Day 21 - Dec 5

What a great day.  It was a tough one but it was a really great experience.  We rode 81 kilometers or about 50 miles.  It was about half on pavement and half on dirt/loose rock and gravel.  We climbed 9,360 feet over the 50 miles which is a great deal of climbing.  

The morning was gorgeous with some clouds but a beautiful blue sky.  There were clouds clinging to the mountain tops and floating out of the valleys.  It was beautifully eery.  

We started cycling out of the valley where we stayed for the night.  It was a good start with farms and cattle grazing.  There were some small villages we rode through as we headed towards the mountains.  It was a nice leisurely pace.  But it did not take long before the climbing started.   And once it started, it came at us with a bang.   A whole group of us were in a nice tight peloton before we started the climb but as the climbing commenced it lost its form.  Fairly quickly one after another began dropping back as the grade increased.  The first real climb was on pavement that was long and pretty steep at times.  But it was doable with just a constant focus and effort.  Once that first climb was conquered the anticipated downhill failed to appear.  There was a short little run but then more climbing.  Today turned out to be almost all climb and very little down.  :(

An interesting scene as we went through a town there was a funeral procession with the locals filling the street.  The police cleared the street of vehicles and we had to hold up til it passed.  It was interesting to see another cultures practices.

After lunch which I made the lunch stop by 9:30, the real work for the day began.  It was the off-road/dirt section.  And the dirt section brought with it a stupendous climb.  Steep grades with loose rock and gravel.  Very tough biking to say the least.  But this out of the way "road" took us to some very remote sections and villages.  The view from the top was stunning.  I would say it was worth the pain but that is because I am not climbing any more.  When I was doing it I'm not sure I would have said it was worth it....  There was a section of it where I had to walk the bike because the grade was so steep and the loose gravel had me losing traction.  That forced me off the bike and into a walking scenario. 

The people in the villages certainly have Mayan ancestory.  You can see it in their features and in their stature.  Most are less than 5 feet tall.  

Here are some photos from the day. 

Scenery from the first climb.

You can see the clouds hanging low a sticking to to the mountain tops.t

These are houses as we came to the top of the mountain on the plateau.

Here are the clouds getting stuck on the top of an old volcano.

The mountain ranges that you can see... Mountain top after mountain top!

As I came up the dirt road over the mountain I saw many women walking along carrying their loads on their heads. Most had them in baskets just like the ones these ladies have.