We left Metepec on our
way to resume the original route going around the Gulf
Coast to Veracruz.
The short route goes through Puebla,
but before that through Mexico City
again. I convinced Lizbeth it'll be OK, this being a Sunday morning, and pretty
early at that, to run through one of the world's most crowded cities, again.
OK, I forgot it was it was the day prior to dia
de la virgen de Guadalupe (Mexican's holiest saint, used by those clever
Spaniards to convert the local indigenous people to Catholicism), and there are
thousands of pilgrims on marches, either on foot or by bicycle that clog all
major roads in the area. Some even on major highways, which makes for rather
hazardous situations, where regular traffic encounters a blocked lane often,
due to the different processions. They mostly kept to the right shoulder where
they could, but sometimes you would encounter one procession passing another
both going less than 30 KPH on a highway where other traffic was still running
at regular Mexican speeds. Not that it is unusual to find slow traffic on
Mexican roads, but allowing this many on major highways is a recipe for
disaster. As long as you remember that you can't trust anybody but yourself
(OK, some of _you_ I wouldn't trust either...) you can survive the experience.
For a highway, the road from Puebla
to Orizaba and Cd. Mendoza is
actually pretty exciting. Long sweeping turns that go on and on, lax (read
none) speed enforcement and traffic that mostly lets you be, make for good
times. Add some seriously dense fog going down the mountain around Orizaba
(and I mean dense, visibility was less than 30 ft. in some sections) you get a
really exciting ride. I went by Ciudad Mendoza with about 140 miles on the tank
and decided I could postpone the gas stop to somewhere later on the highway.
Yup, as you can guess, this is the one highway in Mexico
where there isn't a single damn gas station on the highway for the next 80
miles. I ran out of gas 3 miles outside of Veracruz
(and the same distance to the next gas station...). Luckily, Mexican's are the
nicest people, and within a few minutes we had to offers for rides to the gas
station. Lizbeth took the ride into town with a gentleman from Monterey
who not only gave her the ride into town, but also gave her a ride back to
deliver the gas and didn't want to accept anything for his trouble. It seemed
the V-Strom runs exactly 220 miles on a thankful under these conditions.
Adventure touring...
Veracruz is a great city, it's a
lively town with an interesting historical center and lots to do, even beaches
if you are so inclined. We spent a couple of days exploring the city on foot
and using public transportation (which is dirt cheap). We took a bus to Boca
del Rio, a suburb south of Verzcruz that is home to the
nice beaches (Veracruz is more of
a port city, the beaches developed south of town). It also has the doubtful
distinction of being home to so many big box retailers and chain restaurants it
looks like "any town USA" in some newly developed areas (mostly
behind the hotel area). We likes the beaches, but preferred to eat in the
market...
From Veracruz we headed to Ciudad
del Carmen. Along the way we stopped in Tlacotalpan, a really nice little town
that is on the UNESCO world heritage list. This gives the town some extra
incentive to keep it as if it was straight out of a movie set. This is what you
imagine quaint little Mexican towns look like, except it is a real living and
working town. Due to too much time spent walking around Tlacotalpan, we decided
to hit the highway. I know there is still a lot of corruption in Mexico,
but if I had to pick an example of a place where it's way to obvious it would
have to be Veracruz toll
highways. The tolls are expensive (no discount for bikes like in Chihuahua)
and these are the worst roads I have driven in Mexico,
cuota or libre. Someone must be pocketing the money... As we were making our
final miles to Cd. del Carmen, I pulled in to get gas in Frontera. A PEMEX
pickup pulled in next to me while we were resting a bit and the driver came
over to chat. Turns out he is a biker (owner of an R1) and he was impressed by
the sound of the V-Strom as we passed him earlier. He gave us a recommendation
for a hotel in town, and he even showed us the way around the downtown maze.
Very nice guy.
Our next destination was Campeche.
There are great views of beaches along the hwy. Campeche
roads are really well maintained and I was pleasantly surprised to find a curvy
libre into Campeche
(the Yucatan is mostly flat).
Campeche has a really nice historical
center (another UNESCO Heritage Site). It's contained within the remains of the
old fortifications (baluartes) that
protected the city in the wilder days of pirates and warlords. Very nice malecon (boardwalk) too. We spent a long
afternoon exploring the baluartes
circuit, plaza and malecon.
Going out of Campeche to
Uxmal
I found another surprisingly fun road for a few kms, then rolling hills. We got
to Hacienda Uxmal and found it mostly empty. It seems like the hurricanes have
scared the tourists away. Lizbeth negotiated a killer deal and we got the empty
Hacienda Uxmal all to ourselves. This place was originally built to house the
teams of archeologists that excavated the Uxmal
ruins. Visiting the ruins was an outstanding experience. We spent about 3 hours
walking around the site. Simply amazing architecture and location.
Surprisingly, Hacienda Uxmal does not provide drinking water. That is, they
have water, but you have to pay for it (dearly, I may add). Considering that
providing bottled water is common even in budget hotels, it seemed to not fit
with the high end pretensions of this place.
From Uxmal we set course to
Celestun. As expected, the roads in the peninsula are not very interesting, but
they do keep you busy, with livestock, wild animals and topes. We found a very nice and cheap hotel, Maria del Carmen, on
the beach. Celestun is a small, mostly fishermen, town. We took a great boat
tour through the Celestun Biosphere Reserve. There are numerous birds, trees
and even a petrified forest to tour. We met a couple of nice guys on the tour.
Tupac is from Nicaragua,
but lives in Spain
these days. Brice is French, practicing his Spanish between making independent
films. We ended the tour and had lunch on the beach together, before they left
to go to Merida.
We went to Merida the next day. It
was hot, hot, hot. Merida was hot
and bustling, very heavy traffic in town and we didn't like the hotel we were
planning on staying at (this is what happens when you pick a hotel out of an ad
rather than the Lonely Planet, we should have known better). Merida
did not turn out to be as nice as expected. The narrow and very crowded (with
vehicle traffic) streets make the city center tiring to walk around. But, it has
some really nice things like the plaza, public buildings and cultural life that
are certainly worth a visit. It is much more pleasant in the evening when it
cools off a bit and traffic gets thinner. Now, you have to remember that we
were there in December, one of the two coolest months of the year in Merida.
I can't imagine visiting it in summer, especially not on a bike. As we were
walking around one evening, we saw a line outside the theatre. There was a
convention of Mexican dance teachers in town, and this was opening night.
Lizbeth managed to get two (free) tickets and we went to watch the show. A
local dance troop gave a history of the Yucatan
in dances, it was great.
Our next destination was Palenque.
It's a bit far from Merida, and
there are no highways to speak off, so in order to make good time I had to take
advantage of the V-Strom’s passing abilities. But, those WFO passes on lines
and lines of cars and making good time came at fuel efficiency cost. Some of
the worst I got all this trip. The head winds didn't help. The town of
Palenque
has no real attractions. If it wasn't situated next to these incredible ruins
from the ancient Mayans, it wouldn't be worth the ink on the map. Lizbeth says
it probably wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the tourists that come to town
for the ruins. The ruins are simply amazing. The architecture, monkeys, birds
and location in the middle of the jungle make it really unique.
From Palenque we rode to San
Cristobal de Las Casas. The road is great, it's
basically a series of never ending curves from Palenque
to San Cristobal, but there are
lots of topes. Luckily, the road goes
through the Lancandon Jungle, and the scenery is best appreciated at a more
relaxed pace. It is also home to the EZLN, which makes its presence known
through numerous signs, posters and a large presence of Mexican military that
is still looking for them, even though everything is at plain site. Only in Mexico.
We stopped for lunch in Ocosingo (which turned out to be much busier than
expected) whose claim to fame is being one of the places the Zapatistas
suffered most casualties during the uprising in January 1994. This seems to be
reason enough to make it a tourist attraction. We also went through Oxchuc,
where the main street is a real mess with colectivos
(vans and pickup trucks used for public transportation) crowding the main road.
There was a significant change in weather and scenery after Ocosingo, from
jungle to conifer forests.
We spent some days in San Cristobal
de Las Casas. We took a great tour to San Juan Chamula, home to a Pagan/Catholic
church complete with healer ceremonies, sacrifices and poshe (sugar cane alcoholic beverage) drinking. There were way too
many vendors outside, bordering on annoying, you couldn’t walk around town
without being offered something every other step you made. We visited the
coffee museum in San Cristobal,
which goes into the interesting history of coffee growing in the region, and
does not skip the not so pleasant sides of the treatment the landowners gave
the indigenous people they employed in the fields. A lot of people in San
Cristobal do not speak Spanish as native language, and
it often makes communication a challenge. I was making fun of Lizbeth that she
is not Mexican enough to be understood in these parts.
OK, it's time to go enjoy Oaxaca,
I know I am far behind in my report, but I am having way too much fun to spend
more time in front of the computer.
YMexAdvMV,
Gustavo
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