Tag: Mexico

Ride from Tuxla to San Cristobal de Las Casas and First Steps Around San Cristobal de Las Casas – 20220626

I had my last moments being a fancy boy in a fancy hotel, took a mirror selfie to show off the fanny pack and jumped on donkey to ride for San Cristobal de Las Casas.

Rocking the Fanny Pack

Donkey is still a little wonky from the kid hitting me, and I should get it checked out, but I probz won’t for a while anyways.. It was only about an hour and a half ride but it was crazy foggy for much of it and the whole way I was climbing and there was a lot of construction.

Foggy Ride

San Cristobal is actually pretty high altitude, around 7000 feet, pretty much as high as my comfort level goes, but I think since I was just in Cusco for a while my body will be semi-acclimated.

My first impression of San Cristobal is that it is an incredibly nice old city built now for tourists. But it seems that almost all the tourists are Mexican. The vendors are a little aggressive, constantly bothering me while I’m sitting trying to eat.

Met another motorcyclist who introduced himself as “Crow”

The locals walk around with gold teeth and there’s tons of places selling sweets of all kinds. I wonder if there’s any connection(I found out later the average person in Chiapas drinks 2.1 liters of coca cola per day.)

Is there anything better than churros?

All during the ride I saw a little girls carrying a huge load of logs right up a steep hills with a straps that go around their foreheads.

The hostel I’m staying at only cost $15 for a private room and it’s super nice. It’s called Posada de Abuelita and the front desk lady Nilly was super nice and showed me the amazing amount of public spaces throughout the hostel. It’s places like this that make me analyze places for future ideas if I ever get a house or open my own hostel or hotel.

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Pielut in Mexico

Gorditas

Street Art

I had nothing to do for the night so I found a free walking tour on guru where I met some pretty cool other travelers and had a cool guide named Ana.

On the tour we tried the local alcohol called Pox. It’s made of fermented corn and sugarcane and it’s actually really good.

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Catedral

Pox

Vendor

After the tour we headed to a bar to see a little bit of live music. We got to see this guy absolutely shred this fiddle. I’ve never seen anyone so good who seemed to enjoy himself so much. He was hopping around the stage like a happy leprechaun the whole set.

Happy fiddler

Quick Day Trip Around Tuxla Gutierrez- 20220625

After staying in some grungy places along the way I decided to use my hotel points in Tuxla Gutierraz as there was a Marriott that had parking. Even without points the cost of the hotel was only $40 and had an incredible pool.

The pool was SACK

I only stayed 2 nights in Tuxla but to be honest that was most than enough to see everything I would have wanted to see. Really the only thing worth seeing around Tuxla is Canon del Sumidero. I wasn’t especially excited to see it as I knew nothing about it and only went there as I had nothing to do during the day. But I was so incredibly surprised. I liked it more than the grand canyon as it is absolutely full of life. Totally green with birds and animals all over the place.

Canon del Sumidero

There are 2 ways to see it. you can drive to the top which takes about 40 minutes from the center of Tuxla or you can take a boat through the canyon. I cannot speak for the boat tour, but driving to the top gave me amazing views. But I would have loved to have seen it from the boat as well.

Happy Boi

After seeing Canon I went to a bar near the hotel for some much needed Mezcal as I could see the guava farms thinning out as I rode East and knew eventually there would be no Mezcal to be had.

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Mezcal

Zicatela Bar

First Terrifying Roadblock and Ending in Cintalapa(B*ttf*ck nowhere) – 20220624

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.

These huge fans were trying to blow 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.

This is NOT what you want to see while riding. Especially around Chiapas

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.

Not the friendly Mexicans I’m used to. This dude said they were gonna beat me

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.

My heart was beating pretty fast, but they eventually let me through

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.

Heaven