Oaxaca

Oaxaca was one of the first places that I'd added to my map of "places I should go" in Mexico. I was told that the state as a whole was beautiful, and the city in particular had a number of interesting archaeological sites, natural wonders, and other interesting things to see in close proximity. Oaxaca was big enough that I looked for a couchsurfer, and while I didn't find someone to stay with, I did end up finding a good guide - and the hostel I stayed in led to some good adventures as well.

Orizaba

Since I wasn't on the coast anymore, I was able to make my way to a few of the things in the central parts of Mexico that I had been planning on skipping. So my next stop after Teotihuacan was to make my way to Orizaba - and honestly, I wasn't 100% sure why it was that I'd marked it on my map, but I decided to head that way anyway. And I decided that, since I'd been riding like crazy away from the hurricane, I was going to take two days and actually have some time to enjoy the city, even though I had no idea what I'd spend all that time doing.

This one's going to be more of a photoessay than most - the pictures do most of the storytelling themselves.

Teotihuacan

Finally having escaped from the rain, I can actually do something with my day other than race the motorcycle as fast as possible against the impending storms. When I was originally planning where to go in Mexico, I'd marked a few things around Mexico City, but then nixed them after deciding to head down the coast and not go inland. Well Patricia forced me inland, so I resurrected one of the places I'd wanted to go: Teotihuacan.

Absolutely unbelievable, and I'm glad I ended up going that way.

Patricia

I'd gone the whole trip so far without having to use my rain gear at all. It rained a bit while I was in San Ignacio, but I was mostly in a hotel bed with a cast on, so I hadn't ridden during it at all. I checked the weather one night and saw that there was some rain in the forecast, and when I looked a little further, I saw a little blurb about a tropical storm that was going to come on shore near where I was. Well darn, hopefully it won't be too bad, I thought.

Not long after, that little tropical storm became the strongest hurricane ever recorded and I was riding as fast as I could away from it.

Colima

Colima got added to my list of places to go pretty early on - I'd heard about a volcano nearby that you could hike up, and I'd been told by a friend that it was a cool town as well. When I rolled into town I expected to spend one night there, but after spending the evening in town, I decided I needed to stay an entire day there and have a second night.

But you know what they say about plans and mice and stuff.

Compromises Pt. 2

In the last post I talked about two of the compromises I made when preparing for the trip that ended up causing me problems, and how I resolved them as I was leaving Guadalajara. You might think, having fixed two things that I'd previously screwed up, the rest of the day would go smoothly.
Yeah, of course not.

Compromises, Pt. 1

When preparing for a trip like this, or taking a trip like this, there's a lot of decisions to be made. How much should I bring, what things, should I buy good stuff so it'll last or cheap stuff I can replace, etc. On some occasions, I've made compromises - instead of buying the best, or exactly what I wanted, I kept an old one I already had, or tried something new, or tried for a "best of both worlds" sort of situation.

And it seems like every single compromise I made has come back to haunt me.