Woke up around 10 and felt pretty good. Packed my stuff and started riding! It was an absolutely gorgeous ride strolling through the mountains. I felt the temperature creeping up as I got further and further away from the comfortable cool of Oaxaca. I also shot through a valley that just started blowing me off the bike. I was surrounded by enormous windmills that just smiled down dumbly at me as they spun and as I crouched down as low as I could but would still get blown all the way to the side of the road over and over. It really felt like they were huge fans trying to push me over.
Eventually I started to see a lot of people walking in the road and I knew it smelled like trouble. Before long I saw a line of Tuk tuk’s which then looked like trouble.
I then saw the roadblock ahead where all the cars were turning around. I thought it was an accident or something but it wasn’t. I saw big tires thrown in the road and men with huge bellies standing in the road with their arms crossed.
This would be my first instance seeing the BS that poor Mexicans need to deal with every day and just one reason why the poor stay poor. It was clearly some kind of self-serving sociopolitical movement run by old fat men that know nothing about sociopolitical movements.
I waited a moment to observe, took a deep breath, and shot out into the grass around the blockade. One dude approached me and just started yelling at me. Then he said if I crossed that they would beat me. I was a little confused and then he kept asking where I was going. I didn’t really know how to respond because I had no destination for the day so I said Palenque. He laughed and then waved me on. Everyone looked angrily at me as I rolled on. I’m still pretty curious what was going on there.
I ended the ride in Cintalapa, really a shit town. I drove all around looking for something interesting to see or do when 2 kids whipped by and rammed my front tire with their scooter. The kid at the back jumped off his bike in his flip flops to grab something he dropped, jumped back on the bike, and shot off. I have no idea if it damaged the bearing or something but I really hope not. I am staying in Hotel Maya and it cost $280 pesos per night with AC. Not a bad deal at all and all in all not a bad hotel.
In the end I found churros which made everything worth it.
