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!

Xilitla - Posa Edward James

It was a long drive to get to Xilitla, leave Guadalcazar on back roads, many speed bumps ( Topez) dirt roads, small towns.
we finally made it to Cuidad Valle. The sun was setting, so we were getting nervous on where to sleep. Being a big city, sleeping somewhere Cuidad Valle was out of the question, we stopped for some Tacos and decided to push it to Xilitla ( 80kms) Breaking our rule of no night driving for the second time... but all went well, traffic wasn't too crazy. Finally ... Xilital.. 15kms! Yes we'll make it. Up we go on a windy mountain road. Got to Xilitla, with luck a man told us... up up!! pointing at the road ???? Castillo??? I ask, "si - si" he says, "acampar alla"?? I ask ( can we camp there) "si - si" he says, Ok Yes for everything... must be good, lets go...
We are tired, needing a place to sleep, been driving for 10 hours. We finally see the Castillo, ( this is what we came to see) a famous castle that was built by Edward James, he also founded Xilitla, and started to crated his own " Garden of Eden " between 1949 and 1984.
Once we saw where the castle was... the question was .. where do we sleep? here we are driving up and down the road, thinking of options like sleeping on the side of the road... also out of the question, especially when a bunch of guys are drinking beers outside the castle .... ,mmmm bad Idea, but the guys offered us a beer, so hey, why not? starting talking, then ask where we could camp? turn out a campground was right in front of us, across the road! Haaa... you don't ask you don't get.
Stress over, we set up camp, loud drums playing all night, it was a mexican long weekend, great! But we had a safe place for our tents and happy not to be on the side of the road. next day... we visited, La Posa Edward James, and enjoyed a soak in some wonderful waterfalls to cool off before the next push to the coast...

Voladores de Papantla - El Tajin

Passing threw Papantla, we were told to visit El Tajin not far off the road, 15 kms... so we made a little detour.
El Tajin meaning " Thunder or Hurricane "some beautiful Pyramids are located here, but unfortunately we didn't visit, too
much gear on the bikes and a high fee to visit, we decided to pass, since we are going to see more Ruins in the Yucatan soon.
But we did show up in time to see the traditional dance. One guy stands on top of the 100 foot pole and plays a traditional instrument while 4 other guys spin around and get lower to the ground tied by a rope around their waist. Talk about a head rush!!

Along the road...

This cave was pretty cool to find, in the middle of nowhere, climbers told us about this place, some climbs are found from 5.12's to 13's... but we didn't climb, camped here for the night, did some yoga the next morning, and hit the road to Xilitla...