We spent five days
in Mexico City with Garry and his family. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do as
much tourism as we would have liked - we had to take our bikes in for their
7,000 mile service (they were past-due at 8,000 miles), and we had to pick up our
headset radios from the post office since they still hadn't been delivered a
week past their scheduled delivery date. Taking the bikes in to the Yamaha
dealer was a two day ordeal, due to the horrendous traffic in Mexico City - it
takes almost 2 hours just to go 20 km, and Johanna got into a minor accident
while lane-splitting on the first day. Luckily, she was ok and there was no
damage to her bike or the other car, so there was no need to involve the
insurance company. On our 3rd day (Friday) we spent the entire day trying to
find out where our headset package was. We continually got sent from one post
office to another, but we finally got them to deliver it just before closing
time by letting them know that we would be declaring the package lost since we
were leaving the city on Sunday and the package was very late. After hearing
that, the manager got involved and we received our package within 10 minutes.
We headed back to Garry's just in time to attend their annual Mexican
Independence Day Party - did we mention that we just happened to be there for
Mexican Independence Day? :)
We had a fantastic
time at the party - Ivonne, Garry's wife, made some amazing pozole, and we had
a chance to meet all their wonderful neighbors. We even did ok for the Mexican
trivia portion, thanks to some last-minute studying via wikipedia.
The next day we set
out to see Teotihuacan, an ancient city pre-dating the Aztecs at around 2,000
years old. It was a huge site containing both (what they believe to be) a Sun
Temple and a Moon Temple. Despite being somewhat hungover from a little too much
partying the night before we had a great time. It was pretty incredible to
imagine what the city looked like back in it's heyday. Based on some of the
paint that remained, all the structures were painted extensively, mostly in
yellow and red. It must have been an amazing sight.
On Sunday morning,
we set out again, refreshed by our long break. We stopped by Tres Marias for
breakfast, an area legendary for all the motorcyclists who travel there at
break-neck speeds every Sunday. We managed to not get run down by the
speed-demons zipping by us and continued on our way to Puebla, where we planned
on seeing Cholula, another temple. Tired after a day of riding, we stopped for
the night just outside of Atlixco. At our first "no-tell motel" no
less. From what we've heard, these types of motels are necessary in Mexican
culture due to the fact that many people live with their parents until marriage
(and even after), so "getting to know" your significant other can be
rather difficult without these love hotels. It was surprisingly nice and
affordable - we were able to park our bikes in a real garage underneath our
room, and the room was nice and clean - all for 300 pesos for the night. They
also had a steakhouse attached to the property which apparently employed chefs
who had trained in New York City. Johanna couldn't pass up the opportunity to
enjoy a New York steak for the price of 180 pesos (roughly $10). It did not
disappoint.
We had a great
night, but woke up to a wake-up call at 6:53, letting us know that check-out
was at 7 am - thanks for the 7 minute warning….grrr. We packed up everything in
record time and headed out to find Cholula. On the way through Atlixco we had a
car honk and the driver started waving enthusiastically at us, we assumed they
had figured out that we were travelers from America, so we waved back as well.
Shortly after we stopped at a local grocery to pick up some supplies and the
same car pulled into the parking lot next to us. A local from Atlixco, Ruben,
jumped out with his wife and introduced himself to us. Through our broken
Spanish and his broken English, we described our planned trip and he expressed
his enthusiasm and wish to do the same. As always, work gets in the way, haha.
After that, we were
back on the road to Puebla. We arrived shortly and set out to find Cholula -
which proved harder than expected. After riding in circles for about half an
hour due to the directions being completely off on our GPS program and missing
signage in town, we decided to give up since there was no way it would be as
amazing as Teotihuacan, and continued on to our next stop in Huajuapan.
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| Johanna taking a power nap. |
We spent the night
in yet another no-tell-motel and then continued to Oaxaca. On the way we passed
through the small town of Nochixtlan, which didn't really catch our attention
until we were mostly through town and ran into a few improvised road-blocks which
consisted of burned out vehicles that blocked part or most of the road.
Luckily, we ride motorcycles and we were able to maneuver around them easily.
Later, we looked up the town and found out that they were put there during a
conflict between teachers and the federal police a year before and that several
people died. The vehicles remain as a grim reminder of that event.
We rolled into
Oaxaca city in the early afternoon and set about finding our hotel and
something to eat for lunch. We popped into a little coffee shop and ordered a
couple tortas which were on special for 40 pesos for both. While we waited for
our food we noticed that there was a news report about an earthquake in Mexico
City. At first we assumed that it was about the 8.1 earthquake that had hit the
coast of Oaxaca/Chiapas a week earlier but then quickly realized that this was
a new earthquake that originated just 75 miles outside of Mexico City, in the
exact area we passed through just two days earlier when we traveled from Puebla
to Huajuapan. This was a 7.1 size earthquake, and it occurred on the
anniversary of the 1985 tremblor that killed 10,000 people in Mexico City. It
was crazy to think that if we had stayed just a couple days more, we would have
been effected by the quake. We contacted our host there, Garry, to see how his
family fared and we also wrote to Ruben from Atlixco, which was also close to
the quake. Luckily everyone was okay.
The next day we set
off to San Jose Del Pacifico, a town far up in the mountains at over 10,000 ft,
famous for its mushrooms (magic and otherwise). We did not partake, and headed
down to sea level the next morning to the seaside town of Puerto Angel, then
continued east to Tehuantepec.
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| Our totally not sketchy hostel. |
On the way we met a French couple traveling by 125cc motobikes from Guatemala. They were doing a short tour of Mexico before continuing on their boat trip.
The following morning, we were loading up our
bikes for another day of riding when suddenly the ground began to shake
violently. It quickly dawned on us that we were experiencing an earthquake,
which we found out later was a 6.1 and originated in Ixtepec, a town not too
far away. We held on to our bikes to keep them from falling over and rode out
the quake. Other people from inside our hotel began running outside and started
calling friends and family to see how they were. Luckily the hotel did not seem
to take any damage from the quake. We finished loading our bikes in record time
and set out, hoping to mostly avoid aftershocks - which seemed to come at
varying intervals of every five to twenty minutes. On our way we stopped in
Juchitan to fill up on gas. As we pulled into the gas station we noticed that
it was filled with federal police and that all the windows of the Oxxo
convenience store had been blown out. One of the federal police came over to
inquire what kind of bikes we were on and let us know that gas wouldn't be
available, maybe until tomorrow. We asked if maybe it would be available a bit
further away and he indicated that he didn't believe we'd find any that day. As
another aftershock shook us and our bikes we decided to take our chances and
made a plan to go 80 km to a town on our route where we knew that they had a
gas station and a campsite. Worst case scenario, they wouldn't have gas
available and we'd stay at the campsite and try again the next day.
Luckily just out of
town, after passing several buildings that had fallen down due to the quake, we
found a gas station that seemed to be selling gas. We're not sure how legal
that was however, since several gas stations afterwards were not, haha. We made
it to the small town of Cintalapa in Chiapas state, stayed the night, and then
headed through the mountains to San Cristobal de las Casas where we found a
hotel for 150 pesos a night. We decided to stay an extra day.
After San Cristobal
we headed west to visit the ancient Mayan city of Tonina, which ruled from the
6th to 9th century and warred with Palenque, our next stop. It was pretty
incredible, although since we were the only visitors there, we were constantly
harassed by a local guide who wouldn't take no for an answer and followed us
all over, so we left quicker than we intended.
Afterwards we
continued another 50 miles north to Palenque where we stayed at the Kin Balam
Hostel. We dropped off our bags and walked 3 km to the ruins, sweating
profusely all the way. We stopped at the very nice museum and learned a bit
more about Mayan culture before trekking through the jungle to see the ancient
city. Palenque lived up to the hype, and we felt grateful for the fact that
there were very few tourists there - hoorah for low season!
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| We got a bit rained on. |
Ancient ruin thirst
satiated, we headed back to our hostel for some R&R and discovered a howler
monkey just hanging out above the bathrooms. He did not seem to have any fear
of humans and kept trying to enter the communal kitchen, despite being shooed
away repeatedly.
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| Monkey balls! |
The next morning we
woke up to howler monkey calls (we assume it's from the same monkey) and
managed to catch an audio sample before setting out on the road again.
We stopped for the
night in Escarcega and then continued the next day to Calakmul, another ancient
ruin deep in the jungle that may have also warred with Palenque and Tonina.
Unfortunately, when we reached the entrance of the park, we realized that since
there hadn't been a gas station since Escarcega (120 km away) we didn't have
enough gas to make the 60 km to the ruins and back, so we had to continue
another 50 km to get gas, fill up our bikes and our Rotopax gas can and come
back.
Worth it.
Worth it.
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| So...sweaty... |
The next day we
headed to Chetumal, our last stop before we head into Belize which will be our
next post :)