September 9, 2021
Tecamachalco
Today wasn't the most inspiring of rides but we weren't expecting it to be. Our primary goal at the moment is to get to Oaxaca and we aren't aware of any routes that are going to make easy or attractive.
Many journals have suggested using the "cuotas" or toll roads instead of the "libres", the toll-free major roads between towns because the cuotas tend to have less traffic and have a good shoulder. The cuota from Puebla to Tecamachalco, visible for a lot of today's ride, seemed just as busy as busy as the Route 150 which we had decided to ride and we would have been a long way away from food and drink options along the way.
After ten kilometers we enjoyed a second breakfast of chopped up watermelon, sweet melon and papaya and at the twenty five kilometer we wolfed down a bowl of soup with a chicken drumstick and a couple of tortillas. The chickens here have bright yellow skin and we passed a place where whole yellow chickens were for sale, hanging upside down like cooked ducks in south-east Asia. I am sorry I didn't stop to take a picture.
The weather report suggested that we would enjoy north-easterly winds today that would have helped us along but instead for most of the way we battled into a fresh south-easterly.
Most of today's ride was through built up areas, even though in many places the building didn't extend any further than the edge of Route 150. The road surface varied from excellent to shoddy and in a number of places we had to carefully judge the traffic to squeeze past flooded sections of the road. Hildago state to the north of us suffered heavy flooding about three days ago with about fifty thousand people displaced. Puebla state has also had its fair share of rain and so many of the road are very wet.
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At about the forty kilometer mark we enjoyed a marvelous downhill on a good section of road. This nullified the headwind until the road flattened out but even so the last twenty kilometers of today's ride passed quite quickly.
We are in the Hotel Real San Nicolas for the night, selected because it has a safe place for the bicycles inside its courtyard. It's nothing special but at M$440 for the night we are more than satisfied.
Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 294 km (183 miles)
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