January 2, 2026
Day 4: Cancun (Day 2)
Brutal!
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It's a hard pill to "swallow", but really the local bakery products are inedible. But some kind of baked product at breakfast time seems essential for my mental stability. These circumstances have led me, at least temporarily, into the arms of the "Bimbo" company. Bimbo is the company that makes the local "Wonder Bread" type stuff, and they have a wonder bread - like cinnamon bun. It's available, a least here in the east of Yucatan, at OXXO. Fortunately, OXXO also has "Disfruta" yogurt, which means "Enjoy". Disfruta yogurt really is our favourite. It has lots of fruit, on the bottom, and lacks the "Greek" texture that has taken over yogurt at home.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
We set off on our newly assembled bikes, brimming with enthusiasm, and optimism that we would see a nice birding area by the inner lagoon of the hotel zone, plus that we would at last see the famous hotel zone itself, with gleaming buildings, craft markets, and water to the left and right.
It started off great, as we took Huayacan Avenue, which has a bikeway right down the middle.
But as often happens in countries that do not really have a cycling culture (i.e. everywhere but Germany and Netherlands) even when they accidentally put in some cycling infrastructure they soon forget what they were doing, and let the project drop, often in the middle of nowhere.
In this case, the project dropped in the middle of a set of car clogged roundabouts. The area, and most areas, as we were to find out, was not only car clogged, but had few traffic signals or crosswalks (not that any crosswalks were much respected). The traffic flow was very heavy, trundling along at about 60 kph, with nary a break. There was also lots of construction, and limited access ramps and exits. If you zoom in to our track, at the end of Huayacan, you can see us casting about for a way through. But what you don't quite see, is that each "cast", when it involved crossing a street or getting into a left lane or something, was an actual gamble with death.
This kind of situation extended through the day, and ended with us giving up. I'll bring forward a photo from a slightly different area (in the hotel zone) to show clearly what this is all about:
One one occasion I flagged down a police officer in an ATV, and got him to stop traffic so we could cross. Another time, an officer in a truck got out on his own and shepherded us across. But too many times, Dodie shoved her bike out into traffic and dared the drivers to run us down. Or, we spotted a brief break and shouted to each other "Run! Run!". Two 77 year olds "running" while pushing heavy bikes is not exactly a sports highlight!
Our first big push ended when we arrived at the Malecon Tajamar. This was supposed to have trails from which we could see birds, but all we really saw were warning signs not to feed the crocodiles. Fancying myself a modern day Captain Hook, I tried to sneak through behind the sign, but they had it fenced off. So I kept my arm, for use with jousting with cars.
The main attraction of the malecon was a very extensive craft market, with lots of pop up tents and stands, but not in operation this early in the day. At least it did have the promised (on the map) bikeway.
We found our way next onto the east-west strip of land that leads over to the main north-south hotel zone. Not having the GPS on my bike, concepts like "strip of land" or "east-west" meant little. What I saw was more like this:
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Along the way birds were fairly scarce, but Dodie did manage to point out a few, like this Chachalaca on a wire, or some Ruddy Ground Doves, scurrying on the .. ground.
None of these shots, though, are brought to you by the Lumix camera. It developed an aversion early to the dust, probably, and jammed. Fortunately we carry a backup, the Canon that Dodie got from Susan Carpenter. Most of today's photos are courtesy of the Canon.
But things did look up as we encountered another temporary bike way.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The bike path took us enough into the hotel zone for us to see some beach and some hotels. The beach was remarkable, with "sand" that was actually very finely powdered coral, I guess. Like this:
The hotels themselves were commonly just plain white concrete towers. The two towers shown below are not totally typical, since they do seem to have a little bit of design to them.
The one I did really like was called the Riu Palace. It featured some rounded bits, and did look like a fun place to stay.
I was thinking that a Joni Mitchell Pink Hotel (with a boutique and a swinging hot spot) would be good here. No luck, but I did come up with a Peach Hotel:
| Heart | 7 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The hotel zone to this point did not really feature a lot of shops and restaurants, which also might have slowed and controlled the traffic. But I did spot this shop:
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
There was excitement for us as we came to a bridge - a fairly guaranteed place to see some water. And we did, plus our only water bird - a Magnificent Frigate Bird:
Also in the water were some "pirate ships" - part of a evening dinner and pirate show operation:
Since we were riding on the sidewalk a lot, we were dodging tourists and having to bump up and down the often quite high curbs. It began to dawn on us that we were really nowhere, in terms of going down the hotel zone, and that if we ever made it, we would have to fight our way back up the even busier highway 307. We asked Google Maps just how far it would all be, to get back to our "mansion". Maps said it would be best to turn back, meaning that we were not even half way. We resisted that for a while, but as traffic thickened and no further bike paths appeared, we faced reality and turned around. Even that was not a piece of cake, because as mentioned, we had fought through a lot of traffic just to get as far as we did. In fact some of the more harrowing moments were still to come. But we did it!
It was very taxing, though. At one point we stopped at a shady bench, and reminiscent of some bonks in Germany, I scarcely had the strength to put some cookies we had into my mouth. They did go in, though, and gave the needed boost to get back.
Our plan for tomorrow had been to hike out to 307 again and to try flagging down a collectivo, that would go into Cancun downtown, where there are several markets and presumably other fun stuff. Now if we do go, we will spring for a taxi. But really we are thinking this country couple belongs out in the jungle and quiet roads, and that is where we will head asap.
Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 70 km (43 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 8 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 3 |
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us7000rm3k/executive
3 weeks ago
3 weeks ago