Hola

The last few days we are en route to San Cristobal las Casas. The plan was to stay away from Tuxtla because we really hate the chaotic traffic in these big cities. But somehow navigator Steve managed to get the three of us again in Mexican chaos. Nice… the good thing is, that we are now really close to San Cristobal, a place we are really looking forward to.

After our three days of rest and canonball competion in Acapulco, we continued route 200 along the pacific.

Although still along the coast, the landscape got less green and someone turned on the heat. Everyday it is getting hotter and hotter. We didn’t get much further than Playa la Ventura thursday 18th. An ocean swim to cool down was really necessary. We were told that at night turtles get on the beach. But after a 15 minute night beach walk, we decided it was a lie.

Next day (friday) we left early in order to get some cool km’s. But soon temperature was sky-high again. We had to make several stops. In the shade temperature is 35 degrees C. You can imagine how hot is in the sun, wearing a black helmet and with 4000 explosions between our legs…. (no comments on this one please).  Really HOT! We haven’t seen rain for over a month now and the lack of green landscape doesn’t surprise us. We made it to Puerto Escondido, a relaxing surfspot with a backpackers athmosphere. We spent the weekend there and enjoyed the roofterrace Bar Fly.

On sunday (21th) we headed for Puerto Angel, recommended by many Mexicans as well as Zipolite (next to Angel) with it’s nudism beach. Although a nice Bahia village we were not impressed. By then we already figured that we want to visit San Cristobal and Palenque and left next morning. Yesterday we reached Santo Domingo Tehuantepec, observing very strong winds at the end of the day making driving difficult.

This morning we got up early again and continued towards San Cristobal. Again very strong side winds, almost blowing us from the road. Unbeleivable! But when we saw all the windmills we thought it might be windy over here more often.

Tomorrow we will make it to San Cristobal. The plan is to enjoy the colonial city, visit maya stuff, and service our bikes and treat these old ladies with some fresh oil.

El mazzel.

Goodbye Mexico, Hello Belize

Just arrived in Corozal, in Belize. After almost 6 weeks through Mexico, we said adios and got quite easily into Caribean Belize.  The last week was fantastic and maybe the best so far: best rides, nice city, great culture, various people and enough beers….

After we left Tuxtla (Wednesday 24 march) we headed for San Cristobal the las Casas to stay a few days. The ride was really great and brought us to 2100m, where the climate was a “warm” welcome after the heat of the last weeks.

Again we got stopped at a military post as in the last few days. So far we were quite lucky and  only had to smile and wave, but not this time. They wanted to check our belongings, but after opening the bag with biker’s laundry, they somehow had seen enough. Quite impressive, all these heavily armed military posts along the way. The entire route from north to south has dozens of these posts.

We spent three nights in San Cristobal in the best hostel! Really nice place with a big patio where we met a lot of travelers from all over the world.

San Cristobal is really a very nice place to stay. Great city with very good coffee (we’ve really missed so far).

At night we enjoyed the bonfire in the hostel and went out afterwards. We also got our bikes serviced with new oil.

On Saturday (27^th) we left San Cristobal and had the best ride to Palenque. A 230km curvy route through the mountains which led us into the jungle near Palenque.

What a blast! In Palenque we also stayed three nights in the jungle in el Panchan.  On Sunday we visited the Maya ruins. Really impressive.

After the ruins we continued with a jungle tour to watch some hidden maya ruins (95% of the city is still overgrown by jungle!), monkeys and waterfalls.

At night we couldn’t sleep for hours because of a terrifying loud sound. Later on we heard it were the “brulaap” monkeys. The next two nights we slept  with earplugs. In el Panchan we spent the evenings listening to live music and chatting with backpackers (we met in San Cristobal).

A great week, and a nice goodbye to Mexico. Time to discover Central America. We’ll spent a few days in Belize and after that go to Guatemala.

Thanks for all comments!

Hasto luego amigos,

PS: in Palenque we said goodbye to the Mo…