Into every bike tour a little rain must fall

December 20, 2018

Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What? Rain you say? Yes, well, we will get to that later. Let's just start with the glorious morning. We got up at our now usual 6:00 and were on the road by 7 after making some peanut butter wraps for later and steripenning some water for the longer day ahead. Thankfully, the weather prediction for today was a little cooler again and with that super handy app, Windy.com (thanks, again, Chris!), we were looking forward to making good time to Merida. But, before leaving we had to take just one more pic of the beach at Celestun. Honestly, its such a relaxed place we found it hard to drag ourselves away!

But away we went, cruising down the straight and boring road we had ridden in just a few days ago. Only this time there was just a very slight tailwind, making the ride much easier and pleasant. We did see a few interesting sights along the way that were picture worthy - not sure about the artwork here but I suspect it was a way to tell where the driveway across the road was.

We approached the intersection we had come from and this time rode through it. Jim had his phone out, ready to capture some of the aggressive dogs who had chased us the other day, but I guess it was just to early for them and we didn't hear a peep until we were well past them. What we did come upon though was a police check point. Not sure why you need a check point this far out in the countryside, but they very nicely waved us through. As it was time for a food break, we pulled over just a little ways past and had our morning snack. While we were eating, we noticed that they had actually pulled a car over and were inspecting everything - hmmm... strange!

Not too sure if Jim should have been taking pictures here - if they decided we were a problem, it would have been a problem!

Breakfast done, we boogied on down the road, stopping every so often to take a pic or two of whatever caught our interest. We even managed to catch a bike path for a while!

Pretty much how the road looked for most of the day

We interrupted breakfast for this guy and a whole bunch of his friends hanging out in the tree above

Another abandonded hacienda - fixer upper?

You can take selfies on your bike when you are on a bike path - not so much on the open road

Shortly after that, with about 45km to go in our day, we had to make a choice. Either ride on the highway with the smooth wide shoulder or go down the more rural and rutted country road. They were both about the same distance into town, it was just a preference. Normally, we would choose the more rural road, but the wind had really picked up and was at our backs and we just wanted to book it into Merida, so onto the highway we went. It was great! Very little traffic, and a great tailwind so that we were able to ride at about 26km/hr - pretty fast for us! We kept this pace up until we stopped for juice about 16 km from town. We had a little break, ate some muffins and congratulated ourselves on being close to our goal for the day. That is, until we noticed the big big black cloud that was coming our way - uh oh! We both took out our jackets, zipped up and took off, hoping to miss the worst of it. Hahaha! Well, that didn't happen! Those of you who are annoyed with our never ending sunny beach pics can be happy with this one:

However, we laughed and rode on, as there was literally nowhere to stop and wait it out. The rain pounded down on us for about 10 minutes and we were both soaked to the skin, but it was still pretty warm out so the rain was actually kind of refreshing! Shortly after this, the sun popped out again and we rode into Merida, not quite dry, but not dripping wet. Making our way through the heavy traffic into the city was a bit of a nightmare - cars and motorcycles all over the place and no one really keeping to a particular lane. However, we soon got back into the swing of cycling in this city and eventually made our way to our digs for the next two nights, the Hotel Santiago. It is a spendid old building more in the old historical centre than our last stay here in town. We checked in (I'll show pics tomorrow), had a shower and immediately passed out for a good two hour siesta. We were pooped but happy campers! Tonight we will again wander the streets here in town, find somewhere to eat and enjoy a hopefully quiet night. Tomorrow is about getting some things in the mail, visiting some sights we missed last time and getting geared up to head to Izamal.

Ah, we made it to the historical central area!

Today's ride: 89 km (55 miles)
Total: 455 km (283 miles)

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