As I sit here now, watching the final stages of the 2010 Tour de France, it is incredible to think of all that has happened on this year’s tour. The first few stages were a train wreck of crashes and disasters, those were some of the ones we were able to see while we were in Belgium. The team I cheer for, Garmin, lost its lead rider almost immediately. Another race favorite lost the yellow jersey (that’s first place) when the wrist he broke the day prior, and kept secret from the rest of the racers, got the best of him. Since that point, it has been a two man race and after all 2,200 miles …

We began our bike-tour of the Argentina while we were still in Salta. Unable to go mountain bikes we managed to find some ‘regular’ bikes to go for a spin around to the surrounding towns. The bikes were slow, we were out of shape from all this great food we’ve been eating, and we couldn’t find our way into the big forest that we had wanted to go to. Feeling ‘bike’ sore in more ways than one we began to worry about the other bike trips we’d be taking in the near future, we quickly reminded ourselves that those would be featuring wine!
After finally tearing ourselves away from our great hosts in Salta, we made it …

After “mountain biking” with several companies in Mexico only to ride flat gravel paths we were convinced there was little commercial mountain biking to be found in Mexico. Although we had been in real bike shops in Mexico, none of the tours turned out to be real mountain biking. And then we met Ursula. Taking what we figured might be our last stab at mountain biking in Mexico, we headed to Los Pinguinos in San Cristobal de las Casas. The modern equipment, covered in dirt told us that this trip would be different. As we fitted our gear (helmets and bike gloves!) Ursula explained the trail to us and cautioned us that no cameras would …

The last few weeks in Mexico all we had been hearing about was Semana Santa or holy week. “Utter chaos; Go somewhere and don’t move;” was the consensus of travelers and locals alike. The busiest travel week in Mexico, something akin to a national spring break for everyone, not just students, we decided to wait out Semana Santa in San Cristobal de las Casas. San Cris, as we now call it, is far away from the beaches and other nice vacation resorts, so we hoped to find fewer crowds, less chaos, and the Mayan ruins of Palenque.

San Cris seems to owe much of its fame and fortune to a series of ‘unfortunate’ events. The day …