Warm Weather Winter Bike Tour
 

I'm looking for some recommendations on a warm weather winter bike tour.

I have a few weeks off after Christmas and am looking for a bike tour in warm weather. There are a few constraints.

I think a guided or self guided tour with a tour company would be best. My wife uses an electric bike. Shipping electric bikes is problematic so we are looking for a company that has electric bikes.

We would prefer not a long plane ride or multiple stops. We will be flying from NYC.

A two week tour starting Dec 29 or 30th would be great.

I've looked at Portugal but the weather is problematic. India sounds intriguing but the plane ride is daunting. Many of the tour companies don't run tours at that time.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the help.

Mongoeric

I always look at the tour duration to how long is it going to get there ratio. Since you are only talking about two weeks, I would not recommend traveling really far. Cancun / Yucatan area would be nice.

It doesn't quite match your long plane ride criteria, but I've taken two trips with Spice Roads. One to Thailand/Cambodia (over Christmas) and one to the Mekong Delta (over Thanksgiving). The company did a reasonable job with both. I notice their web site has a "tripfinder" feature where you can put in departure dates and trip specialties such as e-bikes.

Another suggestion I'll make though it doesn't match your e-bike criteria is Suriname. There is a company that will rent you bikes for self-guided tours (Zelfstandige fietsreis Suriname | Fietsen in Suriname); help with making reservations. The country as a whole is very flat. In the winter it is two times zones ahead of NYC (in the summer one). Even in December/January it is still hot/humid so distances you'll bicycle likely won't be extremely long.

It is summer in the southern hemisphere then ... but it would be a bit of a flight.

How warm is warm? The Southern US is reasonably warm at that time. If it isn't warm enough perhaps Mexico or Central America?

How about shipping the ebike? If you stay in the US or at least start and finish in the US, shipping could be fairly easy. There are a few extra issues for an ebike, but shipbikes.com and bikeflights.com can get your bikes there at a fairly decent price without too much fuss. It might involve a bit of extra effort since it has to be packed by someone who is a hazmat certified shipper. Bikeflights.com maintains a list of shops that are certified shippers. I am pretty sure Shipbikes.com does the same.

A few possible trip options:

• Fly to Southern Florida and do a big loop or point to point around the peninsula
• Fly to Jacksonville and ride to some point at a distance west of there that you find suitable
• Fly to San Diego and ride to some point a distance east of there that you find suitable, possibly dipping into Mexico
• Fly to Tucson, El Paso, Phoenix, San Antonio, or some other south western city US to start a loop or point to point in the southwest possibly including a bit of Mexico.

Given the length of time available and the limitations of shipping or renting an ebike these just might make more sense than a trip to another continent.

Maybe Cuba?

Having spent quite a few winters in south Florida, I can't recommend Southeast Florida. I found biking around the "Treasure Coast" in season to be just too frightening. Between the bike hostile roads & intersections, the legions of seasoned citizens & texters, most of whom are completely oblivious to their surroundings, it's just plain scary and not fun. Most of the close calls I have had in my life, were in Southeast Florida. Southwest Florida, some of it anyway, like Venice, would be a better choice. I've also found the Orlando area to be much better in that they have a great network of paved trails throughout Orlando and the surrounding communities. I'm not familiar with Jacksonville though.

Canaries.

There are plenty of places which are warm in December & January, and with flights that aren't too awful from NY. The bigger issue is the necessity for an electric bike. Most of us on this forum plan our own tours rather than use touring companies. I would suggest that you search for touring companies which can provide an electric bike, and then see where they offer tours which match your time period. If you strike out with that, then I would search for places where you can rent an electric bike but otherwise plan your own tour. And if neither of those options gives you any good leads, then I'd try to see how difficult it would be for you to ship your wife's electric bike either domestically or out of the country.

As for destinations, things are really dependent on the electric bike constraint. But forgetting about that for the moment, the best touring destination I can think of during Dec-Jan which entails an easy flight from NY would be the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. I've toured there myself, and the interior roads of the Yucatan (i.e. not the built-up Caribbean coast) are pretty nice. Merida would be preferable to Cancun or Cozumel as an airport to fly into, but there might be more electric bike rental possibilities in Cancun or Cozumel. I've toured in a bunch of places in Latin America, but I don't think the others would be a good fit with your constraints.

Southern Arizona might be OK in the continental US though it will be chilly at night. A friend did an ACA group tour there in March out of Tucson and enjoyed it, but March will definitely be warmer than January.

There are quite a few guided tours in Costa Rica. It's a fairly popular winter destination for cycling.

Trek Travel Multisport

Backroads

Freewheeling Adventures

Duvine Multisport

I did a bike tour in Florida Everglades and Florida Keys a few years ago in February. (Lots of mosquitos in the Everglades.)

I have no clue if there are any tour companies there. Lodging in the keys could be expensive, we were camping and found a lot of the campgrounds were quite full or completely full.

Florida is quite flat, so no need to worry about hill climbing. Approaches to bridges are their substitute for hill climbing.

I've toured in Costa Rica and while I liked the country a lot, I didn't think it was a great place for touring. Reasons? Really crappy roads, and extremely challenging terrain. Unpaved roads I biked on near Arenal volcano and the Pacific coast were generally better than the paved roads elsewhere. The only non-mountainous road is along the Pacific coast, and it's very hot when you're at sea level. But I'm sure that if you go with a touring company, they minimize the amount of major climbs.

After a break following the hurricanes, I see Adventure Cycling is back touring Puerto Rico that time of year. You can rent ebikes in San Juan.