We camped on a campground in Del Norte en went grocery shopping in the afternoon. We wouldn’t find any supermarkets fora bout 5 days, so we needed to stock up in Del Norte. The next day was going to be a long day, so we wanted to leave early the next morning. That meant  we had to do all our shopping in the afternoon.

The next morning we woke up from a sound around 4:30. Raccoons were stealing our food! It had happened to us before, in California, and it’s not something you want. We usually left our panniers on the bikes at night because it saved us work and time, but you can’t do that in areas with wildlife like bears and raccoons. We didn’t know there were raccoons there. They manage to squeez their paws inside the panniers, even if they’re closed, en then they just pull out everything they can grab. They eat or take everything they like and leave the rest scattered around the area. So it was chaos around us and we were missing quite a few things, like our breakfast fort he coming days. So we had to go back to the store to get new food and had to leave later than we wanted.

The reason we wanted to leave early was Indiana Pass, the highest pass of the whole route. We wanted to make it to the tiny town of Platoro because there wouldn’t be any water along the way. The only water there was polluted by a mine. By riding to Platoro in 1 day, we wouldn’t have to bring extra water along and make our bikes extra heavy. But that meant a long day with lots of climbing.

Indiana Pass itself is about 32 km/20 miles long and 1220 meters/4.000 ft up and it took us about 4 hours to get to the top. But then it actually started. Instead of flat or down, it kept going up and down. The scenery was beautiful, which made up for a lot. When we finally started to descent it was on a rocky road. And when we thought we were finally really close to Platoro there was another very steep climb on a very bad road with big, loose rocks. After a long day we finally arrived in Platoro and we were greated at the campground with the announcement we could sleep in a cabin that night. They keep the cabin for cyclists and hikers. And there was a huge pizza on the menu that evening.

The next morning we figured we had earned a bit of rest, so we took it easy and only rode about 35 km/ 22 miles tot he next community, Horca. We could camp next tot he restaurant where they had linedance lessons that evening. So we went over to watch them dance.

From Horca it went back up, but on a paved road this time. After we had turned onto a gravel road again, it didn’t get any better. The road became worse and more hilly and then, all of a sudden, we were in New Mexico, the last state of the route! The happiness about having made it to New Mexico didn’t last very long. The road kept getting worse and worse untill we got to a steep part that was so rocky that we had to push our heavy bikes up and even that was almost impossible. The bikes were extra heavy again because of the extra water we had to carry. There wouldn’t be any water for a few days again.

At some point people on atv’s were passing us and we asked one of them if they could carry our bags up for a bit. They did and then we only had to push our bikes up, which was a lot easier. We found our bags at the point where the road turned a bit to normal again and from where we could ride again. We were happy we reached the campground after another hard day. Because these circumstances are very demanding on our bikes, brakes and gear, there were some brakepads to be replaced and a pannier to be fixed after we arrived, so the day wasn’t quite over yet.

A stormy day followed, but fortunately we had a tailwind most of the time. We could fill our water bottles at the ranch Scott, a guy we met the previous day. That meant we would have enough water fort he coming days. We rode through forests and highlands, but we slowly descended and the temperature kept rising. And then we really were in the desert, it was hot and we saw cacti. But it also was a complete other world than we had been used to till then. It was like we were in Mexico itself, Spanish text and names on walls, buildings and streetnames and the whole atmosphere was Mexican to. We liked it a lot! The last stretch to Abiquiu was with a hot headwind, so we were glad we had made it when we arrived.