Thank you to the Guevara Family.

We're gone now from Puebla and we already miss our new friends and family we made there. We spent a week with the Guevara family, and they made things easy for us. Victor arranged all the things we needed to make our day on Orizaba a success. We needed crampons and Victor found some for us so we didn't need to rent them. They were 200 Pesos a day which is 20 US $ and that was out of the budget for sure. As far as for the rest of our time in Puebla we relaxed and got things we needed for the road ahead of us. Vicky, Victor's Mom cooked for us every day delicious food that I already miss very much. Victor's sister's kept us busy with movies and entertainment. It was nice to stop somewhere and live with a family. Being on the road for 8 months now, makes us think more on our friends and family back home in Canada, well for me anyway. Alain is used to traveling this long so he knows how it is. I think there's a reason why things happen and this was a good example. They showed the outmost hospitality and treated us like if we were part of their family. We will be thinking of them every day we spend on this trip.

A day in High altitude, Orizaba 5747 meters Highest Volcano in North America

Ok this was honestly the hardest mountain I had ever been on in my life. It's not technical but it's at high altitude and I had never been higher than 13000 feet. Orizaba is over 18 000 feet, so a little harder for sure. Alain had been high like that before so he new what to expect. Victor's cousin Juan Pablo came with us to put some crosses on the summit he made for his mother that passed away a few years ago. It being mother's day this week end, it was good timing for him to have friends to go up with him. He was very strong on the climb and made to the summit first. Alain arrived shortly after him and I thought I was gonna die on the way up but 45 minutes later I joined them for the victory pic. I was suffering from head aches and I had a hard time breathing. I also thought I was gonna vomit at least 50 times but luckily I didn't. We had a hour break on the summit and tried to sleep a little to regain our strength for the way down. The way down was harder than I thought. It felt like it was never going to end. Around 4 pm all of us were at the hut looking back at what we had just accomplished. CAL & AL MISSION ORIZABA COMPLETE. I couldn't of been happier than that moment sitting down beside the truck. Now it's time to head back to civilization and drink some cerveza's. Corona's were on my mind. One hour later Al and I had our Victory cheers over a can of Corona. It doesn't tast the same as in a bottle but I couldn't care less.

Visiting the sites of Cholula and Puebla

After eating dinner and meeting Victor's family they invited us to stay with them for the night and also with them in Puebla. The next morning we followed them to the city and established our base camp at their home. They showed the outmost hospitality towards us and made us feel like family. We took a few days to settle in and Victor gave us a tour of the town and helped us find certain things we needed for the bike. He also brought us to Cholula which is a neighboring city. Cholula is a place where in pre Hispanic times priests gathered from all the city's around and performed all kinds of rituals. A lot of Pyramids were built and human sacrifices were held there. Every 52 years the people would cover the Pyramids with dirt to hide them and prepare for what they thought was the new age coming. After the Spanish came to establish them selves, since the early 1500 's they built over 360 different churches to change the old ways of thinking. To symbolize the era changing they built a beautiful church on top of the biggest Pyramid. It's a beautiful place to visit and a must see if being in the area. While we were there we saw some local kids doing some break dancing. They were the best break dancer's we had ever seen.

Right place at the Right Time...

After spending a nice relaxing day at the restaurant, we decided to hit the road the next morning and make our way further down the coast. It wasn't too long after leaving we saw a coffee shop that said Real Italian Coffee shop, with internet. Al looks at me " want to stop and check a few emails before we go any further? " I looked at him and said sure why not, internet with a real cappucino sounds good to me. It had been a while since we had a good coffee with internet. We spent over 2 hours in the nice cooled air condition coffee shop before I started to crave a smoke so bad I had to go buy one at the Pemex. When I was walking back to the coffee shop, I noticed someone was checking out our bikes. I stopped and made conversation with the guy. Told him about our vision to travel the world on these bikes and climb along the way. He asked me what our next goal was and I told him we were headed to Puebla to climb Pico de Orizaba. He looked at me and said" well you know I'm actually a guide for Orizaba so if you need any information I would be glad to sit down over a coffee and answer any questions for you. I thought to myself this is too good to be true because we had more than a few questions and now we had someone to answer them all. We headed inside and sat down with Alain who was on google Earth at the time and started chatting. After about half an hour Victor, the gentlemen we just met invited us to have dinner with him and his family at their cottage down the road on the beach.

Costa Esmeralda (Gulf Coast)

The smell of the ocean, palm trees, haaaaaa... didn't take long for Cal to park his bike and jump in! what an amazing feeling the ocean can be after a long hot mountain drive. Driving along the coast was a good feeling, passing by a sign, HAMBURGUESA, english spoken, mmm I stopped, "hey Cal... hungry!" What a question... Cal is always hungry, so we turned around and went for the burgers, chatted with the restaurant owner that came from new York, telling him what we were up too. He invited us to camp next to his restaurant if we wanted too. But instead we decided on driving a little more to find a spot on the beach, so off we go...
20kms later, stuck in traffic at a toll bridge, Cal says, " screw this traffic, lets go back and camp there, rest " ya sounds good so we turned around and basecamp at the restaurant and had our first real Italian pizza, relaxed in hammocks with a cold beer and listen to some of his life stories.

Xilitla to Gulf Coast

It must of been up there in the 40's as we left Xilitla, the waterfall swim was refreshing before hitting the road, excited to continue on south, we decided on a new route, first plan was to drive straight south, but after the intense heat of the inland from the last week, Cal said...." we should go to coast, let's hit the beach!" mmmm, good Idea, lets drive East then fallow the coast south and make our way to Orizaba (we plan to climb the highest point in Mexico) So off we go, back down the same 15 km road we drove up the night before, beautiful lush green mountains, windy roads, bikers dream....
8 hours later, bikers dream became bikers nightmare, 200 + km's later, and over 500 Topez (speed bumps) threw narrow high mountain passes, sometimes heat up to 45 c!!! we were really looking forward to the beach. Passing small towns, Pemex gas stations didn't come to often, at on point pushing our distance to where to tough we would for sure run out of gas... we've been going for 100 kms... next Pemex 70 kms!! shit.. passing threw a small town, next thing you know, see a sign on a tree.... GASOLINE VENTA !!! ouff, saved! Filled up the bikes. 70 kms, not bad... should take us maybe 1 1/2hrs but no... more like 3hours with the last 20kms of dirts road, pot holes and Topez every 1 km, it was the longest 20kms ever. Beers were good after this one!