145 km (90 miles) – Total so far: 2,042 km (1,269 miles)
At 5 o´clock my alarm rang like usual – I was awake 100% immediately and I jumped out of bed. Very fast I got dressed because the temperature in the room was beyond all bearing! Soooo cold! I packed everything, took all my panniers downstairs and loaded the bike in record time to be quickly on the road again.
All together it was 5:45 when I started. I was thinking to take the highway (again a toll road!), because the locals had told me that I could easily cycle along on the wide shoulders. Unfortunately I think I must have missed the right turnoff so I ended up cycling on the free road.
In the beginning the road had 4 lanes which was ok, but after it narrowed into 2 lines and cycling turned into a nightmare. Really dangerous. All cars drove agrressively and the drivers passed me very close all the time. About 3 times I needed to escape off of the road when a monster truck was coming behind me….
The most challenging thing was to keep the bike upright while I was climbing. The road went up to 2500m. There were a lot of pine trees around. When finally the downhill started I couldn´t go faster then 55km/h because the road was paved newly with still a lot of small stones, like split, on it. Whenever a truck passed me by I got a nice „small-stones-shower“.
Wonderful. At the end of the downhill the road kept going straight for a while, but now I had strong headwinds until I got the junction where I could take the toll highway in the end. Finally I could enjoy the nice shoulders the locals had announced! This time the heavy traffic on the highway didn´t bother me, but soon the road again started to climb slowly but steadily. I could feel it and I see it on my GPS that I was cycling up all the time. Anyway I was in a good mood, happy and very motivated.
I was going very fast. Still 50kms to go to Puebla. I knew Puebla´s height was 2175m and I was cycling at the moment at a height of 2390m, so I knew the road would go downwards very soon….Finally I arrived in Puebla and I went to the center to look for a hotel. I found a nice one close to the zocalo.
I took a shower and went to eat. I ordered an argentinian steak of 300g and a glass of wine. (The first one since I´m cycling). But when the waiter brought everything, the steak was a big disappointment. It was really small, not what I expected and not what they were advertising. I complained, but that was their size of steaks. What they could offer was to bring a second one, but of course I rejected that. Well, I learned the lesson. Steaks in Mexico.
I went to get me a beer and I returned to my room to sleep.
