Simon Gandolfi - Old Man on a Bike

‘Go when you know he’s not there. His mother-in-law is always home. Give her the impression that whatever is between you and her son-in-law is a secret. Say you’ll come back the following evening. She’ll have a whole night to get out of him what you want. You know what she’s like – a real demon. She’ll make life hellish for him. He’ll be happy to pay.’

A second barber trims my beard while the others discuss provincial cuisine. The barber and the debt adviser boast of a local fish stew. They accompany me to a street-front open booth staffed by a round-bodied grandma. Walls and floor are tiled in white. There are three gas burners, a fridge, four sets of plastic tables and chairs. The stew is a deliciously rich mix of spicy shrimp, prawns, crab and octopus. We split a couple of beers and pay four dollars each.

Later I find an internet café close by the hotel. One side of the café is divided into private cabins occupied by shrieking teenagers, mostly female. I can’t post pictures – the connection is too slow.

Catemaco, Wednesday 17 May

I get up at six. I ride south over beautiful green hills to a magnificent lake set against a backdrop of mountains. The movie Medicine Man with Sean Connery was filmed in the nearby ecoreserve. I eat breakfast on a lakeside terrace among old friends from the flower and bird kingdoms. Bougainvillea shades the terrace; there are orchids and bromeliads, egrets, herons, cormorants, a bad-tempered roadrunner up a palm tree. One bird insistently calls weeah-weeah-weeah ; another, peepee-peepee; a third imitates a cat’s meow.

Out on the lake men dive from row boats for tegogolos, a type of freshwater crab. Sun breaks over the water. The mountains are a smoky blue. A cool breeze blows off the water. Total joy. Except for the tasteless coffee.

I ride back through San Andres to San Salvador Tuxlas. San Salvador is a small, clean, pretty town of low single-storey buildings set on a river. The largest known carved stone head from the Olmac period sits in a small temple in the middle of the central square. The massive sculpture depicts a deeply depressed gentleman – perhaps he received his tax bill in the morning post. A small museum on the square displays superb ceramics. I sign the visitors’ book.

The curator notes my nationality: ‘The English invented football.’

‘No,’ I reply. ‘The English invented rules.’

Out in the square, an early-thirties Mexican rides by on a gleaming quarter-horse. Bridle and saddle are true Mexican finery. So are his riding chaps – carved leather. Turquoise studs the silver band on his Stetson and the silver circlet on his string tie. He sits upright as a bronze statue, raised right hand drooping the reins loose. This is his town. He knows how good he looks: the equestrian equivalent of a pimp in his pimpmobile.

The horse is gorgeous.

I pass nothing but fat horses and fat dairy cows for the next eighty kilometres. The road follows the river through rolling hills. The land flattens and farms change from grass paddocks and clumps of woodland to fields of pineapple. Hitting federal highway 175, I turn north to Tuxtepeca. I flinch and the bike trembles as convoys of big trailer trucks thunder past. Drivers are kindly and allow me ample space. The country is flat and drier. Vast fields of pineapple seem sucked into the distant heat haze. Huge trees shade patches of water.

I rest at a fruit-juice stand run by a plump, good-looking woman in her early thirties. She drops a whole pineapple into a press operated by a long handle of galvanised pipe on which she thrusts her full weight. She asks what country I come from. I drink juice to the Beatles (‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’) played loud on a small CD player.

The woman is single. She tells me that Mexican men are too machisto. She dreams of living in Canada and marrying a man who treats her as an equal. She plays ‘Yellow Submarine’ as I remount. Two more hours to Tuxtepeca.

Tuxtepeca is a modern agro-industrial city of no great interest. However, I find a good folding knife for a few dollars, a spoon and a small plastic bowl to make my own fruit salad of enormous grapes, mango and crisp apple. I have completed 470 kilometres since Veracruz on thirteen litres of gas, or roughly a hundred miles to the gallon. More important is the freedom of being on a bike, taking whatever road I wish, stopping where I want and for as long as I want. Tomorrow is the big one.

Tuxtepeca, Thursday 18 May

Cortés first saw what is now Mexico City from the head of a mountain pass at 3000 metres. Ahead of me lies a pass of 2900 metres. Cortés rode a horse. I ride a 125 cc Honda. Cortés was the boss and could commandeer a fresh horse from his companions. I can’t change bikes. Cortés went on to conquer Mexico. Reach the top and I will have conquered much of my fear of this trip and may go on to reach Tierra del Fuego. This is not so grand an ambition, but I am not a great man. I am merely a writer of moderately mediocre novels.

Tuxtepeca is sixty metres above sea level. I leave at six in the morning. For the first sixty kilometres the road follows a wide river valley between fields of sugarcane. The mountains ahead are hidden in cloud. The valley narrows. I top up the gas tank and add my long-sleeved cord shirt over a sports shirt and thermal vest.

Up, up, up. The road is carved out of the mountainside. Rainforest blankets the almost vertical mountain face. The road twists and turns and twists. Many bends turn the road back on itself. Cloud and mountain hide the sun. I shiver in the chill morning mountain air and stop to add a second thermal vest and a second sports shirt beneath the long-sleeved shirt.

Up. The climb is endless. I overtake a bus. I pass an abandoned pickup. I am in second gear, sometimes first. Fear for the bike, for the engine, is paramount.

Up. The pain in the right side of my chest could be a muscle twinge. It could be my heart. I recall being felled by pain in my chest and arm and crawling across the floor in my hotel room and begging for a doctor. That was fifteen years ago in the mountains of Guatemala. It is extremely foolish of an old Brit on heart medication to be on a tiny bike on a Mexican mountain pass. I am scared that I won’t make it. I take deep chill drags into my lungs, testing the air for oxygen. My fingers are numb (cold or tension?). I stop and wave my arms around to restore the circulation and put on a third sports shirt and my short-sleeved jumper. A gap in the undergrowth shows the clouds way below. I take photographs. I remount the bike. My legs feel weak. Turning downhill, I jump-start the engine before continuing the climb.

Up. A lone pine appears among the broadleaf canopy. A further five kilometres and the pines have the victory, the road twisting up through an open forest carpeted with small feathery ferns. The clouds are way down where they should be when you look down from an aeroplane. From an aeroplane, clouds look soft and fluffy and beautiful. From way up here on the mountain road, they are a frightening reminder of how far you will fall if you make a mistake.

Up. The cramp in my left side is fractionally more intense – or is this pain the product of a fiction writer’s over-vivid imagination?

I have neither passed nor been passed by a vehicle in thirty minutes. I am alone, totally alone.

Up. The sun hits the pines and I inhale the familiar tar scent of childhood Scottish summers. The trees thin. The summit must be close. The road follows the crest of a ridge. For the first time on the climb I see down to both my left and my right. I stop in the sun to take a photograph. I don’t dismount and I keep the motor running. The bus that I had overtaken earlier creeps by and stops. The driver and another man jump down to ask whether I need help.