It's another week in the life and as always it's been hard to get our heads around all the places we've slept in. From feeling the true comforts of home to braving a whole new world of sleeping options, nothing has disappointed us in the slightest and so, as always, we leave ourselves open to anything. U.S. election night has come and gone, well I say gone but still none the wiser, and the 21^st century has reminded us that we live within its limits while going to the cinema to experience a zombie filled destiny which felt all too real in times of Coronavirus! So saddle up as we face the heat of another week with the help of our new found friendships.

The time had come to say a final thank you to our favourite Tzintzuntzan family and fly the nest; it had felt like we'd been under their wing for the last few days now. Ruth was in that lazy mood where she preferred to take the easy route but I, for once justifiably, managed to convince her that taking the hilly path that bordered lake Pátzcuaro would be better than the short, flat main road (not an easy sell!). It was lovely, quiet and traffic free! Amongst chatting and gazing at the blue waters below we stopped at a quaint restaurant where three generations of family cooked us up some lovely breakfast that included bright blue tortillas! They could have dropped all the kitchen plasters you like on them and we wouldn't have bat an eyelid. We made it to Pátzcuaro and rocked up at a campsite and, as fate would have it, coincided with two sets of amazing people. Raúl and Valquiria (a Brazilian couple) and Dennis and Liz (an American couple). They were all kitted out in their camper vans, one of them even had an onboard washing machine... Oh the luxury! We'd spend a good while chatting a mix of Spanish, Portuguese and English which we all somehow managed to use as bricks and mortar to pretty successfully build intelligible speech. Later we had to venture into the centre, as the campsite was just on the outskirts, so following sound Brazilian advice we happily ditched the bikes and wandered up into the picturesque streets of this Purépechan city. If taking a step back in time were a useful way to describe things, that's what it would feel like I'm sure. It was late before we headed back, but the place was peaceful and walking back in the dark was really charming with all the large street lamps hanging lazily off the building's facades.

The previous day we'd decided to get up early and head to the capital of the region, Morelia, but even the best-laid plans... Ahem. Well, this was partly down to Ruth getting all worried at night about the spirits/ghosts that might be kicking about still from the night of the Día de Muertos when trying to get to sleep. But this at least gave us the chance to spend some quality time with our new found friends, although Raúl and Valquiria had to make a move late morning we managed to spend Trump/Biden election day rather appropriately with some folk from Florida. Being the big day that it was, we voted to have dinner together as results came trickling in. So the ladies hung around the campsite while us blokes scooted out on their motorbike to pick up supplies, being more successful on the liquor front than that of the ingredients... But it all worked out, Liz cooked up a storm while we sought refuge from the evening chill in their camper van. Washing the feast down with a neck full of beer, wine and David Attenborough documentaries; though we'd have to wait a while on any election results...

Replacing the lost camping stove with suitably equipped companionship, out of the camper in the morning came some nice hot, freshly brewed coffee! Today there were no excuses with Morelia beckoning and only some blog translation and a mini photo-shoot with the guys to hold us back from the inevitable departure. Thank goodness we're hardened over many months of goodbyes as it was a real pleasure to spend time with the Liz and Dennis and an equally real shame to leave them. But we hit the road for a rather uneventful ride to the big city and its confusingly hidden hotels. We'd seen a cheapy online and on what we thought was our arrival couldn't see it for the life of us and instead spotted another across the street which, although full, said that the house across the road was actually the hotel we were looking for! They said they keep it hidden to avoid paying taxes or something which sounded dodge but it was even weirder when we knocked on the door. The guy there stuck to his guns on a price way higher than on the internet and made us book it through that page which took an age, he then got confused about what taxes we had to pay and the whole thing got pretty awkward... All this hassle meant it got fairly late and our tummies were screaming out for some TLC, so we fed them with an entire chicken at the 'Pollo Loco' fast food joint down the road, which proved to be a little overkill and left us rolling home.

The day before we'd said we wanted to get the bus to make some progress and see more interesting places, but this was going to have to wait as we hadn't got the chance to go to the cinema yet! Well, apparently a big dog of Mexican cinema is from Morelia and so there was some great cinemas around with huge screens, VIP rooms and full '4D' experiences (where your seat jerks unnervingly around, you get splashed with what you hope is water while the room fills with smoke and you pray that there are no perverts about. At least that's what I expect to find). Not to be missed. So we accepted the idea of staying around for this and to check out the town centre. A centre which was really quite grand and European in style. After scouting out the bus station for the next day's escapades we got one of the little people carriers, which act as public transport, out to one of the huge cinemas on the edge of town. Hoping to experience the full '4D' we were disappointed to find that Covid-19 had put pay to it, so of all things we watched a crazy Korean zombie horror film in one of the impressively big screens; tucking into a rather messy corn on the cob smeared in sauces while we were at it.

Our friends in Tzintzuntzan had told us that we had to try the "crepas" here, so we opted to try it for breakfast along with a coffee in one of the huge stone colonial buildings in the town centre. We'd got fairly lazy on the getting-out-of-bed front since leaving the hot climes of the Sinaloan coast so we wanted to make amends; enjoying the cool morning air. Cycling out to the bus station we grabbed some delicious tacos, probably the best so far, from some lovely chatty ladies at little stall close by the station itself. Christ, I can still taste them! Cramming the bikes in the luggage space under the coach we got back to 'cheating', west coast USA style, and took to powered transport once more. We wanted to see the towns of Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende and Querétaro before the fast approaching flight home, so this little hop up to Irapuato would award us a couple more days seeing what we wanted see. Today we were getting lucky with our choices of nosh and to calm a stressed Ruth we had some of the best churros I'd even tried from an old couple at the central market before making an appearance at the fire station. The fire station? I hear you ask. Yup, we'd heard it was a good option for cycle tour camping as there's loads of space, someone is there 24/7 and they have toilets and all that jazz. So we thought we'd give it a bash! At first they turned us away, sighting the lack of female presence on their part, but after a little while they warmed to us and invited us to stay in their little chapel. It could be deemed slightly creepy with a effigy of a bleeding Jesus and such but was made pleasant by the staff who looked after us really well with their enthusiasm and offers of food and tips. It was an absolute pleasure to spend the night with team Bomberos Irapuato, thanks so much!

We had breakfast with the crew at the fire station and hit the road. We'd seen lots of suggestions around the town of Irapuato that they like a good strawberry: statues of them, stalls selling them by the kilo, finding them in the 'maxi-letras' of the town and finally, when leaving the city, the many cream and strawberry restaurantes. Well, we couldn't resist of course and tucked into an enormous bowl of the stuff as a late morning snack to keep our legs pumping. With all the cream they really didn't need the seven table spoonfuls of sugar as well... But with this inside us it was a breeze pedalling to the curious town of Guanajuato, with its labyrinth of tunnels and steep peaky hills you could tell in a heartbeat that this was an old mining town. We weaved our way to a campsite we'd been told about through the three dimensional streets using our two dimensional map... We finally understood why there were tons of people on the outskirts of town offering city maps and tours! It was however fun to loose ourselves in the colourful streets and deep cut roads that alternated between tunnel and gorge, at least until we climbed the steepest street in Christendom to said campsite only to find it closed. Darn! With hunger striking and having nowhere to stay we set to remedying things and used our booking.com get out of jail free card to book and hotel in a quirky old building near the centre (as all other options would mean backtracking far more than we deemed acceptable). So we chilled and lunched our way through the rest of the afternoon chowing down on what the nearby tortillería had to offer and leaving the serious tourism for the following day.

This is a very important day of the year as it is Ruth's Mum's birthday! So after a remote happy birthday sing-a-long we got down to tourism. Squares, museums, works of art, markets and parks. We saw it all and, as it's such a well known town, you can find it all on the internet! We picked up some food at the market and retired to the hotel for the evening, exhausted (it's the museums that really squeeze the energy out of us!), to rest, record some podcasts that had been accumulating and drink some wine we'd picked up when with Liz and Dennis and had also accumulated.