Cycling from Mexico City to the Gulf of Mexico

We visited the famous Teotihuacan pyramids close to Mexico City. We also visited the capital but today we pack up and move on again heading east to the coast. The Gulf of Mexico.

We’re still in the mountains but this will change soon. The town we’re heading to is much lower so the weather should also be warmer. We found out there should be an awesome eco campground, we think the perfect place for spending this Christmas in a few days.
The days after we decline a few thousand meters and indeed it’s getting warmer and warmer day by day. By the time we hit the eco campground near Cordoba we are as low as 900 meter above sea level and the temperatures are nearly tropical.

We expected the eco campground should be quite popular so we’re not celebrating Christmas just by ourselves. Bummer we are the only ones around, we have the whole campground to ourselves. Even the restaurant on the campground is closed at Christmas, no internet to contact people at home, so not much to do here. The town Cordoba is small and does not have much to offer too. ? It’s gonna be a lone lone Christmas ? but not without you ?
We do some shopping for our Christmas dinner in town and take it easy. A street dog steals a part of the food out of our tent on Christmas Day. The dinner we finally cook is far from a real Christmas dinner.
We are a bit bummed out but the place itself is awesome so we don’t argue. (And beside, there is no one to argue with ?)

After Christmas Day we move on and decline even further down the mountains. The landscape becomes flat, we leave the mountains behind us. The area we are in now is full of sugarcane farming and it’s harvest time so the air is full of thick smoke from the cane burning.
The long and hot dirt roads between the cane fields seems endless but after a few days we arrive close to the coast. But still around 50km from it.

On this point we are not able to hit the coast already because there aren’t any roads to it which are heading our direction without we have backtrack in the coming days. Our only option is to follow a big highway south for two days before we finally can hit the coast at Coatzacoalcos. The road is boring but we can do distances of 120km per day so we move fast.

At Coatzacoalcos we wanna spend New Year’s Eve but when we enter the town it seems half of a ghost town to us. A lot of streets are empty. No people, no cars and closed buildings. Some parts of town are filled with people but still this town is not like all the other Mexican towns we passed for so far.

We don’t have much of a choice if we want to celebrate New Year’s Eve in some sort of town and not just by our selves in the middle of nowhere like we did with Christmas. We check-in in the cheapest hotel we can find and make it ourselves comfortable. We take a long walk along the beach, the first time we see the Gulf of Mexico. And we eat churos instead of Dutch oliebollen. At the end of the day we end up in a Chinese restaurant for dinner.

In the restaurant we meet a few Canadians/Mexicans and find ourselves in a chat quickly.
They are telling they live in Canada but he is from Mexico so they are here for family visit and a wedding. The kids are very excited they finally can speak English again with someone besides their own parents so they do a lot of the talking. By the end of the chat they invite us to celebrate New Year’s Eve with their family that night. We are excited being invited and looking forward to celebrate New Year’s Eve Mexican Style.
They give us their address and tell us to be there at 10 in the evening, two hours before the year 2019.
Back in our hotel we make ourselves ready for the evening. We have just a very few clothes to choose from so we save our party clothes for another year.
When we arrive at the party address we meet the whole family. All very nice, open and interested people.
We start dinner straight after and wait till the clock gives midnight.
“Happy 2019 everyone??”
The rest of the night we fill with some fireworks and interesting conversations about life and about cycling.

When we lay our heads on bed around 4:30 in the morning we fall asleep straight.

Thanks to you all for this extraordinary New Year’s Eve we wouldn’t forget for sure.