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Today marks four months on the road. We like this traveling stuff and we love Mexico! Familiarity breeds understanding and apreciation.

We left Oaxaca on the 20th, riding through one of the central valleys toward Puerto Angel. It was a fun ride through high, dry valleys, some agriculture and alot of climbing. We ended in the bustling town of Miahuatlan where we finally (!) found a $20 room in a beautiful new hotel hidden among the confusing streets. Art’s altimeter is not always accurate, but the town nexteled in the valley at about 6,500 ft. We found a wondrous dinner ina joyous little restaurant, fronted by a lovely garden, hidden behind huge doors off a dark and industrial street. Ah! Mexico!

Today we again climbed – 13 miles up – out of the long, scrubby highland valley, into the pines and coastal mountain range to 9,400ft. The profile on the altimeter looks a lot like pyramid steps. There are cabañas here, perched ont the side of the mountain with views off into the far distant pacific range. You can see our cabaña and our view on the San Jose del Pacifico web site. This is a mecca, drawing hikers and adventure travelers to the back country.

San Jose de Pacifico Puesto del Sol Cabañas

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Beautiful mountain ridges falling off on both sides of the road – steep climbs for 5 to 10 km – crazy long, long down hills, very curvy road with periodic washouts and landslips narrowing the pavement to one lane or less. Brakes heat up, hands and feet are tired...road surface potholed and sticky tar into hot jungle sun, humidity and bountiful tropical flowers!

Met a Canadian couple (father-son) riding up so we stopped and exchanged stories and experiences. They are on a three month journey of Mexico, the son continuing to the tip of South America. We think we will meet up again somewhere down the road.

At the end of this challenging day of riding, we ended up in the town of Candelaria where we would find a hotel. What we found was an huespuedes (room) – a 2 roacher for $10 (about). It did have a hot shower but the cleanliness was way below our recent experience. We know that we are back into our journey once again.

	mountain ridges
road washout
	Motel in Candelaria -- two roacher

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As I swing in my hammock, next to Art’s hammock on the second floor porch of our posada, I look across the hibiscus blossoms into a tree and watch the chickens roost for the night! We arrived at Puerto Angel about noon, this tiny bay of clean beaches and fresh seafood. This past day and half riding down 9,400 ft has been absolutely amazing!

We passed down through so many interesting eco systems: dense pine forest, then mixed vegetation slowly losing the pines, seeing bromeliads, tillandsias and orchids in the trees and a ferny floor, into the bamboo and banana trees to full jungle foilage complete with philadendron vines scaling four story trees and dripping over the road in ropes (true tarzan country), then down to dryer vegetation and over old, old sand dunes covered with shrubs to this pacific seaside mecca.

The bird sounds changed, too, from little song birds in the pines to squalling jungle birds still with us here at the sea. Many of the birds are spectacularly colored, and we’ve seen hundreds of hummingbirds. Two night ago we almost froze, tonite we steam. What an astonishing place to travel!

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