The next chapter from my Swedish book *På cykel från Chile till Alaska*, based on my 1986–87 bicycle journey from Chile to Alaska.

Mexico became heat, rattlesnakes, sickness, cracked lips, humiliations, kindness, poverty, wild landscapes and the strange feeling of approaching the richest country in the world without knowing if I wanted to enter it.

Then came Tijuana. Then the border. Then the United States — first fear, then fascination, then Highway 1, San Francisco, Oregon, Mount Rainier, and the colder mornings that began pointing toward Canada and Alaska.

Read it here:

https://explorermikaelstrandberg.substack.com/p/mexico-hatelove-and-the-united-states