Many Milestones

It seems that with trip milestones, when it rains it pours. In the last few days I've finished the ride down Baja California, posted my biggest daily distance at 200km, crossed the Tropic of Cancer, crossed over to mainland Mexico and cycled more than 5,000 km. All of these add up to make one very happy Ant.

I'm happiest about having cycled through Baja and being on the mainland. I covered the 1,550 km of Baja in exactly two weeks and posted my biggest day of the trip on my way to my final stop in Baja, La Paz. La Paz is a lovely city that sits on a large sheltered bay over which the sun sets each night. With a poulation of 170,000 it's big by Baja standards and comparatively quite cosmopolitan. I think it had the first coffee shops I'd seen in Baja.

I got on the ferry from La Paz on Sunday evening and woke up on Monday morning in Mazatlan (well, I should say the last time I woke up on Monday morning I was in Mazatlan. A combination of thrift and the beautiful night sky meant I decided to sleep on the deck of the ferry rather than get a cabin. Problem is mexican ferry employees aren't shy and many of them, on realising it was a gringo asleep on the deck, decided to wake me up to practice their english and tell me thier life stories).

Anyway, the difference between Baja and the mainland is dramatic and was imediately striking. Everywhere you look here there is verdant greenery. On every hill, mountain and in every valley there's a deep blanket of trees, palms, bushes and grass and the river beds actually have water in them! When I look around at this landscape it says to me "Look at all the life I support". When I looked at the barren rocks and cactus fields of the Baja desert it would say to me "Be very careful Ant. Be very, very careful. If you slip up and get this wrong I'll have to properly f you up". I'm not denying the desert has it's beauty. It certainly does, but it was just a very difficult thing to cycle across and getting into a different climate has really highlighted that to me.

Not that the climate here is all that good for cycling - the temperatures are in the mid 30s and the humidity is high so it's very sweaty work - but it doesn't have the debilitating effect that the midday desert sun did. Another significant factor here is the population density is greater so there are more towns and cities and therefore the logistics of food, water and accomodation are that much easier. Overall, I'm really enjoying travelling through here. The scenery is beautiful, the food is excellent and the poeple are just fantastic.

Having cycled 5,000 km is also a big milestone, because it means I've crossed the halfway point of this trip. I expect to do a total of somewhere between 9,500 and 10,000 km: another 2,200 odd in Mexico and the remainder in the rest of Central America.

Still not having much luck uploading photos, but will keep trying.