the JOURNAL

Hey folks!

Kristi here – just wanting to share with you a cool new bike-across-Canada project… to raise awareness about the current situation in West Papua. Here is a little teaser from the website (http://pedalling.westpapua.ca/):

On the morning of April 27, 2012, with the sun shining down and good omens on the breeze, there will be a cyclist with his back tire dipped in the shallows at Long Beach in Ucluelet, British Columbia.

On the afternoon of August 25, 2012 his front tire will touch the Atlantic Ocean in St. John’s, Newfoundland.  There’s 9,754 kilometers and 117 days between Ucluelet and St. Johns.

And just 1 story.

At performances all across the country, Jeremy Bally will tell the story of West Papua – a thrilling tale of contested lands, guerrilla warfare, political intrigue, and a whole society of Indigenous Papuans caught in the middle.

The word genocide has been used to describe the situation in West Papua, but most Canadians don’t know where it is on a map.  Jeremy seeks to change that.

9,754 kilometers.  121 days.  1 story.  He is Pedalling for Papua.

http://pedalling.westpapua.ca/

Dear All,

You will be able have a better idea of the road bewteen Mexico city and Oaxaca by having a look at your last pictures’ album

Enjoy

Raf and Emilie

 Article written by Rafael Distance covered: Since San Francisco: 4500km Since Mexico City: 600km

After spending almost 2 weeks in Mexico, it was time to leave this big city, very interesting but tiring after a bit! We did it again on our bikes, but in two days to get closer from the exit and the next day having time to go over the 3200 m mountains. Then we stopped in Iztapalapa at our couchsurfing with Jaime and his family in the eastern neighborhood of Mexico city, we had to go through a very busy and stressful traffic, hopefully just for 30km. The day after, was a little tough as we had 1000m of elevation gain and 75km after a 2 weeks break, but going up, and up, is always beautiful with volcanoes and city views, and more entertaining than boring flat roads! After this big uphill we just had to leave our bikes roll down to a little town before Puebla. The toughest part of the day was probably to find a place to sleep, we arrived there asked in a church where we waited an hour to get the answer of the father which was just a NO without even a look at me… Following the advice of the church secretary then we tried the police station where we had our passport checked for another 40 minutes and the night was coming and we hadn’t other choice, but they accepted us after all being sure we were not terrorist or so!

The next day we got to see Puebla quickly on our way to Raquel’s house in Acajete where we spent 2 days. In her house, la casa de piedra we helped her plastering her walls with cob, and learnt about all the workshops she did (about recycling, cob construction, permaculture…), how she is involved in her town to promote sustainable living and ate delicious meat cooked in a cob oven for her mom’s birthday!

From there we had 4 days left to get to our final riding destination, Oaxaca. This stretch has been probably one of the most hilly, but also one of the most beautiful in the mainland. We stayed on the highway for most of the way, however it was very quiet, and the road was swinging in desert landscapes, canyons with limestone cliffs, higher plateaux and at the end greenish hills. It has been tough as we were never sure of how big and long were the hills expecting us, but the beauty made it very enjoyable. We slept the first night in the main plaza of San Mateo Tlacoxcalco having dinner in the middle of kids and policeman questioning us, the second one in an unofficial motel in Tepelmeme, and the third one in a totally lost village in the mountains North west of Oaxaca. Arriving there we met the mayor after spending 15 minutes looking for somebody in the village and he left us set up the camp in basketball field. We met him again the next morning when he woke us up with shots of Mezcal after for him apparently a big party! He made us experience a very typical Sunday breakfast in the village, some sort of corn grits cooked with a lamb on top in a buried bricks and Maguey leaf oven. Everything is eaten on top of a Maguey leaf with a Maguey leaf spoon and a little bit of blood cooked in the stomach. Now we know we get to Oaxaca, Mezcal country (which is actually distilled Maguey).

In Oaxaca we spent a little more than a week, had time to visit, chill in the laid back plaza, and meet some interesting persons for the project, but also just interesting people!

We stayed 2 days with CACITA, an organisation building bicimaquinas, see their work, helping them building a filter for their dry toilets, and fixing bikes!

We also had the opportunity to ride the paseo nocturno de Mundo Ceiba, and interview them.

Another funny meeting were Salvador, a retired professional cyclist we apparently crossed the day before getting to Oaxaxa who absolutely wanted to invite us for breakfast, which we had the opportunity to do after our visit of Monte Alban a Zapotec Archeological site.

We also met again with Jorge, a friend we rode with in Baja California, and try some of Oaxaca nightlife with lots of Mezcal! From there, it’s been like in La Paz, meeting many bike tourers, from UK, USA, Switzerland…

After this last stop in Oaxaca as we were mentioning before we decided to stop the project for now, and hopefully another team will ride the last stretch and learn from the interesting project in the last stretch to Costa Rica. On our side we will start publishing some more contents in the sustainability Tool-kit, and let you know what we did exactly, in the next few month.

Good bye everybody!

Rafael

Distance covered since San Francisco  3900 km

As our connection is not very good, we haven’t been able to illustrate that article with a lot of pictures but you can see our last abum following the link

Article written by Emilie

We stayed almost two weeks in the Mexican federal capital. The city has even more facets than its several names : la Ciudad de México is also el Districo Federal or simply el D.F or México as it is called by the Mexicans.

Those two weeks were rich in discoveries : new friends, interesting cultural sites and creative sustainable initiatives. Mexico city is famous for its museums and we took advantage of our time in the city to learn more about Mexican history and culture with the national museum of history in Chapultepec’s castle where you also have a good view of the city. The famous anthropological museum is also a great way to get deeper into Mexican culture.

Walks into the historical Center lead you to the Zocalo surrounded by the main Cathedral, el Palacio National and some very busy and well-known pastry shop. Art is also present in less touristic buildings such as the secretary of Education where Diego Riviera expressed his ideas about Mexico and its people throughout his frescos.  If you want to go out of the city’s core, you find Teotihuacan North and South you can plunge into Frida and Diego life, visiting their Casa Azul in Coyoacán.

Yes D.F. is perfect if you want to do cultural staff but thanks to our hosts we have been able to discover the lively neighbourhood of Roma, spend a Friday’s evening at the “ Arena de Mexico” for some lucha libre crazy fights, or just take time to chill out watching a movie on a rainy Saturday’s after-noon (yes rain happens sometimes and at that moment it is good to have a cozy place with new friends when you have been travelling for three months

Don’t worry, we haven’t been forgetting about our journey’s reason : documenting sustainable projects and Mexico city is full of them ! Meeting people we heard about a lot of projects going on, we have been focusing on three of them …

How to be brief about what Bicitekas, one of the main cyclists organization there, is doing … Let’s try to summarize what we learnt with our main guides, Ernesto and Agustin, and during the time we stayed at Casa Bicitekas.

Starting with a bike ride (which is still running every Wednesday for 13 years), the organization opened 1,5 year ago the Casa Bicitekas which is a small version of a bike kitchen. You can come there to use tools, speak about bike, look at the small library and more than that share time with people (the idea is to create a community and not only to be bike fashion). Bicitekas is also working on an advocacy and educational level by publishing for instance “El Manual del ciclista urbano” and“Por mi Ciuadad en bicicleta : experiencas de ciclistatas en la ciuadad de Mexico” (you can download for free the second book on their website, not only good stories but also cool pictures We have been able to share our journey with the bikers of the city, throughout a talk and the presentation of some pictures too.

The citizen network is really strong in Mexico City (and more generally in Mexico). Bicitekas has been involved for instance with an urban activist group willing to democratize the public space called Camina, Haz Ciudad. One of our hosts introduced us to their last public intervention : painting a bike lane to make politicians faced their responsibilities.

Thanks to the Mercado El Cien, we have been able to learn more about fair-trade produces and organic food in a 29 million inhabitant city. The market is taken place every other Sunday in the Roma’s neighbourhood. The producers are coming from 100 miles or less. Not only can you find veggies but also meat, fish, some Mexican-German pastries and bred, some household produces… If you are there around 11.30 pm, you can take part in a workshop (it was about organic chocolate when we were there … ). As we are very serious detectives we have been willing to visit one of the producers… Our investigation led us at Juan Rojas Jiménez’s place in Xochimilco, the south part of Mexico city. This young organic producer has been relieving his father and is also involved in the preservation of the canals’ water quality. The whole area used to be a lack back in the Aztecs’ times…

The Sembradores urbanos ( or urban sowers) have been developing their non-profit to promote urban agriculture for 5 years.

They have currently two main sites. In the urban agriculture centre, you will find at least 5 ways to garden in a small space (what about a vertical garden where you can grow plenty of veggies:). The whole space has been thought to follow the principles of permaculture : the roof’s water is collected, you will find three types of composts, and the gardening’s sets are made from recycling materials… In their urban garden, situated on Reforma, one of the main avenue of the city, you can participate in workshops about urban and ecofriendly gardening. The three musketeers have a lot of projects in mind to develop their activities

Leaving Mexico city, we are taking the road again and for our last stretch. The final destination of that second riding part, which started in San Francisco, will be Oaxaca. The project will carry on. After that riding-part, we will fill up the Sustainable Tool-Kit with the projects that crossed our way. We thank all the people who have been helping us throughout their donations:)

Stay tuned for our last month of ride !

Emilie