Biking is not impossible in Mexico City. Weird as it sounds, in the last ten years there have been a series of efforts from the civil society in order to show that peseros, taxis, and of course, particular cars are not the only alternative to move around the city.

Bike lovers have created very organized groups that join together once a week—sometimes more often—to move their wheels, get to know the city and teach Mexican drivers that bikes do matter when they are on their way.

The most famous pro-bike organization is Bicitekas, who have been quite involved, along with local authorities, in designing an urban policy that now allows bikers to use the subway on weekends to transport their vehicle. Also, they were involved in designing routes for the so called ciclopista that takes you to different areas of the city, such as Polanco, Avenida Chapultepec, Ciudad Universitaria and the Ajusco. Although far from being perfect, it is worth saying that they have made a great effort taking into account how difficult it can be to change the whole concept of how to move in a city, specially one like the DF.

That said, I just found a group of women who bike the city every weekend, and they just seem very cool. They call themselves Las BiciEllas. Their goal is to organize weekly rides to promote the use of the bicycle by women who live in Mexico City. They depart from the Ángel de la Independencia every Saturday at 3:30 and they go to different parts of the city, like Coyoacán (to eat ice- cream), Colonia del Valles or Colonia Roma.

The main goal is to meet people (women) and to show that citizens can take over the city—at least on weekends. They do not race or anything like that. In fact, they go on a slow pace because the thing is to have fun more than to show off your skills as a biker. Ericka, the manager of the group calculates that every trek lasts approximately 4 hours.

If you have a bike and you want to mingle with a group of female bikers this is the right group to approach.

To get in contact with them, go to their yahoo group: http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/BiciEllas.