Biking Adventures in Mexico: From Baja California to Palenque on Two-Wheels

The Origins of a Production Company in Mexico

On July 26, 2005, WhereNext founder Gregg Bleakney embarked on a bicycle journey from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the most northern road accessible point in North America, to Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America. This marathon traverse of the Americas took nearly two years to achieve, covered 19,500-miles, and ended in the rugged and windswept city of Ushuaia, Argentina, in May 2007. It was a life-altering journey, four months of which were spent in Mexico, that set Gregg on a path to pursuing a career in photojournalism and ultimately founding WhereNext.

Biking Baja California: Tijuana to Todo Santos

Stage one covered 1,111 miles along the entire length of the Baja California peninsula, from Tijuana in the north to the one-horse town of Todos Santos on the Pacific side at the desert peninsula's far southern tip.

A Tasty Lesson From the Road

Through the miracle of hunger and cycling computers, Gregg discovered that one taco would power his legs for exactly 5.243 miles on the desert flats. Since this revelation, taco research has occasionally taken up more of his time than filmmaking and photography. It's even been theorized that he founded our production company in Mexico only as a means of getting back on the street taco train. His was undoubtedly the first hand in the air when our Mexico City production with Cat Footwear needed someone to scout out taco stands for the shoot.

After two weeks off the bike, backpacking in Baja Sur, it was time to get back on the road. A ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez from La Paz delivered him to Topolobampo, from where he pedaled to Mazatlan through a dramatically different landscape. Compared to the dry, desert terrain of Baja California, the tropical mainland climate was quite an adjustment.

Through The Mexican Heartland

From sea level, he traversed tropical jungle, lowland desert, and pine tree forests, climbing up and coasting down for three straight days, ultimately gaining over 18,000 feet in elevation on his way to Durango, which is situated at 6,100 ft. This was his introduction to Mexico's remarkable geographical and cultural diversity: a staggering mixture of landscapes, cultures, and history.

From Durango, it was on south to Fresnillo and Zacatecas.

Our arrival to Zacatecas felt like a video game. We shot down steep 500-year old cobblestone streets, bunny-hopped manholes, dodged in and out of rush hour traffic, and tried to stay focused on the road as we passed countless churches, plazas, and mariachi bands on the way to Hostel Villa Colonial. Hands down, the best city that we've experienced during our trip, Zacatecas had it going on. At 8,000 feet in elevation, the El Centro is crammed into a gully between two hills with enough cafés, churches, plazas, windy side streets, and museums to keep a traveler occupied for weeks.

But the road kept drawing him unrelentingly south, and it was soon time to depart for the windy heartlands of central Mexico, through San Luis Potosi and Querétaro, a suburb just north of Mexico City.

By this stage, he'd ridden over 1,700 miles through Mexico in 150 hours of cycling time. The running taco consumption count was well past 300, and there was almost half of Mexico left to cover.

This Baja desert traverse required a lot of tacos to complete!

Southern Mexico: from Alpine Forests to Tropical Jungles

In the southern half of Mexico, one of the world's biggest cities makes way to misty alpine forests followed by mosquito-infested tropical jungles shrouding the secrets of the ancient Maya civilization. Mexico's jaw-dropping diversity continued to astound:

While cycling from Mexico City to the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, we were forced to navigate around a megalopolis of 30 million inhabitants, climb the highest pass of the trip, and sweat through 100-degree heat after descending from alpine forests to steamy tropical jungles. Ancient pyramids began to replace colonial plazas as our top attractions. We wore gloves for the first time since Alaska, not because of frigid temperatures or the rugged terrain beneath our tires but because of the intense humidity that made it impossible to grip our handlebars with bare hands.

After enjoying the bright lights and historical attractions of Guanajuato and Mexico City, he sought the quiet back roads which led him over the majestic mountain passes of the Sierra Chincua in Michoacán. In the Monarch Butterfly sanctuary, he witnessed "the silence of the forest broken by the flapping of a million butterfly wings, turning the landscape a velvety-orange."

From this retina-searing display, it was south to Cuernavaca and then Oaxaca City.

After cycling for 35 consecutive days at over 5,000 feet, we were eager to fill our lungs with oxygen-dense air at sea level. In an epic 100-mile single-day peddle push, we descended from a 9,200-foot pass in the Sierra Madre to a 'tranquilo' traveler's beach on the Pacific ocean, just north of the Guatemalan border. Dense jungle vegetation, sticky t-shirts, and roadside banana slingers became the norm. A true testament to how far we've come, for the first time during the trip, we could no longer compare our environment with anything we knew from back home. We concluded this stage by palapa hut-hopping along a row of beach towns, bodysurfing, and dangling our toes from one of a never-ending supply of hammocks.

The beautiful desert landscapes of Mexico

Shadows of the Maya

The final stage of the Mexico journey took Gregg on a huge zig-zag line along the Mexican border to the Mayan ruins at Palenque to admire the ancient ruins, then on to Guatemala, and the next stage of the trans-Americas odyssey. But first, there was time for some reenergizing rest on the idyllic Pacific beaches of southern Mexico.

After cycling through the pretty colonial towns of Tuxtla Guiterrez and San Cristobal, the surrounding landscapes once again underwent a drastic change:

As we rode out of town, there was a distinct change […] The jungle got thicker, the huts appeared more weathered, and it seemed that each mountain pass brought us a village that spoke a different Mayan dialect.

Eventually, he arrived in Palenque.

The End of the (Mexican) Road

The Mexican stage of the adventure ended here, but those 3,200-odd miles of pedaling through one of the world's most complex, beautiful, and diverse countries captured Gregg's imagination and stayed with him. This four-month two-wheeled odyssey cemented Mexico as one of his favorite travel destinations. As proof, his romance with street tacos continues to this day. So when he was looking to expand WhereNext's international reach, Mexico was at the top of his mind and deep in his heart.

---

Contact Us About Producing Your Next Campaign in Mexico

Our production company in Mexico has gone on to work across the country, filming projects in Mexico City, the Yucatan Peninsula, and Oaxaca. And it all stemmed from those four life-changing months in the saddle, 250-plus hours of pedaling, god-knows how many flat tires, and enough tacos to feed an army.

---