Day 29, 30- 11/24/21, 11/25/2021
Odometer 27,090 – 27,230 —— 140 Miles (4,530 Miles Total)
Oaxaca, Mexico
My day in Oaxaca on Wednesday was pretty much spent on my hammock at the hostel enjoying the lovely view that I will very much miss when I leave. I helped the hostel owner fix a few odds and ends around the compound, went out for a little food in the city two times, met an American couple for lunch at the meat market and then just enjoyed being lazy the whole day.
I got some bike maintenance in. Cleaned my chain, checked the oil and found out by bike finally started burning oil like my bike in Europe does. I was wondering how long it would be until my bike here started to do it too. I threw a few things out of my bags and did a lot of minimizing little things I got with me. My friend Lilly was flying in today and who knows how many bags of things she would bring with her that shew wouldn’t use. She will probably read this when she leaves so I can talk trash now and she can’t do anything about it after she leaves! Hah
She flew in and I grabbed her from the airport. We went out for some good street tacos in the city, walked around a bunch and then called it a night.
11/25/20201
We got up pretty early and were planning on going to Hierve Le Agua for the day which was some 2500 year old waterfalls about 2 hours out of the city. We got on the bike, headed into the city to get some breakfast. While we were waiting to get seated this couple from London was sitting across from us and he asked me who made my trousers since he liked them. I told him the company was called Kuhl and since I’m super picky about my jeans I stood up and started to unbutton my jeans to look at the type of jeans they were, (free rydr) so I could tell him. Thats when everyone at the waiting area gave Lilly a funny look like what the fuck is this guy about to do! We were all cracking up after. When we sat down the couple from London ( Sasha and Tom) sat next to us and I’m pretty sure we made some new lifelong friends. This couple was just pure comedy the whole time. We loved them. We exchanged contact information and were planning on meeting up later on in the day.
We got on the bike and thankfully I had Lilly with me because at the toll booth the guy started to tell Lilly if we were going to the waterfalls this ay was blocked off and we had to enter another way.
We backtracked through a small town and the road turned to dirt. 20Kms to go up a mountain and around it. This was gonna be a rough ride. We rode through some pretty gnarly stuff for about 30 minutes going through some pretty steep climbs. There was soft sand gun many places with some sharp rocks. I was just praying I wouldn’t drop the bike and crush Lillys leg or get a flat which would slow our day down a lot. We pulled into the small town and when we got to the attraction I couldn’t believe it. Sort of looked like we were on Mars during some small parts of it. We hung out there for a while took some pictures and went for a swim. On the way out the ride was super dusty and brutal again but we made it without dropping the bike once or getting a flat. Very thankful. There was two spots where we came around a turn and the view just made me start crying in my helmet. These are the views that make my trip and I will never forget those views.
We got back to the Oaxaca, grabbed some food and met up with Sasha and Tom. We went to a nice restaurant with them where we just had front row seats to a free comedy show. These guys were hilarious!!! Once we ate we shot back home to get some warmer clothes on since the sun was setting. It’s still getting super cold up here in the mountains and we’re wearing down jackets. I can’t wait for actual heat all day and night long.
On the way into the city again there was a ton of traffic and as I creeped through the traffic we saw they were doing some sort of protests. I got right up behind the protest to try to creep through and suddenly we were surrounded. A feminist protest. And here we have a white man on a motorcycle trying to get through. They stopped walking at a slow pace and just stopped al because of me. They surrounded us yelling things in Spanish, taking pictures of us and my motorcycle and my license plate. They were getting very aggressive and had cans of spray paint in their hands. I turned my bike of and took a deep breath before I snapped and lost my shit. I kept looking at my knife on my tank bag to let them know they shouldn’t dare think about using that spray paint. After a few minutes Lilly told me to turn around and get out of there. I made a U turn and rode on the sidewalk for about 750 feet, made my way through the side streets to get ahead of the feminists and off we went to meet our new friends.
We went back out with them and went to the city center to watch some live music. Our hostel owners brother owned a mezcal tasting bar so we went there, talked a lot of shit to each other, told a bunch of stories, laughed a ton and then I took them to a street taco stand Christina told me about. Then Tom made some friends and we went to a bar with live music where he fed us some margaritas and met some of their friends they made in the city too. They were flying out to Puerto Escondido on Saturday so we found out we would be seeing them there too! It started to get late, we said our goodbyes and went back to the hostel. We had a 6 hour ride ahead of us tomorrow for Puerto Escondido which I was looking forward to for a very long time.
