Sounds like name for some punk band :-). Anyway, that's how we celebrated this Christmas. From Morelia headed up into the mountains, we spent one day just climbing up. It was quite hard work, on the lowest gear, in average speed about 5-6 km per hour but we didn't regret it. The road was winding on the steep slope with huge deep valley below us and, sometimes, with high rock walls above us. Everything was green, we passed through forests with deciduous and coniferous trees covered by many different types of vines or some dendrophilous plants (most of them we hadn't seen before), and through small villages and ranches with avocado orchards or corn fields (reminding of rice fields in Asia). Little by little we were climbing towards the top of these wonderful hills, sweating a lot, but enjoying empty road and really fresh air (after a long time). As we climbed higher and higher, the gray clouds were closer and closer. It started to rain at night and kept raining whole morning till noon. It was December 24th, for us it is the first and the main Christmas day (in Slovakia we celebrate Christmas for three days, all if them are public holidays). Even after it stopped raining, everything was still soaked in thick white fog. It made special atmosphere of this day - in some way it was truly Christmas atmosphere (it reminded us of Christmas more than decorated palm trees or plastic Santas in their red and white coat while everybody else was wearing T-shirts and shorts). And we got Christmas presents too - finding out our elevation was almost 3,000 m, which was our record so far. And after all that climbing, we were rewarded by amazing 20 km long downhill ride through foggy forest. It was also one of our coldest one, not for being wearing just shorts anymore...
At the evening we improvised in making our traditional Christmas celebration. We prepared potato salad, traditional Christmas dish, it tasted like at home, even though we had to improvise and substitute some of the ingredients for what we could buy in small villages around here. We lighted up a candle in empty can, listened Christmas Carols from our laptop and thinking of our family and friends. Christmas atmosphere was perfect. :-)
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