The Hotel Victoria in Tantoyuca is situated on a very steep hill near the plaza. I had to push my bike up the small, heavily congested, one-way, street to reach the plaza. When I left the hotel the next morning, I rode back to the plaza and expected to find another one-way street running parallel down the hill and back to the highway, but there was none. So, I rode around a little looking for a street down the hill. I found one that went in the general direction that I needed to go and began the descent. There were no cars on this street (there’s a clue Mark). It was a cool morning with a misty rain, everything was wet. There were lots of people lining the street selling stuff and I noticed they were staring at me (more than normal). I`m going real slow and riding the brakes when the front wheel starts to skid, I realize that I am going to have to get off and walk the bike down the hill. I get off and nearly fall; the pavement is extremely slick and the street is getting steeper. So I slow to a crawl, I got both wheels locked keeping the bike in a controlled slide as I take three inch baby steps down the street. I am realizing choosing this street was a mistake, or perhaps all the streets are like this and some days you just can`t leave Tantoyuca on a bike. I am pretty sure I am going to fall, and the people watching me are sure of it too and are just waiting to see it. In my minds eye, I see me and the bike sliding down the hill into some vendors stand and demolishing it. Boy, would that be a mess for the gringo. I inch around the last curve and my heart sinks, the street empties into the MERCADO! and it`s the SUNDAY mercado, that’s why there are so many people on the streets. The street disappears into acres of suspended tarps. Wow, what do I do now, there no going back up the hill, I barely came down it. I guess I either go through the mercado with my bike or camp here at the bottom of the hill till something changes. So into the mercado I go with my fully loaded bike and trailer. It’s times like this that I am glad I am not flying the Stars and Stripes on my trailer antenna advertising where I am from. The market is a zoo; animals, fruits, vegetables, you name it, and you can buy it here. Most of the people look indigenous. I move slowly, hoping I don’t damage something or scratch someone. The path is narrow, just enough room for two people to pass. Everyone is bearing with me well, nobody looks angry with me. About 100 meters in, I stop and ask for directions, the guy points to my left. Eventually I see the road! I am so happy. I push the bike down the road, there are still a lot of people about. The road makes a right turn, and there is the highway! However the last 15 meters is steep, it kind of looks like my driveway. I can`t push the bike up the hill, it is too slippery. I take a running start at the hill, that doesn`t work either. Maybe I can unload all my stuff and carry it up one thing at a time…….hmmm, maybe I should see if I can walk up it empty handed first, what do they make these streets of anyhow? About this time, this kid who was standing by watching everything says, “Señor, ¿adonde va?”. I replied I need the highway to Tuxpan. He points at a path by the river. I could have kissed him. A minute later I am riding down the highway. I got a good story to tell so I stop for coffee and share it with three amigos. They get a kick out of me pantomiming sliding down the hill and pushing the bike through the market. As I saddle up to leave, I ask them if they have ever been to the United States. The one guy, the biggest joker of the three, pantomimes kicking someone in the butt, and says ”they kick the Mexicans out”. We all laugh uproariously. I invite them to come to my house anytime.
Archive for January, 2008
into the Huasteca
Posted in mexico, san luis potosi with tags golondras, mexico, san luis potosi on January 24, 2008 by markschaumannMy fitness plan is simple: I pedal. I pedal at daybreak or I start shortly afterwards. I pedal nearly all the day. I pedal in high gears. I pedal in low gears. I pedal till my bottom bracket squeaks. I pedal standing. I pedal sitting down. I pedal fast. I pedal slow. I pedal where I want to go. I pedal South (always South). I pedal till the sun burns the skin off my arms. I pedal hoping that really is the peak of the hill I see and not another step to more of the same hill. I pedal till I see visions of warmshowers and soft beds. I pedal till the dry riverbed under the bridge looks like an inviting place to sleep. I pedal determined to claim those few inches on the side of road as mine. I pedal on the path beside the road when the trucks take what is mine. I pedal always glancing in my mirror for that truck with my name on it (I hope it does not exist). I pedal hill after hill, how many could there be? I pedal till my amigos are incredulous with my pedaling. At night my body heals, and when I arise I am stronger and more confident. I am forging a weapon that no road will conquer. I will see this to the end……God willing.
Although far from fading into anonymity, I noticed that about one hundred kilometers South of Ciudad Victoria, people were not shouting something about Panama or newspaper from the side of the road, I guess I am beyond the range of El Cinco´s circulation. Upon exiting Victoria, all the advice I received was to cut to the coast and take the dual lane highway to the industrial city of Tampico because it was flat. I ignored the well intended advice and rode South on the old Pan American highway into the Huasteca. The sorgo fields of Tamaulipas changed to cane fields and orange orchards. The sugarcane operations looked ancient. They process the cane by hand feeding the stalks into a turnstile press drawn by two horses squeezing the juice out. Then they bottle it and sell it. The whole process, from field to market is right there beside the road. The road turned bad after Ciudad Valles and I mostly rode the path beside the road to the small town of Aquismon.
I hired Jaime (pronounced HI-may) to drive me to “Soltano de las Golondras” in his camionetta. It was the worst road I´ve ever been on. It was strewn with boulders and rocks, I had one arm on the seat back and my hand on the dash, the passenger window was gone; no doubt somebody smashed it with their head while making this ascent. Jaime says he has been making this drive twice a day for the last seven years. There are indigenous women walking the steep road carrying wood on their backs suspended from their forehead with a strap, others are carrying a child on their back. None of them look over five feet tall. We wind our way up the mountain in a stump pulling gear. Jaime starts asking me what California is like. He and some amigos are leaving February 3rd for North California to pick apples for nine dollars an hour. He expects to be there a year, maybe more. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters. I sense his sadness, but he is also excited about the adventure. We encounter a big backhoe in the middle of the road working, Jaime shuts the motor off and we wait for him to make a way. It took over an hour to go 13k. It´s quite cool when we get out of the camionetta. We climbed 900 meters. Jaime stays with the truck while I continue on with an indigenous guide on a goat path for a half hour. Finally, we reach the Soltano. The first thing that strikes me is how quiet it is. There are about a dozen of us there, each of us perched on a boulder. I am the only gringo. The Soltano is a pit about 200 feet round at the top and cone shaped. It is 1000 feet deep and about 500 feet round at the bottom. I, of course, want to hang my head over the edge and look for the bottom, but an indigenous kid asks me not to. I respect his request, the indigenous own the Soltano de las Golondrinas. We are waiting for the sparrows to return to the pit at dusk. Eventually, about a dozen come screaming just over my head and into the pit. They are beautiful bright green birds, and they circle in the pit descending to the bottom. As it gets darker more bird come till it resembles a meteor shower into the pit. It sounds like a volley of arrows, each bird making a quite audible “whoosh”. Someone reminds me it is time to go, it is almost dark. If it got completely dark while we were here we would never make it back to the road till daybreak, it was a very remote place. I tell Jaime to show me how fast he can drive down the mountain, but I guess he knew I was kidding, or maybe he did not what to break his camionetta, it´s his livelihood. He teaches me some Wastek phrases on the way back, he is fluent in both languages.
The video I took at the Soltano did not turn out too good, so to give you an idea what the place is like, this link is to a two minute video of some base jumpers leaping into the Soltano. It is from the “Caves” episode of the 2006 BBC documentary, Planet Earth.
The girl running the internet cafe here is wearing a tee shirt that says in English “I love Mark”, you believe that? Is it a sign?
I made the front page!
Posted in mexico, newspaper articles, tamaulipas with tags adventure travel, bicycle on January 16, 2008 by markschaumann
check it out here
the rubber meets the road
Posted in mexico, tamaulipas with tags mexico, tamaulipas on January 15, 2008 by markschaumann 
Wow! My mind, body and spirit have been adjusting to the new sensory inputs and trying to respond as they should. Everything has been running on overload. It is exhilarating! I rode 350 kilometers in the first four days while towing a heavy load, not bad for an old guy who hasn’t been riding his bike much. I was in some serious pain out on the highway for the most part, however the feeling at the end of the day makes it all worthwhile.
Do you want to know what it feels like to be a celebrity? Ride your bike across Mexico. Literally everyone on the side of the road waves and greets me. When I am in a city, I feel like I am a politician in a parade waving to those on the right and then those on the left, I don’t miss anyone. When I stop for water a crowd usually develops. They all have a lot of curiosity and questions about my trip. Everyone wants to play a part and help me on my way. Just south of Valle Hermoso, a well dressed couple pulled over to talk, they gave me all their contact information and told me we would have dinner together when I reach Merida. On the outskirts of San Fernando, a rancher pulled over to talk, he offers a place to stay and says he has sheltered some Canadian and German cyclists before. As I entered Ciudad Victoria I was stopped by a journalist for Elcinco a major daily newspaper. He whipped out a recorder and interviewed me on the spot. He took some pictures too. There are many more things that the Mexicans have done to make me feel welcome, but you get the idea. Presently, I am resting in Ciudad Victoria for a few days, it’s a big city, the capital of Tamaulipas, and has a pleasant climate this time of year.
Thank you all for the kind comments and emails, mark
Juan
Posted in mexico, tamaulipas with tags Mexicanos, mexico, tamaulipas on January 14, 2008 by markschaumannI was checking in when I first laid eyes on him. He was sitting in a chair in the hotel office watching an old black and white movie on the television. He resembled your average homeless, very dark skin, out of control gray/white hair and beard. He was wearing a tattered “don’t mess with Texas” ballcap. He had that serene look about him that a truly happy person has or perhaps he was crazy or maybe a little of both. I exchanged a few words with him and the clerk, an energetic fellow, then retired to my room for a shower. The next morning I was checking out at daybreak and here comes Juan, returning from the store with a cup of coffee. I asked him where he got the coffee. He hands me the cup and says “you have mine”. When he sees how astonished I am that he would give me, a complete stranger, the cup of coffee that he just walked to the store and bought for himself, this makes him so happy he hands me the bag he is carrying too and says take this also. In the bag was a pound cake, not a slice of pound cake, but a whole cake. I don’t know what to say. I put the cake in my handlebar bag and started drinking the coffee while Juan starts filling me in on everything I need to know for my ride to San Fernando today. He is very excited to help and is speaking rapid fire Spanish and waving his hands about. He acts like I am going on a mission to crash the gates of Hell, and it is something that he has done it before, and the only way I will survive is if I know everything he knows. He tells me to drink the coffee for energy, when my calves hurt, (he claps the back of his leg to demonstrate) then ‘cambio’ (downshift) and he points at the rear wheel cassette. I nod my head. As he is waving his hands around I notice that two of his fingers have been broken and not set right, they cant off on an angle. He points out that the taillight on my trailer doesn’t work but I show him that is is just a reflector. He says but it is dirty and the trucks won’t see you,. He spits on his hand and wipes the reflector clean. Finally, it looks like I am ready, he gives me the directions to get on hwy 101 and I give him a hug and tell him we are friends for life and will not forget him. I swing a leg over the bike and look at him. He has his hands clasped in prayer and is looking at the sky, then he points at the sky, then he said (and I knew what he was going to say) “vaya con Dios amigo”.
the illegal immigration debate, my take
Posted in border, illegal immigration, mexico with tags illegal immigration, mexico on January 10, 2008 by markschaumannThe issue of illegal immigration over our southern border has been pushed to the forefront of political debate in America. I cannot flip on the news without hearing about it. In my opinion, the importance of the issue is over represented by the media; why, I am not sure. My conspiracy theorist friends think its Big Brother trying to get the masses to accept a national identification plan. You know, the mark of the beast and all that. Others think it is being used as an issue to rally the conservative base. It certainly seems to produce a strong, knee jerk reaction in most Americans. However, there is a humanitarian aspect to the issue that you will not see on the news networks. I watched a couple of documentaries on the Sundance channel recently that showed the issue from the immigrant’s point of view. One was titled “Crossing Arizona” and the other had to do with the difficulties Central Americans have in crossing Mexico, I forget the title of it, but it was powerful. It was a close up view of several immigrants’ s plight. These are brave, desperate, people; who have seen hardship all their life yet are still hopeful. They see a life in America as a solution, not only for themselves but also for their families back home (they send lots of money back home). I see little difference between them and the Europeans who arrived in the prior centuries. The most moving story was told by a priest in Tapachula Mexico. He runs a safe house in Tapachula which sits on the Guatemala/Mexico border. The priest said: There was a black Honduran woman who arrived one day. She was sick and stayed with us a while. She cooked for us and we got to know her. Then one day she left, headed north to America. Fifteen days went by; then I received a phone call from her. She said, Father, we crossed the border to Texas at night, there was about twenty of us. As soon as we crossed we heard a voice in the dark shout “Halt”, it was the border patrol. They handcuffed each of us and began to make us get in a van. You will have to forgive me for what I did Father. When it was my turn to get in the van I said, “Mister Border patrol man, I want to ask you one favor, that is all, please take your gun and shoot me right here! If I return to Honduras I am dead. Let my children in Honduras say she made it to America and died there, just give me this one favor”. The border patrol man took the handcuffs off me and said “I never saw you”. The priest, who was looking at the ground as he told the story, turned and looked into the camera with moist eyes and a warm expression on his face and said, “she was calling me from Chicago”.
Wow! I say “you go girl!” I hope she is thriving in the USofA and sending lots of money back home.
Illegal immigration is a problem, however I believe the politicians ought to put some bigger fish on the front burner.
at the border….
Posted in border, mexico with tags border, matamoros, mexico on January 10, 2008 by markschaumann
My sled, on the Old Bridge, the Rio Grande in the background or ¨Rio Bravo del Norte¨ as the Mexicans call it.
It was unforgivable.
The migration office was empty except for the two officials sitting behind the glass window. I stood at the island table studying the “tarjita de turista” form the one on the right had given me to fill out. I’ve been feeling out of sorts, an issue back home had been at the forefront of my mind all day, nothing was receiving my undivided attention. I put the pen to the paper and began to print each letter of my name in the block allotted for it. Halfway through printing my name, I noticed that beneath the glass countertop, was an example form filled out with a fictitious person’s information to demonstrate how the form was to be completed. I realized that I had printed my last name first, when I should have printed my first name first. No big deal, all I need is a fresh form and I’ll get it right the second time. I turned and walked towards the officials saying “I made a mistake”. They did not understand what I was saying (if I had said it in Spanish they would have understood) so to demonstrate that I had made a mistake I tore the form in half. When they saw what I was going to do, they both rose out of their chairs simultaneously and shouted the same word in perfect unison: NOOOO! But it was too late. I stood there dumbfounded with one half in each hand. The guy on the left clapped both his hands to his head and put his head on the table and started rolling it around. The animosity that the other one was directing toward was palpable. I was glad they was a glass window between us. I passed the two pieces under the glass and offered him a “Lo siento, no se”. Trying to control his anger, he said, “you have destroyed an official government document, and I will NOT be giving you another”. Like I would ask for one, I felt awful about tearing the form. One would think that a little bit of tape would have resolved the problem; but their reaction told me that there might be some repercussions that I didn’t know about or could imagine. Mexico is a land where jobs are scarce and therefore taken very seriously and documents, especially if they have a lot of rubber stamps and seals on them, are to be respected. If I had been feeling a little better, my experience and intuition probably would have warned me not to tear that document in half. I backed away to the door repeating “I’m sorry sir” all the way. I got on my fully loaded bike and instead of riding into Matamoros, I turned back North and rode over the bridge to Texas to find a room and grieve over the torn document and the rest of the stuff I’ve screwed up in my life.
The next day was better, I appealed my case to the Mexican Consulate. When I told them that I had torn a “tarjita de turista” form in half, she said “so you’re the guy” (just kidding, they had not heard about the incident…yet). They were sympathetic, but could not help. They suggested that maybe crossing at a different bridge would work, Brownsville has three. So, I rode over the B&M bridge and inquired at the Aduana building. They said I had to go to the Old Bridge; I didn’t enlighten them as to why that was not possible. The last bridge was New Bridge; it was the interstate 77 crossing that all the trucks used. I had to ride through Matamoros to reach it and that was good for my head. For all it’s bad reputation, there sure were plenty of people flashing smiles, waving to me and shouting “adonde va?” or “buenos tardes”. It reminded why I came here. I stopped and ate a couple of barbacoa tacos with a street vendor. The immigration folks at the New Bridge granted me permission to ride my bike in their country for 180 days and wished me safe travel. At this point, I felt like I had done my penance and I didn’t feel so bad about yesterday’s events. Worse is going to happen, I have to keep things in perspective.
