tired i think. Hey Michele, thanks so much for the offer to stay with your father in law. i´m totally not computer savy and couldn´t figure out how to send you an email from the comments page. hope everyone is good. love,
-jessie

la paz

we're in la paz. tomorrow we're taking an 18 hour ferry to mazatlan on mainland mexico. hopefully we'll be able to meet up with the rest of the guys, although i got an email from dale and he said they were waylaid because of the hurricane. if this image loads, it's a picture of the hotel we're staying in. it's pretty cool. everything is cement, even the beds. peter, erik and that british guy andrew and i are all staying here for $30. not too bad. la paz is cool. it's the first major city we've been in for a while, and tonight we went to a chinese restaurant, which was a nice change from beans and tortillas.
i'm really tired of having diarhea. it's exhausting to be sick on top of the heat and biking. i'm changing the name of the blog to diarhea diaries instead of jessie bikes. i might go to the doctor when we get to mazatlan.
it's really good the have peter back. here's what he looked like after biking 110 miles.

it's funny because really, this has been the nicest biking of the whole trip. the best road, least traffic, and most curtious drivers. but the heat and sickness killed me. people say that around december baja is like "paradise". but it's not right now. the scenery really is beautiful though. i wonder how long it will be this hot. people say that october is the start of the rainy season. maybe soon it will be totally hot, raining, and i'll still have diarhea.
We're still not totally sure whether we'll stay on the coast or go inland. inland we'll be doing a ton of climbing, there will be a lot of traffic, and we'll have to worry about stuff getting stolen (we haven't had to worry about this at all on baja), but we'll get to see a lot of cool mexican cities and it will be cooler with less mosquitos. on the coast it will be flat, hot and more resort towns. flat sounds nice though. also biking in big cities is stressfull. ok, hope everyone is good, and thanks again for the nice comments. i really miss everyone so much. all the guys are really nice, but sometimes i miss having friends who are girls, or maybe friends who are guys who aren't wearing spandex. love,
jessie

Ciudad Constitucion

Yay! Peter is back. he´s so, so crazy! he biked 95 miles, then 97 miles, then today he biked 111 miles! he{s been sleeping by the side of the road, has crazy diarhea, and is totally covered with dirt, but he caught up with us so quickly! So that{s super awesome. today 9/15 is some kind of mexican independence day holiday. if i was a better tourist i would know what it is, but i{m sure we{ll find out tonight when we go out.
I{m in a much better mood today. i{ve started taking cipro again so my stomach is feeling better. i wonder if i{m just going to be constantly on this stuff for the next couple of months. also, it wasn{t as hot today. we did 72 miles, and it wasn´t that bad. we seem to be leaving the desert and entering some kind of weird grassland with cactus growing out of it. i´m a little worried about this new hurricane that´s supposed to be coming in. i tried putting in pictures, but i can{t tell if they worked out or not. i miss everyone super much, and thanks for the comments. i really like them. love,
-jessie

loreto

Erik and i are in loreto. our group is totally split up now. big Pete, Clyde, Dale and Gary are on mainland mexico. they took the ferry over from santa rosalia. it{s funny because i was doing most of the route planning so i always had all these guys asking me how much further and where we were stopping and all that jazz, and then after they left, erik and i woke up and started riding south, and we pretty much had no plan, and didn{t know where we were going to stop that night. it was a lot easier. we{ve met up with this british cyclist that peter was riding with after he left us. he{s in touch with peter. appearently peter got a cheap cassette and rear hub, hitchiked back up to near guerro negro where he broke down, and is trying to ride quickly down the peninsula to meet us in la paz. he{s so crazy.
the riding is really horrible right now. the scenary is beautiful, but it{s so, so hot. erik and i both drink so much water, and we never pee. i{m sick of drinking water. i don{t even want to do it any more. i feel like we{re constantly dehydrated. also i{m sick again. for the past couple of days i{ve had this stabbing pain in my stomach all day. i think the last thing i want to be doing while sick with food poisoning is biking 50-60 miles through the desert in extreme heat. it{s making me feel really, really exhausted. we got another hotel room last night in loreto and today we{re only going to go 25 miles. so that{s good. both of us are thinking of maybe going inland once we get to mainland mexico to escape the heat. we{re just going totally crazy out here. the other day we were biking through this canyon and i was like, "erik, i{m dying..." and we stopped, and for some reason erik started yelling, and it made a really cool echo, and so we just stopped and yelled up this canyon for a while listening to the echo. erik was like, "look any time we get too hot, we{ll just scream a lot." i just really don{t want to be this hot any more. also, i don{t want to be sick anymore. so, good news about peter, sad that the group split up. hopefully we{ll get to la paz in one piece. think good thoughts for me, cuz i{m not feeling that great right now. love,
'jessie

Santa Rosalia

so it seems like the hurricane hit santa rosalia pretty hard. i just ate lunch in a cafe that had no running water and a lot of flies. none of us are feeling super awesome. it´s just too hot. this american guy just came up to us and was like, "what on earth are you guys doing biking through baja in the summer?" i guess he lives here. i asked him how it is in december and he said it´s like a paradise. not right now though. also people are having bike trouble. in guerro negro erik and i got this hotel room, and peter and the other guys camped. so peter met some british cyclist and just took off with him. he didn´t even come by the hotel room to say goodbye to erik and i. then yesterday we accidentally biked 90 miles, and erik and i were hanging out at the campground, and the other guys ran into peter hitchiking on the road. His rear hub is totally messed up and needs to be rebuilt. he told the guys that he was going to hitchike here and look for a bike shop, but there isn´t one. we haven´t heard from him, and i´m a little worried about him because he´s only 18 and he doesn´t speak any spanish. i wish i´d seen him on the road cuz i probably would have offered to go with him. we´re wondering if maybe he decided to take the ferry to mainland mexico. then erik and i are rolling into town today, and erik´s pedal totally craps out. it just stops turning. so he tries to fix it, takes the thing apart, and it´s toast. the american guy erik is talking to says he has a pedal he can give him, so hopefully that works out. i dunno. it´s like i´m so hot and tired i almost can´t think straight. we´re talking about maybe taking the ferry to mainland mexico in hopes that it´s cooler, but people say it´s the same. also, if we cross over now as opposed to biking down to la paz, the only road going south is a toll road, which means we´d have to sneak our bikes on. i´m so, so tired. i hope erik gets another pedal and i hope we can some how find peter. i think we should stay here on baja and bike south, but maybe that´s a bad idea cuz some places don´t have water. also, i´m getting tired of being everyone´s translater.
the other night i had a dream that it was my birthday and my parents were buying me a chocolate esspresso milkshake and it was so cold and delicious. at night when we go to sleep, the ground is hot. you can feel the heat surge up at you through the floor of the tent.
'jessie

guerro negro

i think baja has definately been the hardest part of the trip so far. we´ve been bicycling through this insane desert and a lot of the time when we stop in these little pueblos there is no running water, let alone a shower. i´m not sure how this happened, but i think i´m starting to get dread locks. i´m not sure what i´m going to do about it. here´s a picture of my new hair.
I guess when i thought about baja, i figured it´d be like the end of the shawshank redemption where their hanging out at the beach, but instead we´ve just been cycling through the world´s most ecologically diverse desert. i´m kind of freaking out about water and one day i carried 10 litres with me.

There are some really bizare looking plants out here. one of them is called "cirios" and it´s a kind of tree that looks like this crazy stalk with black things coming out of it that ends in a fan shaped group of yellow flowers. appearently these plants can live to be 300 years old and grow up to 18´. There are also tons of cardon cactus that are really huge. i´ve been talking to the locals and they all say they can be hundreds of years old.

it´s so, so hot out here. erik has a thermometer and the other day it was like 110. it´s funny because when i was looking into what tires to buy for the trip, everyone seemed to really like these german tires called schwalbe except for this one guy who said he was biking through the desert at 115 degrees and the tires melted. i remember reading that and thinking, "well he´s totally crazy, who´d bike through the desert in 115 degree heat." Here´s a picture of peter and erik dying by the side of the highway.
So we spend all day sweating in the heat and dust, and then don´t get to shower afterwards. the other day we were in this little town called cataviña and i was talking to this guy outside of this roadside store, and i was asking him if there was anywhere in town we could get a shower. he was all, "Follow me. we all bath over here in this dip in the road. the water´s really nice." i wasn´t totally sure what he was talking about, but erik, peter and i all follow him down the road, and it ends up being this spring that they´ve attatched a hose to, and put up inside this cement thing. it was so, so awesome. we´re all laughing cuz the situation is so bizzare, but it was so, so nice to get clean. This is a picture of erik in the "shower".
In addition to the extreme heat and lack of water, we´ve all been getting sick. Big pete got some heat exhaustion thing were his pulse shot up to 93 and he had to go to the hospital, and pretty much everyone except young peter and clyde has the runs. we´re all taking cipro, but i´m sort of wondering what we´re going to do for the next couple of months. you can´t just keep taking anibiotics, and today i asked in the pharmacey if they carried cipro and they just had imodium and pepto bismal. we´ll see how it goes i guess. but it´s not like we´re eating recklessly.
-Jessie

san vicente baja

we got really confused leaving teajuana and there was a toll road and a free road, and we were stopped by these guards at the toll road, and then got totally lost trying to find the free road. then this lady told us to just climb under this barb wire fence and go up this embankment to the toll road and ride on it anyways. so we did. here's a picture of the guys trying to get their bikes up there. erik's back. so that's cool.
Here's a picture of everyone riding on the toll road next to the no biking sign. the toll road was really nice though. we only rode it from t.j. to rosarito. other than that it's been the free road.

hey, internet speed might be slow, so not sure about photos. i think it might have been 110 degrees today. I'm really glad to be in Mexico though. It's funny, everyone we've talked to thinks it's crazy to bike down here, but Mexican drivers have been the nicest drivers so far. i think maybe in the U.S. people get annoyed with bikers, but in Mexico driving is a lot crazier, so it seems people have more patiences with us. everyone has been waving at us and totally moving out of the way for us in their cars. there was only one scarey stretch with no shoulder coming out of Ensenada. i'm a little delirious right now because of the heat. i'm just sweating so much. baja is a neat place though. people seemed blown away by us biking. when we told this one guy we'd biked here from alaska he want, "Ay! No!" and covered his face with his hands. then we told another guy, and he went, "Ay Yay Yay!" it was pretty awesome. i really wish it wasn't this hot though. we've started filtering water, which is a pain in the butt, but i think will ultimately end up saving us money.
-Jessie