San Pedro Totolapa

September 22, 2021

We are slowly easing out of the phony cycle tour. Today we started the section of the R190 to Salina Cruz on the Pacific coast. Today's ride was easy but the tougher bits start tomorrow with over a thousand meters of climbing a day for the next three days. There are many accounts of cyclists doing this section in less than two days - it is about 250 kilometers with more than four thousand meters of climbing - but we are going to take out time.

Today's ride only had a bit more than five hundred meters of climbing, what I like to think of as a normal day, but what made it easy was a drop of more than eight hundred meters over the last twenty kilometers.

Traffic was also a bit lighter than what we have had so far but there were still a lot of vehicles on the road. Mostly they have been very accommodating to us but some of the inter-vehicular interactions are quite scary.

After ten kilometers of mostly flat riding we came to the town of Matatlan that bills itself as the Mezcal capital of the world.

This horse was initially standing so still we mistook it for a model.

Then we climbed for a few hundred meters, all of it quite ride-able.

At the top of the climb we looked southwards into a valley with our destination for the day lying more than eight hundred meters below us.

Enormous candelabra cactus filling the valley.

We reached San Pedro Totolapa just before one o'clock, found the first open restaurant and settled down to lunch. I still have fears of not finding enough food but there are lots of places along the R190 catering for truckers so we won't go hungry.

We had a half-hearted debate about pushing on further today but it was already quite hot and the next accommodation was thirty five kilometers away with more than a thousand meters of climbing to deal with.

Our digs for the night, "Cuatros San Fransico", seems to cater for truckers too but it is more than good enough for us. An almost OK Internet connection, so I can get some work done and it is cleaner than a lot of places we have stayed in around the world.

Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 514 km (319 miles)

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