What happened…

Andrew writes: We heard gunshots last night. Or maybe we thought that it was gunshots that woke us up, a little after 2300hrs. They were off in the distance, but after our encounter with the three men with machetes, we spent the rest of the night a little on edge. Then this morning, we were cheered by the efforts the whole town was going to for their Celebration of Primavera (Spring). Everyone was dressed up, and people were decorating vehicles as floats. That was nice. That feeling of niceness ended when we stopped for a snack in Tizupan. There, a police officer told us in English that the area ahead was dangerous. That a few buses had recently been robbed by armed bandits. That if we saw someone with a gun standing or walking on the road, and they weren’t in a uniform, to turn the other way. He went on to say that most of the armed occurrences happened at night, so we should be sure to secure a hotel. My personal sense of uneasiness increased to a level of anxiety that I don’t like. I think for the rest of the afternoon I paid extra attention to all of the noises in the forests around us, and I was wary whenever we passed a parked vehicle alongside the highway. I also found myself less willing to smile and say hello to everyone that we passed. In short, I was running scared.

I didn’t like that feeling. When we stopped again in a town a little further down the coast, the restaurant owner there told us not to be concerned. That it was mafia fighting mafia, or that it was the government workers trying to expand their roles, or feel important. He said that the government here is corrupt, which is something we’ve been hearing for the last several months in Mexico. Still, I think that there was an unspoken agreement between Amanda and I that we wanted to find a hotel room tonight, and it was many hours later when we finally reached Caleta de Campos. This is the biggest city we’ve seen since we left Manzanillo. We’ve run out of a number of our staple foods the last few days including rice, peanut butter, nutella, jam, pasta and *gasp* coffee. We picked up a few of those here in CdC, and hopefully can find the rest when we reach Lazaro Cardenas tomorrow.

There are lots of shops and restaurants, and I heartily enjoyed my six tacos with beans and rice. “Just keep em coming Jose!” I exclaimed to the restaurant owner at dinner. Aww man, I’m so stuffed, and the food helped ease my anxiety. I don’t want to be afraid as we ride around the world, and I must remind myself that the majority of people are great folks, who make great tacos!

For now though, I’ll feast on the view from our seaside balcony at Hotel Los Arcos. I think this is the third or fourth hotel of that name in which we’ve slept. Anyhow, the view is incredible. Cheers!

Amanda writes: It was a gun shot at 2:30 and it was the second one. I’m the lighter sleeper of the two of us. The first gun fire didn’t wake Andrew and I was able to go back to sleep by convincing myself they didn’t want anything to do with us. We’re just two crazy Canadian’s on a bike ride … right?

As we approached the town we opted to stay in, tensions were a bit high. Andrew has this rule; he doesn’t like to ride longer than 6 hours. I think it’s a great rule of thumb, however somedays it just ends up being longer. It’s not often that it happens, so when it does I wish we could practice more patience. Andrew wanted to stay in the first place we came across however I wanted to push on the few kilometres to the centre of town knowing that we were out of some staple foods. After a bit of an argument we pushed on and I think we were both happy we did. Once we secured our hotel room we were able to walk two blocks to eat tacos and buy groceries. The hotel we stayed in was a family run business and I think the owners had like 5 young kids all under the age of 10. They all wanted to know how to say everything in English. And while it was nice to have kids talking to us after yesterday’s town of people staring at us like we were from mars; we were exhausted. After about 10 minutes of questions I was able to tell them I needed to rest. So while the day was long, having a hotel room with a beautiful ocean view by the lighthouse; it was all worth it.

Today’s Photographs