Before dawn we left our apartment to make our way on foot to the bike shop where we were scheduled to take a two hour bike tour in the Mexican countryside.  Locals were setting up food stands to feed the construction workers who were building the apartment blocks that are springing up like weeds in the beach town of Bucerias.  

At the bike shop we picked up our bikes and met the rest of our posse: a couple Canadians and an Englishman with a Harry Potter accent.  Our guide, one of the Canucks, gave us an overview of our route and a primer on the kinds of speedbumps, or topes, that we’d encounter.  There were two kinds of topes.  The first consisted of two rows of metal hemispheres which were slightly offset.  If you take them at an angle, who can avoid the bump. The second kind is the line of asphalt across the road, rarely marked.  You need to watch for brake lights of the cars ahead of you to know where they are.

Right out the gate we headed up a cobblestone street that really scrambled the huevos.  At the stoplight we crossed the highway that leads to Puerto Vallarta.  A little way down the highway stood The Home Depot as it’s called in Mexico (kind of like The Ohio State University in that neither one was fielding a football team for the remainder of the year).  I wonder if Gringos lined up in the parking lot waiting for work.

Soon we were in the countryside surrounded by fields of corn, pineapples and watermelon.  The mountains in the hinterland were known for their opium crop, but that didn’t make it down into the valley.  Farmers must have been burning their fields as the air smelled of smoke and the sun was a big orange ball over the mountains behind Puerto Vallarta.

A convoy of cops in pickup trucks passed by in the opposite direction adding to the surprising amount of traffic we encountered. The guide said this was only about 30% of the usual weekday traffic as we were in the week between Christmas and New Years, but it still seemed heavy given there weren’t any substantial towns in the direction we were going.  Also surprising was the number of recreational cyclists we saw, Mexican and Gringo alike.  Fortunately, drivers were mostly respectful except for one guy who came careening into our lane as we crossed over the new toll road that connected the capital of Nayarit with Puerto Vallarta.  The guide kept riding two abreast, so apparently he wasn’t too worried about the drivers.

Soon we pulled off to the side for our first break. There was a pile of bras on the side of the road.  Apparently someone had quite a party, or maybe they were used as molds for the topes.  The guide gave us some instructions about the next section of the ride.  Being Canadian he kept mixing up miles and kilometers.  The majority prevailed as he settled on kilometers, but dutifully I informed him that there were two kinds of countries: those that put a man on the moon and those that use the metric system.

A couple miles later we rolled into the town of Valle de Banderas like a group of bandidos rolling up on some unsuspecting pueblo. We stormed the center plaza shooting pictures with our cell phones, the locals helpless against the onslaught.  Leaving their Christmas decorations behind to suffer their fate, they fled in fear of the old Gringos in shorts. (No Lycra today.  I didn’t want to look like a total goon.) Presents pillaged and reindeer defiled, we returned to the main road before turning around to head back to where we started.  The Canadians started talking politics, so I decided to drop back to avoid getting sucked in.  

Bucerias (pronounced Boocherias, eh in Canuckistani) is like Canadian Florida.  I don’t think I’ve seen so many of them in one place, even in Canada.  The vendors in the market sold hockey jerseys, and the bar TVs showed hockey.  Not just the NHL, but Junior Hockey.  And they all wanted to talk about Trump.  They were annoyed with the tariffs and his jokes about making Canada a state.  “Why does he pick on us?  We’re the nicest, most peaceful people.”  You can’t fool me.  I’ve seen Letterkenny and the Trailer Park Boys.

Back on the road, an ambulance sped past us shortly before returning to town and before long we came upon them blocking the right lane.  I couldn’t tell what they were doing in the tall grass.  It didn’t appear to be a car wreck.  There was no car.  Had a cyclist been hit?  Did the local mafia dump a body?  Beats me.  The paramedics waved us around.  Sometimes it’s better not to know.

Eventually we crossed the highway again and rattled our way back down the bone-shaking cobbled hill to return our bikes.  At the bike shop we received some complementary coffee to go with our scrambled eggs and shot the breeze for a while before going our separate ways, like the posse breaking up at the end of a Western.  All in all it was a nice ride.  If I go back again I’d like to do a longer ride to get deeper into the countryside if I can get a hall pass.