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.
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.
After dragging my feet for a long time and staying in Oaxaca way longer than I had initially intended I finally started the drive out of Oaxaca Towards Chiapas, the last state in Mexico that I would visit on my tour of Latin America. My last night in Oaxaca I took my first ever dance class to try to learn a little bit of salsa and I actually really had a good time at the class. The salsa part went way over my head but the bachata class was pretty easy and I felt like I was pretty good at it, at least for a gringo.
But in the morning I put my riding boots on and headed South! It was time to cross one more state and then cross the border. The second I started riding it started sprinkling and I rode in and out of rain ever since. Rainy season for me started in 1 day. I knew it was coming but I still hate it. I don’t have good rain gear and I’m worried about my stuff which is packed in very questionably waterproof bags. When it rains I shove my phone in a plastic bag and let every inch of my body get soaked and I squint as hard as I can as the baseball sized drops smack my eyeballs.
Once the rain started to pick up hard in a matter of minutes I could feel the cold bite me all the way to the bone. I stopped on the side of the road at some small restaurant shack where they brought me out a big cup of chocolate and it felt as if I was pouring my own soul back into my body.
And Just Like That, Rainy Season Began
I finished the day in a tiny village called Sancristobal(Not San Cristobal de Las Casas). I rolled into town and everyone was staring at me. It is not a place foreigners ever go.
I rolled up to this building and asked a guy outside if it was a place I could stay and he said yes. It was like a little convention center. I asked him how much and he said 300 pesos. That’s about as cheap as it gets for your own place here and it ended up being perfect. Because of all the rain I was able to work on the motorcycle under the roof of the place. I installed the USB port so I can charge my phone and put in a new air filter, but it is much different than the old one, I hope it works out alright. It’s more like a big sponge instead of the harder old one, but it should work..
Getting some much needed work done on Donnkey
I went to go eat something and it cost me 100 pesos for a big plate of beef with a fresh coconut. It was quite a nice meal and then I went back to my room to edit some old videos. I’m still so behind on editing Mexico videos. Oh well.
