Sun broke through the clouds at 7:30am. Already hot and muggy. Its going to be a hot one today. No Aerostich pants today.
Has what seemed should be a relatively easy day ahead of me. Basic plan was to work my way east along the Gulf of Mexico, ending the day ariund Villahermosa. Along the way were several archaeological sites and museums I wanted to check out. From Alvarado the road actually climbed inland through some low coastal mountains into an area known as Los Tuxtlas. Despite the gain in elavation, the heat and humidity remained. as long as you were on the bike and moving, it wasn't bad, but stop and you were instantly drenched in sweat. I detoured off the main highway into the town plaza of Santiago Tuxtla, which had a small museum dedicated to Olmec artifacts and housed one of the 17 colossal stone heads found to date. They range from 1.5 to 3.4 meters in height. The town plaza was one of the nicer ones I've been through, very picturesque, and I hung out there for a while, people watching Several young boys approached with shoeshine kits, asking if I wanted my (motorcycle) boots polished. I declined. After lunch at a small restaurant along the plaza, I left town, after ssking the museum curator the directions to San Lorenzo, a relatively remote site at which several of the colossal heads were found. One head is still located there in one of several small museums at the site.
It was a 20 mile (one-way) easy graded dirt road, south off the main highway into San Lorenzo, passing through several other small villages along the way The road also passed through what appeared to be low-lying marshland, with sevewral rivers and lakes. I chased up scores of (I believe) white egrets as I rode by. Janet would probably still be there bird-watching.
In San Lorenzo I found the local resident which maintained the museum, and his daughter led me across the street and unlocked the gate to the museum grounds and guided me through. The museum was small, but just over 1 year old and housed a colossal stone head in the breezeway between the two rooms of artifacts it displayed. She did the best she could to answer my butchere questions in Spanish. I felt I should offer her something for her time and effort, but didn't know what was normal or reasonable. To little and you look like a cheapskate, too much and you look like a rich gringo (which you are). Given that the admission at the much larger museum in Santiago Tuxtla had been 10 pesos, I gave her 5 pesos.
Several kilometers further south was another small archaeological site housing several elaborate stone sculptures, undisturbed, where they were found. After checking them out I headed back. I got back to the main road at about 5pm, and headed east towards Villahermosa, and given that I was hot dirty, and tired I Resolved to try to get within 30-40 miles of Villahermosa take the first reasonable hotel I saw.
I inadvertantly ended up on the toll road bypassing Minatitlan (first toll road in Mexico). Afteer that it began getting dark but the country was wide open with few towns and no hotels. For the 1st time since the 1st night of my trip in Nevada I was riding at night and used my PIAA lights. Definitely nice addition for times like this. It was amazing how many trucks would use just their amber running lights until it was completely dark. Why they don' want to use their headlights I don't know. Their passing habbits didn't get any better at night either. I was going to take the first hotel I saw. The other problem was what few hotel billboards there were were rarely lighted, so seeing them at night, when you were concentrating on the road and the oncoming trucks was difficult.
At about 8pm I passed a sign on the left which said something about a hotel. At the next spot I could I turned around and headed back. It was what is called in Mexico an Auto-Hotel. Each room has its own carport where you can pull your car in and draw a large heavy curtain closed behind you. the room entrance is from within the carport. Some, like the one Noemi and I stayed in in Chihuahua with the X-rated movies, are used primarily for trysts with your spouse or lover. This one had prices for 5, 12 and 24 hours. A nights stay (12 hours) was 70 pesos (less than $10). It was actually a very new hotel, and was by far the nicest room I stayed in during the trip so far. Tile floor throughout, Large king-size platform bed with large mirrored headboard. To bad ii didn't have anyone too watch but myself. Cable television, phone to order dinner from the restaurant, Large walkin shower, fake fireplace, air-conditioning. I took it.
I walked to the restaurant, but it was stifling hot in there. I think hardly anyone evee ate in there; they either either ordered room Service, or were too busy with other activities to worry about eating. It was just too hot i there so I ordered my dinner and sked that it be delivered to my room. When it came, it, a tostada con pollo (chicken), was very disappointing. It was half cold and not very tasty. I ate part of it and set the rest outside the door for some mongrel to have during the night. The air-conditioner turned to be kind of spastic as well, barely keeping the room tolerable. I complained once, but of course when the guy came to look at it, it was functioning at its peak.
Friday September 6 (54640 miles)
Temp: 8am 87F 6pm 85F and pouring and lightening
I sweated enough during the night that I took another shower in the morning. This morning I learned the name of the town I stayed in last night - Heroica Cardenas. I continued east towards Villahermosa, stopping in the next small town for breakfast and to try to call Noemi.
Long distance calling in Mexico is truly an adventure. Especially if you want to do it collect. Many small towns have establishments for long distance calling, long distance "stores" for lack of a better description. You give the number to the person working there who places the call for you. When the call goes through, you then pick up a second handset and talk. Eve if the number you are calling is toll-free or if the call is collect, the local establishment charges some type of fee. And the charge seems to vary from establishment to establishment. I have a Sprint 800 number for Mexico which gets me a Sprint operator who can then place a collect call for me. A this particular business, placing the toll-free call cost a fixed fee of 20 pesos, regardless of how long the call was for. When I got the Sprint operator, I decided this time to try to charge it to my Visa, just to see if it would work. The operator asked for the PIN for my account, which of course I didn't have memorized and was out on the bike. So I ran out and go it. It wouldn't work. The operator said the account wasn't properly set up and that I should call my bank. Yeah right. So I fell back on the collect call. I got the answering machine! At 7 in the morning California time! 2 pesos to hear Noemi's voice on the answering machine. I gave up for this morning.
Before going into Villahermosa I detoured about 20 miles north to the Mayan-era ruins at Comalcalco, which included a large fairly well-preserved temple pyramids and on top of a large grass hill, the ruins of a palace and several more temples. The whole site lay in a clearing in the surrounding dense jungle, and from the top of the hill you could see other as yet unexcavated mounds. The site also had a very modern and interesting museum. It was sweltering. And that was in the shade. And there were mosquito although they weren't too bad. I applied my suntan lotion and insect repellant and within 15 minutes of hiking around the site, had probably sweated it all off.
From there I backtracked to the main Highway and continued east into Villahermosa and the Parque-Museo La Venta, which is, like the name suggests a museum situated in a park-like arbotrtum containing plants and foliage typical of the jungles at La Venta, which is believed to have been the capital city of the Olmec empire. La Venta and many of its artifacts were i danger of being destroyed in the ****'s by the discovery of oil-fields in th area, and the Vilahermosan poet ***** organized the recovery and transport o many of the artifacts from La Venta to the staye capital of Vilahermosa wher they were placed in a natural setting made to resemble the original site as much as possible. The park has about 35 original Olmec artifacts on display including probably the best preserved collosal stone head, and numerous copies of artifacts, the originals of which are on display elsewhere. Most of the pieces are in jungle settings along a stone path which winds its way through the park grounds. Much more enjoyable to view than in some sterile museum. The grounds contain many species of birds, some monkeys, and coati.
It was 5pm till I finished with the museum, but Villahermosa was too large for my tastes, so I headed south out of the city, towards some dark afternoo storm clouds which were gathering. About 30 miles south of Villahermosa as approached the town of Teapa it began to rain, so I took the turn-off in to the town center. I pulled up in front of the Hotel Jardin on the town plaza just as the deluge began.
After paying for my room, I rode my bike right through the front door, through the small lobby and into the interior courtyard where I parked it right in front of my room door.
For 40 pesos I got a room off, an interior courtyard, with a painted concret floor, a padlock on the screendoor for a lock, a 4x5 foot bath crammed with seatless toilet, sink, and shower head, each with a single faucet. The wate was tepid, which considering the heat was fine. The room had a large ceilin fan. It's funny, but I enjoy staying in hotels like this much more than the deluxe, modern, fancy ones like the Auto-Hotel I stayed in last night. When I stay in those, I feel like I've temporarily stepped outside the trip and a removed from the real country and people. I often feel depressed when I sta in such fancy hotels.
The proprietor, a middle-age gentleman spoke about as much English as I spok Spanish, so between the two languages we were able to have a bit of a conversation. He told me aboout President Clinton's bombing of Iraq, which hadn't been aware of up till then. And when I said I was headed to San Cristobal de las Casas the next day, he said Zapatistas and made a ra-ta-ta-ta sound and motions like a machine gun and laughed. I couldn't quite ascertain what was up, but I knew that San Cristobal had been the city the Zapatists has briefly captured in January of '94, and the night before o the evening TV news had heard them mention the Zapatistas. I guess I'll fin out when I get there.
It rained heavily for about a hour with heavy thunder and lightening. I waited till the rain stopped until I ventured out for dinner. By then it was dark and the town was beautiful. The town plaza was lit by numerous colonial-style lights and the trees lining the center of the main street leading to the plaza, were adorned with multi-colored lights, almost like Christmas. Anywhere else it would have looked tacky. Here it looked beautiful and romantic. Where' my sweetie? :-(
It was Friday night and the rain had cooled things off nicely and the plaza and the main street, lined with shops and restaurants, was bustling. I foun a "Restaurante Familiar" along the main street and had shrimp in a tomatoe sauce for about $2.50. Afterwards, at about 9pm, I found a long distance "store" and tried to call Noemi, but again just got the answering machine. In contrast to Thursday morning's call which cost me a flat 20 pesos, whethe I got through or not, this place charged 1.5 pesos per minute. Since I was using Sprint to call collect, and got through to them, but not to Noemi, it still cost me 5 pesos.
On the way back to the hotel, a soccer game was in full swing in the basketball court-sized concrete field in the town square. Teams of 6 would play until one team scored, then the next team would rotate in to play the winner. Towards the end, one team ws short a player and asked if I wanted t play, but not wanting to embarrass myself I declined. I watched for about a hour, before wandering back to to long-distance "store", but by then it was closed.
Saturday September 7 (54774 miles)
Temp: 10:30am 84F 12:30pm 78F @6000ft
After breakfast in a restaurant facing the plaza, I found another long-distance store which charged only 2 pesos for every 5 minutes for the "toll-free" call to Sprint. This time (7a Pacific time), the collect call went through and we talked for almost an hour, much to the annoyance of another gentleman, since this was the only phone in this particular establishment. It had been just over a week since we had last talked. One aspect of my contemplated loop through the Yucatan had been that it would probably eliminate any chance of hooking up with Jeff Coult in Panama for the Panama-Colombia-Venezuela transit. I learned from Noemi that that was moot now, since Jeff had already returned home, after encountering various difficulties in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. She gave me some brief details, but I'll have to wait until I can retrieve some email to get the full details. The 60 minutes went by way too fast.
Teapa lay in the lowlands of the state of Tabasco, just before croSing south into the lowlands of Chiapas. As I continued south, the road quickly began climbing into the Chiapan highlands and the climate became cooler and less humid. The mountains I passed through were spectacular. Vertical densely foliated mountainsides rose up on both sides. Tall grasses and shrubs grew right up to and out over the roadside, 8 to 10 feet tall in places, and I'd frequently pass work crews hacking the foliage back from the road's edge. Words really can't describe the scenary adequately.
The road snaked its way up to a 6000+ foot ridge which was obscured in fog a the guide book said it usually was. Shortly after lunch in the small town o Bochil it began raining, and I had heavy rain for about 2 hours, the first really long period of rain while riding so far this trip, followed by and hour of off and on showers. The final 40 miles into San Cristobal were in sunshine. I was a bit surprised that I hadn't encountered any military checkpoints, this being Zapatista country and all. I had passed 2 military convoys, one going in the opposite direction, tbe other parked alongside the road. Each was outfitted with the finest Hum-Vees Uncle Sam could sell.
I was now definitely on the tourist trail now as San Cristobal is a favorite traveler's haunt, and it was covered in my guidebook on La routa Maya. Ther are plusses and minuses to that. On the one hand you know the layout of the town before you arrive and also know where variius hotels are located and don't have to figure out the layout of the town yourself. On the downside it's easy to rely too much on the guidebook. At the moment I didn't feel much like exploring for myself, so selected a hotel several blcks south of the plaza, described in the guidebook as a mid-range hotel. It cost 100 pesos. Definitely tourist-town prices. Had a nice central Courtyard where parked the bike.
A lot of restaurants of all varieties scattered all over town, but definitel geared to the tourist, of which there were many. A bit too many for my tastes actually. I found an English-language Mexico City newspaper and caught up on current events over dinner in the Restaurante Madre Tierra. I was able to read about the Iraq reprisals and also about the terrorist attacks in the state and city of Oaxaca in the past week which had killed 17 people. There were some reports that the group, the EPN, was out to destroy the Mexican tourist industry, thus the attacks on the city of Oaxaca and a nearby resort area. However none of the targets of the attacks were actual tourist sites or facilities and no tourists were victims. The only mention of the Zapatistas was that they had broken off the peace talks with the government because of lack of progress.