Another chilly day ahead of us. We were heading to the small town of Orizaba west of Cordoba. We had some beautiful scenery today. Mexico has really surprised me with it’s wide variety of scenery. From mountains to rainforest, desserts, and jungles. Much, much, more than I could have thought. Climbing up a giant mountain pass and down, twisting in to the valley. There is a mountain close to Orizaba that resembles Mt Rainier, with no snow. We pulled in to Orizaba around 6 pm, the roads were all one ways and confusing and we hadn’t found a hotel location to stay in before leaving Celaya. The draw to Orzioba was that Mateo had read a blog and it had mentioned some hikes close by. I know I need to do more hiking, it is my therapy, being on the bike is therapeutic for Mateo and hiking is therapeutic for me and Mateo. So it was an absolute yes to Orizaba. Out fist stop was the Holiday Inn, thinking this would be on the cheaper side of the hotels, it typically is in the US so of course it is also cheap in Mexico. We thought wrong, 1000 or more pesos and they were booked. I’m realy not ready for a really bad hotel when our tent accommodates us so well. We rode around and found ourselves at a cute hotel where the cockroaches were few and the linens were clean, extra plus no shared baños! We met the owners furring our checkin, they were a super sweet couple, the wife spoke very good English and the husband a little as well. When we meet people they normally ask where we from, and we normally get a astonished response when we say we have travels by motor cycle to where ever we maybe. Even on the Baja people were surprised! We cruised around Orizaba for the rest of the evening after unloading our bags and found some excellent tacos and horchata.
We woke up early to hike, our check out deadline from the hotel was 1pm. We hit the road early and arrived at the steps, the 500 steps was closed so we opted for another route with 300 and a good hike to follow. Hiking down into the rainforest and over a water processing plant, then into the woods. A hike is really what I needed with the bike breaking down and our delay in Celaya. It was nice to be exerting energy and pushing my self a bit. I have fallen out of shape in the last couple months, riding on a motor bike make you a strange exhausted, where you really want to be active because your have been on a bike all day and you don’t even feel like dinner just sleep. we finished our hike with climbing the stairs a couple of times. I felt it in my calfs the next day thats for sure!