On leaving Pinotepa, I cycled by a bicycle shop, and so decided to pop in. The guy in charge had just come off a bike ride himself, which I took to be a positive sign. In addition, he didn’t look at my bike as though it was a spaceship just landed from another planet, which is often the reaction I get if I take it to a bicycle shop in smaller towns in Mexico. I explained the gear shifting problems, which he seemed to think might need the cable replacing. Fair enough. He spent a while swapping and greasing cables, and in addition played with both the front and rear derailleur’s. End result - I still have to use the two handed gear shifting technique to change gear on the rear derailleur, and now the front derailleur is not indexed correctly either. Bugger. On a more positive note, I took the opportunity whilst in the bike shop to get new brake pads put on rear and front, so at least now I don’t get a metal on metal grinding sound whenever I brake going downhill. As the total cost for all this was 30 pesos including parts and labour, it wasn’t a totally bad move to go there, and I now know definitively that I need a new gear shifter.
As for the days cycling, it was mainly uphill for the first 30 kms and downhill after that. A bit of a trudge to be honest through uninspiring surroundings, and at the small town of San Jose del Progresso I stopped at Hotel Cactus with just 67 kms done. They had an incredibly noisy couple of parrots.

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