From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

In Mexico City, going from Fabienne and Patrice’s to Nancy and Abelardo’s, I fell for the first time since Anchorage. It was a stupid fall, like most falls are. We were navigating the streets of Mexico with the help of the GPS, and we were on the right street, but it was one-way. To save ourselves a couple of extra kilometers, we decided to ride on the sidewalk. Going over a high curb, I didn’t have enough speed and so tried to pedal even though the front wheel was a foot higher than the back wheel. The pedal hit the ground, the bike stopped short, and I fell heavily into the road… right in front of a taxi that stopped only a couple meters away. I fell on my left side and the loaded bike fell on top of me. I had some trouble getting back up – it felt like my left leg couldn’t really hold my weight. In the end, I was more shaken up than hurt, although my knee is still bothering me a little. Luckily the taxi wasn’t going very fast…

For three weeks now, we’ve been coasting along at an altitude of more than 2000m. Between Mexico and Puebla, we actually got up to 3215, our highest point since Anchorage. It’s been good practice for when we have to tackle the Andes. We’ve discovered that we react differently to altitude: Sara is more easily out of breath and gets headaches more easily than I do. We were surprised that we were able to climb up to 3215m without any problems since only a couple of days before, we had had to stop a couple of times on the way up to 2845m because of dizziness and shortness of breath. And that first hill was actually less steep than the one we just climbed up to 3215m.

After making it up the hill, the snow-peaked volcanoes that separate Puebla and Mexico City rose up on our left. Popocateptl is the most famous peak. It is 5465m high and is still active: plumes of smoke rise continually from its summit. The name means "smoking mountain" in the Nahuatl language. A little later we saw in the distance the perfect crater top of Orizaba (5747m). This beautiful countryside is unfortunately spoiled by all the litter by the side of the road. We haven’t written about this before, but since Anchorage, all sorts of garbage has lined the road because people empty their garbage bins out the window of their cars. In Alaska and in the Yukon too! There’s considerably more garbage here in Mexico, and it’s actually gotten worse in the past few days. The most common litter are individual plastic soda bottles – we see them about every 50 cm.

Sébastien