Southern Mexico: an implausibility

A rare find: a vegetarian restaurant, fresh carrot juices and whole-wheat vegan muffins. We gratefully came in from the surge of heat and I spent $3,000 on a muffin.

This was February 9th, 2016. I was riding my bike in Colombia with my beloved and intrepid companion, Lady Elise. We were in Santa Marta.

We sat down on red plastic chairs (classic) inside, carrot drinks in hand, and I split open the muffin. It pulled apart as strings of decomposition, apparently having waited too long for a customer. A woman spoke to us in English, "I couldn't help but say hi, you two look like travelers too!" We shared we were on bikes and chatted for just a wee while, and Ms Friendly said she had dreamed of traveling by bicycle but was with her backpack this time. I gave her my blog address and we all wished each other good journeys. Elise and I finished our carrot juice, which was in fine condition, used the bathroom for the second time (take advantage when one exists!), and rolled out to the beach.

These tiny mundane moments of travel that fall through the cracks, the new daily ways that get forgotten as I become researcher and apartment leaser again in the north.

And I wanted to do go back south again in 2017; the wanderlust is not necessarily curable. Elise and I Skyped and researched and dreamed and drooled over mangoes-to-come and southern Mexico spoke to me for the diversity, beaches, culture, and corn smut. And then Donald Trump was elected president and Elise decided her travel money would go towards living abroad instead.

I was now without my reliable and adventurous counterpart. I felt so much disappointment, like I'd lost half of myself. It is rare to find a friend who can also take a month off from work, who wants bicycle adventure, who's interested in sweating gallons per day on two wheels and potentially contracting malaria. Interested in seeing a new culture from its streets, breathing the hot wind, admiring soaring rainforest mountains.

Now, I consider myself fairly bold, but the idea of bicycling alone in a place was intimidating. I posted on Facebook for friends of friends who might want to bike, I half-heartedly read bicycle travel forums for "companions wanted", I considered going alone with a backpack instead (making a hundred new hostel friends), I moped and postponed thinking about it. I did not consider not going.

In one of my attempts to find a plan, on a whim I replied to a comment on a bicycle travel forum, 'warmshowers', for Cuba (maybe Cuba would be more manageable?). Nothing panned out though, those travelers were going at a time that wouldn't work for me.

Then I received a note from a Kathy in California on that Cuba 'warmshowers'. She gave me her number and said I could call her and that she was leaving for Cuba soon. 

Because she had shared her number, and because I happened to be sitting in a shaft of winter sunlight, and because I always need practice cold-calling people, I gave her a ring. How bizarre it is to chat with someone across the country over a poor connection who I've never met before. But there's an unspoken intuitive feeling among bicycle people, though, like a pre-existing secret handshake. We fell into a natural rapport. She was leaving for Cuba soon and wondered if I was interested in joining their group ride, what my plan was. 

But I couldn't leave my Cornell work in time to join them in Cuba. But before hanging up, I felt like sharing with her my feeling of loss over my previous bike friend, how I was now brainstorming alternatives, our old dream of southern Mexico. 

"Hey! I've ALWAYS wanted to bicycle in southern Mexico", Phone Kathy said. Right!....the ruins, the amazing food, the fiestas, the colorful everything.

So how does one grasp that shivering sliver of hope that grows with hearing this, the outrageous craziness of the potential tendril of a lead?

Well. You do like Phone Kathy did and state simply, "maybe we could go after I get back from Cuba."  (god bless adventurous and retired math teachers, for they have time for bicycle trips)  So many impossibilities though. I don't even know this person. But I started sharing necessary details: I ride about 12-14mph, I don't like camping, I don't mind climbing, I like eating cheaply. Phone Kathy liked stopping to admire the sites, feeling flexible, interacting with the culture, and also not camping.

We were getting a bit more excited.

We left our conversation with the agreement to write out some thorough emails with a battery of questions for each other ("how do you manage a budget while traveling?", "how do your friends describe you?", "what are you hoping to experience on a trip?"). I mean, this is like going on a blind date. For a month. In a foreign land. 

I got a text from her at midnight that night. "Were you in Colombia on February 9th?" She texted a photo of a worn and scribbly scrap of paper. With my blog address written on it.

What. 

She was that friendly woman from that unfortunate vegetarian restaurant back in Santa Marta. I could feel the bright light of this excitement over her realization. She had recognized my "shorthairedbikinggirl" username from the 'warmshowers' bike forum and remembered it as my blog address. She explained she doesn't necessarily remember people very well, but somehow that bit at that vegetarian place stuck. She couldn't wait to dig through her travel shoebox and try and find that worn scrap of paper to confirm.

The exquisite serendipity of this. At this point I was certain: we couldn't not go. Three more giddy phone conversations and multiple detailed emails later, we were buying tickets.

February 7th through March 8th. 

This entire huge world, and here we were. It's incredibly impossible, yet also not entirely unsurprising: intrepid women travelers going to remarkable places. Finding each other. And going back out into it again together.