Biking and Busing From Puerto Escondido To Chiapas
Reflections from my 10-day adventure to San Cristobal de Las Casas and back.
In August, I began to feel like I really needed to get out of Puerto. I was feeling a bit stuck, like a snake who needed to shed some dead skin, so I decided to ride my bike far away. I took a two-day bike ride to Huatulco, then the overnight bus to San Cristobal de las Casas for 4 nights, and then I ended the trip with a two-day ride back home to Puerto again. It felt great to ride, and it felt great to be a hostel-hopping traveler again. Here’s my reflection on the 10 day adventure.
The 4-day bike trip in numbers
266 kms total
48 kms/hr top speed
1,564 meters of elevation climbed
1 busted speaker jammed in my wheel somehow 🤷♂️🔈
♾ 🤙 given out to people on the road 😎
The last overnight bike trip I took was down South Africa’s Cape to Simon’s Town from Cape Town. That was 4 years ago. Before that, it was my epic cross-Canadian bike trip with my brother. That was over 10 years ago now. It’s been a while since I decided to clip in and rip it for multiple days on a bike, and I was a bit worried about how my body (read: Butt and hands) would hold up.
The ride itself was glorious. Breaking up the trip to Huatulco into two days made it so that each day was only about 4 hours of time on the saddle. My butt hurt, but the exact right amount. Walking around Mazunte on that first evening, my body reminded me that I was on a bike trip with every step. That night I ate a $5 margarita pizza at La Pizzeria, which I think about every day. I ate the exact same pizza on the last night of the trip before returning home. Then I took my brother to get the exact same pizza about two weeks later.
Day two of the ride
The second day of the ride was more difficult than the first. I found myself on some big hills that would probably say, “call us Mountains!” There were multiple sections where I was on the lowest possible gear, going straight up at a slow crawl for 15-20 minutes at a time. It’s in these moments of a bike trip that any rider can’t help but think—Why did I choose to do this? Why am I punishing myself? What does this prove? WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS!?”
There is a lot of time to think about life on a long bike trip. I found myself continually thinking about how, in so many ways, a long bike ride is a perfect metaphor for life. It’s happening, and you can decide your own reaction to all the various challenging and triumphant moments of it. You can hate the uphill, or you can accept it as inevitable. You can see it as a challenge—as a worthy test of your spirit—or you can curse out loud for the whole climb if you’d like.
At the end of every uphill, there is a payoff. Life often plays out like this as well. If you study hard for four years you get a shiny degree. If you spend early mornings in the gym, you get a healthy body and you’ll look great at cousin Tony’s wedding. The highs and lows of life, the pendulum of our emotions, they swing back and forth. Feelings are always fleeting. You can’t trap them in a jar. You can’t just go downhill. Life will bring you uphills and downhills, and after one, you can take a pretty good guess of what’s coming next.
The payoff, or the downhill in our metaphor, will always come eventually. On one of the longer downhills portions during day two—I found myself standing, smiling, and then shouting “wooooohoooooooo” as my bike shook and the wind slapped my face—and I thought, you have to truly enjoy the downhill. To make sense of all the climbing, you have to really feel that woooohoooooo-moment in your bones. If you can’t enjoy that part, something is out of balance, and there’s no way you’ll enjoy the bike trip (or life) as an overall experience.
I was ecstatic pulling into La Crucecita de Huatulco that second afternoon. I posted up at a $10 hostel called Azul y Blanco. I did some writing, I ate some hole-in-the-wall tacos, I drank a few beers, and I tried to get myself to sleep early. The beer and tacos were having a party in my stomach, and sleep didn’t come. At some point around 1 am, I checked the map for the next day’s ride and found that the mountains would double in intensity again. I thought “what am I trying to prove… and to who?”
I made the choice to leave my bike at the hostel, and take the bus the rest of the way to San Cristobal. I reset my alarm from 6:30 to 9:30 am, and the next morning I took an hour-long leisurely ride around La Crucecita, which ended at the bus terminal where I grabbed a ticket to Salina Cruz.
I didn’t know anything about Salina Cruz outside of what can be learned from looking at it on a map. I arrived at 4 pm and based on the bus schedule (which I had done zero research about), my only decent option was to return at 3 am to catch an overnight bus that would get me into San Cristobal by 11 am the following morning. I essentially had an afternoon to wander this new place.
I love San Cristobal de las Casas
I was returning to San Cristobal after 9 years. I wrote about it in my memoir, and have always said “it’s one of my favorite places in Mexico.” Upon return, I was so happy to find that my memory had not fooled me. In the first hour on foot, I was reminded why this town had made such a deep and positive imprint in my mind. It’s a truly magical place, as I explain in this video.
The highlights:
There’s an amazing food scene, and much more Asian cuisine than in Puerto Escondido, so I ended up eating my share of ramen and dumplings.
Their coffee, hot chocolate, and café scene is incredible. I had a number of great coffee shop sessions of a particular quality.
The markets, squares, and main pedestrian streets are immensely charming. Energy, music, color, and people flow through the city center and it makes for incredible people-watching.
There’s a wonderful artistic and musical culture in San Cristobal. Busking is encouraged, so I took out my travel guitar (which I did somehow fit on my bike) for two different sessions in the streets. I made about 15 pesos total, but I also made a lot of people smile.
The nature surrounding San Cristobal is world-class. I decided not to return to Sumidero Canyon (which is an absolute must if you haven’t been), but I took the hostel bike to El Arcotete based on a recommendation. I didn’t really know where I was going, but I was very happy to find an incredible cave just a 30-minute bike ride from downtown. (I was less happy that it rained all afternoon and my tire popped during the ride back.)
A surprising realization
In reflecting on the 10-day trip, I find myself flashing back to the most unlikely of places, the most unlikely of highlights. Realizing how strong of a positive impression this one five-hour window left on me has caused me to realize something undeniably true about myself.
I realized what one of my favorite things to do in the world is.
The setting for this realization was actually Salina Cruz, the place where I spent a total of five waking hours. During those hours, I puffed on a little weed pen, and wandered the principal streets of the industrial port city. With the THC dancing salsa on my brain, music in my ears, sunlight on my face, and the map on my phone urging me to walk all of this new town’s streets—like Pacman trying to get all the dots—I was happier than any point in my recent memory.
I was beaming from ear to ear. As the weed and new surroundings were stirred together and began to simmer in the cauldron of my mind, I found myself stopping to write some brilliant thing into an iPhone note every two minutes. I was alive with a capital “A.”
In thinking back about why this afternoon struck me with such a happy force, I realized that walking around a new place for the first time is something I haven’t done very much in the past two years. Marijuana enhanced the experience, but just the simple act of walking around a new town or city for the first time is something I dearly missed. Exploring a new place for the first time might just be my favorite thing to do in the world. I have already started thinking of ways to make this particular activity happen on a more regular basis.
Salina Cruz is not a place I’d recommend visiting, but for me, since it was the only place on this trip that I was seeing for the first time, I was overjoyed to simply walk its streets. I also had some of the best eskites of my entire life, which definitely improved the afternoon.
Life is like a long bike ride, and walking around a new city a bit stoned is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Writing as a form of processing—of thinking slowly and deeply—has really helped me to clarify these two truths.
Writing always helps me to crystalize my thoughts and to get to the root of what is true.
Now, I have three truths.