The Tourist Trail – Guatemala

Feb14

Clare: The first tourist spot heading into Guatemala from Belize is the Mayan site of Tikal. We were both feeling rather pyramid puffed and ruins’ed out but it had to be done. Tikal itself has just a few expensive holiday apartments, way above our budget, so we cruised up and down for accommodation in the nearest village of El Remate. Bingo! A nice little local non-internet hotel. Even a swimming pool it boasted. Pool there was but rather small and murky so neither of us jumped in. As accommodation goes it was fine by our modest standards, friendly staff, bikes parked right by our window, and the gate closed overnight, a roof terrace for a bit of gym. It was new year’s eve, and a fair was in town – Gid took a few sunset pictures, but we both conked out before midnight.

Being on the bus route to Tikal was what really mattered and we duly caught a collectivo the following morning. The driver and conductor were flexible. The sign in the windscreen suggested this route normally finished in a hamlet some way short of Tikal but us and another “wealthy” tourists were too much of a temptation and they diverted for Q50 (£5) each, which initially struck us as extortionate. We weren’t sure if they would take us the whole way to the ruins or just to the ticket office on its outer perimeter. We hoped for the former, but it didn’t matter. ‘It’s only one kilometre down the road to the actual ruins,’ Gid said. The crew started to earn their Q50s as they sorted out our tickets in the queue of “tour” tourists. Thankfully they did deliver us to the ruins as 5 kilometres after the tickets, we still hadn’t reached the site!

Tikal was unique. The extensive site was spread out amongst the jungle with small tracks joining the buildings (there are still hundreds that haven’t been excavated). We choose from the map which we wanted to visit leaving the central plaza until last. The outer edifices were fairly quiet with a feel of having been recently discovered and left in a more rural state which added to the attraction. Plus, we could clamber all over them. A few which were more delicate – or dangerously steep – had steps up the side with a ledge leading back onto the pyramid near the top which seemed a good compromise. From the top, we had a view over the jungle treetops, with the odd pyramid protruding.

The stepped pyramids are so called because they’re built as layers of successively smaller squares, often with tapering sides. We’ve all seen the great flights of stairs up the front. Except… those stairs are very awkwardly tall and narrow, hard to get up, and ruinous to fall down. It’s all the more curious as the modern Maya, and presumably their ancestors, definitely tend to be short-legged folk, even allowing for them being shortish as well. It would be wonderful to understand why the ancient Maya built them just so.

The central plaza was awesome. It had a large pyramid at each end and a maze of buildings/dwellings on each side. The plaza itself had a line of standing stones to one side from which one could readily envisage edged the market place. We clambered all over, taking time out to observe the howler monkeys in the trees overhead and a coatimundi that was snuffling around looking for scraps amongst the ‘Don’t feed the wildlife’ signs.

The island of Flores was next on the tourist trail but didn’t appeal to us. It seemed to be an overcrowded little island joined to the mainland by a causeway.

Gid: Clare didn’t even go to see it, but stayed in bed nursing a cold. I ran around the periphery, once – it was a bit like a miniature St Malo made of coloured cottages, sans croissants. The main drag, on the mainland, was much more interesting – full of motorcycle shops & workshops and hardware shops. My souvenirs from Flores included a SIM card and a useful selection of washers. As in El Remate, a “local” hotel found by cruising around was comfy and a lot cheaper and less touristy than the online offers.

Semuc Champrey was another of the Lonely Planets recommendations and one we plotted into our itinerary. That failed due to us grossly underestimating the time it took us to travel on the northern Guatemalan roads. We finally gave up on swimming in the picturesque limestone pools when we were still 50km away riding in rain with soon to be fading late afternoon light. Enroute our tarmacked surface finished abruptly. Faced with a steep stony but wide track sweeping sharply up a hillside round a corner to err, where? That was the problem. What was round the corner? How far did this gravel with fist /palm/head sized rocks continue for? Ominously, there wasn’t any traffic whatsoever on this stretch whereas we had been accompanied through all the small villages along the way. With a blackening sky overhead we turned back scurrying downhill (video here) into the first hotel we found and just about got inside before the heavens opened. Anyway, it wasn’t going to be much fun in tomorrow’s drizzle scrambling around the rock pools in our swimmers. As it happened it was a stroke of luck, as it really did take us three, not two, days to Quetzaltenango (Xela), and we had not only accommodation booked, but Spanish lessons too!

While idling in Flores (Clare had a grotty cold), we’d realised that we’d dropped into a rather tiring pattern of riding for a day or three, arriving at some tourist site and “doing” it, then moving on. Although it broke up the riding, it was pretty remorseless. Whereas when we cycled 2016-2018, we’d ride for several days, with odd rest days, then stop for a few days in an interesting place. That gave a time for a real break. When cycling, the physical break was more appreciated, as churning out the miles, if not too gruelling, is mentally relaxing, but the legs, shoulders, bum suffer. Whereas on the motos, usually the riding isn’t physically demanding (no iron-butt rides for us), but the constant enhanced alertness is very taxing. We decided to change. Lonely Planet suggested Xela was a great place to sign up for Spanish lessons with an immersive homestay. At the last minute, over the weekend, we booked with El Quetzal Escuela de Español!

Arriving in Xela mid afternoon, we found our way to El Quetzal. Proprietor Glenda and husband, Daniel, bade us welcome, refined the week’s plan, and posted us to our homestay for the week, where Fabiola and Jenny made us very welcome.

The arrangement was, we had a week of one-to-one Spanish lessons from 2pm to 6pm, and four mornings of outings in Spanish. Spanish was the language with Jenny and Fabiola (actually Jenny’s English was pretty good, but she was very tolerant of our garbled espanol). Claudia was assigned to wear out Clare, and Fernando was to exhaust me. So much for our mental rest!

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Pollo Guisado

Another attraction of Xela was the presence of schools of traditional backstrap weaving. A taster session as a part of our language course was all it took – Clare was going back for more. Another week in Xela. I continued with 4 hour Spanish lessons, Clare cut down to two, and spent long mornings and late afternoons in the weaving school. By the time we left Xela, we were loaded down with:

Two tablemats from the taster session (one each).
One table runner
Scarf #1
Scarf #2 on its portable loom of sticks and string.

One thing that has been remarkable in Guatemala is the amount of traditional fabric actually worn by the ladies. According to Clare’s spanish teacher Claudia, it’s not cheap, and it’s blooming heavy – multiple layers of heavily woven cotton. But a large proportion of ladies – rural and urban – especially those maybe 35-plus – wear the skirts and blouses every day. It was very notable that as soon as we crossed into El Salvador, this traditional dress vanished.

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When we planned this trip, the Americas were easy to visit in terms of paperwork, but since August 2024, UK citizens need a visa to enter Honduras (in retaliation for our government doing the same to them), and the visa application needs a home country criminal record check. As we hadn’t planned for this, we put hurried arrangements in place paying HMG extra for a fast track, and Gid’s sister, Jo, kindly got it couriered (thanks!) and El Quetzal was a perfect postal destination. As we finished our second week of school, the certificates set off via DHL.

The wait for the courier opened up the perfect time slot to visit Lago de Atitlan. It was maybe half day’s ride away, so an visit. As we approached the famous lake, we stopped at a mirador (viewing spot) near the top of the mountains surrounding the lake. I had looked at the map and knew there were habitations around the lake but was expecting a few villages dotted around the shores. I was horrified. It was so built up! Creeping down the endless tight hairpin bends kept us very focused on the road. Emerging into the cobbled streets of the town there were the familiar highly coloured murals adorning many of the walls juxtaposed with wrecks and rubbish abandoned along the way. Town dogs mixing it with traffic, tuktuks filling every possible gap while Mayan ladies wearing their tradition costumes, baskets on their heads, boldly striding down the streets set a more appealing scene. The roads, we learnt later, are one of the three prime uses for the volcanic rubble which accounts for the random cobbles.

13 metres – and she did it again!

We trundled along San Pedro main street eyeballing possible hotels – could that alley allow us to ride our bikes right into the hotel? I scouted on foot. Sure! Park amongst our family bikes the friendly owner, well, gestured mostly, to be honest! The hotel had the requested lake view if you poked your head out of the door but even better was our easy access to the water across the road. Atitlan is a swimming lake we’d been told. It didn’t take us long to head off down the opposite passageway to assess it. Sharing the path with a deep ‘road water’ run off channel was the first dodgy point but on reaching the lake the piles of rubbish, and locals washing themselves, their laundry and crockery was enough to quell our desire for a dip. A couple of days later however when visiting San Marcos, a small hippy hamlet on the opposite shore, famed for its jumping platform, it had to be done. That activity also showed us where all the young male tourists were, to complement the young women prowling the tourist stalls and cafes. We were definitely the oldest jumpers while we were there!

Antigua is a must see in anyone’s book. A UNESCO listed ancient capital city overlooked by menacing volcanoes has numerous ruins following a series of eruptions & earthquakes over the centuries. In 1773, then the capital of Spanish Central America, it was shaken to the ground and the capital was moved, taking the name Cuidad de Guatemala with it, and bequeathing the name Antiqua Guatemala to the ex-capital. Antigua has numerous respectfully painted one storey buildings lining broad cobbled lanes. As a UNESCO city there are very strict rules as to what is acceptable and no advertising slogans disfigure the walls. One has to pass a building and peer in to see what is sold. Open spaces were crowded with street sellers, musical performances and a few omnipresent beggars but pavements themselves were oddly devoid of café furniture and sellers. A procession in connection with the build up to Holy Week took place at the old cathedral. These processions gain in momentum up to Easter Week when the streets of Antiqua are blocked. During the Easter festival the streets, which criss-cross the city, will be lined with flowers and relics from the biblical scenes.

Oddly enough, Antigua has weaving schools, too. It also has jade shops. Clare had been looking forwards to these, and dived in with enthusiasm. Most of the worlds quality jadeite jade comes from the Sierra de las Minas, a few hundred km north, and much finds its way through Antigua to be made into jewellery. But although the city’s buildings were attractive, whether in use or elegant preserved ruins, the place was such a totally tourist town – 20 person long pavement tours and hardly being able to put a foot down without negotiating another tourist – that we both got a bit fed up with it after a day or two. Rather pricey, too.

We travelled on to Guatemala city aiming for the the Honduran Consulate to get our visas. Cuidad de Guatemala isn’t much of a draw for tourists, although it does have the modest national museums, and a fine central plaza. It’s the only place in Guatemala with a Royal Enfield dealer (there’s none in Belize or El Salvador), and one of the few with outdoor gear shops. As in Cuidad de Mexico, we chose an apartment rather than an hotel or hostel. Again, it was newer and smarter than anywhere we have lived in at home. Unlike Mexico, this time the district was rapidly gentrifying, new towers springing up in every block. But we could still get a cheap lunch from a street vendor, if we avoided going into the posh malls hungry. I, at least, quite enjoy the buzz of a city, if only for a while. A big draw was that the deal included the gym on the top floor. We could try and get fit for our return to Antigua and the…

Volcan Acatenango Hike:

Gid has had ‘climb a mountain’ on his bucket list since Alaska. I was not so motivated. I’d managed to avoid a couple of possible climbs riding down through the Rockies and wasn’t keen to change my resolve but Acatenango had added attractions. It came with a base camp sleep-over near the top, a view of an erupting ‘sister’ volcano, Volcan de Fuego, from our campsite and a follow up extra hours hike to the top for the sunrise views the following morning. Whilst it did look enticing we had hiked up the Volcan San Pedro to admire the views of Lago Atitlan two weeks before to a height of 3000m and I had struggled badly. Scary after a lifetime of breezing up things like that. Was I just unfit? Nine months of very little exercise sitting on a motorbike has to take it’s toll. (Gid has taken every opportunity to jump up and down, workout on the yoga mat and go for sporadic runs). Or was it the remnants of my cold and chest infection? Either way I was nervous of committing to a 4 hour plus hike, sold as ‘hard’, up a mountain to near 4000m. Gid was generally unaffected by our Atitlan hike but had foolishly not manicured his feet. The descent wrecked his big toes’ nails as his feet pressed against the front of his boots. The toe nails got infected, to the extent of seeing a doctor who prescribed intensive cleaning, antibiotics and no running for a week.

We enquired at an Acatenango hike tour operator before leaving Antigua and rather hesitantly booked up for two weeks ahead. A bit of breathing space for both of us. We could have a personal guide so could set our own pace, and private hut at the base camp so could have uninterrupted sleep and rest. Gid is very sociable so would miss the cameradie but that was the deal if I was to do it. That gave me two weeks to make some improvement on my health or fitness – laughable really. A good start was our Guatemala City AirBnB in a sixteen floor apartment building so up and down the steps was the first stage, the treadmill in the gym was stage two together with actually using my skipping rope which had started to collect dust. Out walking around Guatemala City for 3-4 hours each day must also have helped. Plus I bought some lightweight fabric boots – our Altberg dual purpose boots are comfy, grippy and robust, but very heavy for a long climb. Altitude sickness pills completed the preparations.

The day arrived. I had to keep my head focused, brain in gear – the next ten steps, the next ten minutes. Keep my head down. Don’t look up – I don’t want to see the bigger picture. Slowly but surely. We had regular stops and snacks but didn’t stop for long. Just keep plugging away. Our guide, Ezekiel, was fabulous. He started by telling us how many minutes it was to the next seated rest area. As we made progress he would tell us how much we had covered and how far to go keeping it all very positive. A stroke of luck was that our tour operator was one of two that had its base further up the mountain side (it has a small camping area, and is accessible by motorcycle). The others’ Ezekiel said were a further hour’s hike down the mountain side. On the climb I chatted to a couple of men and a lady who were on their way down. All three looked nearer our ages than the hordes of thirty somethings that seemed in abundance. The guys said, ‘It’s just a long slog, take it steady and you’ll be fine.’ The lady was equally encouraging. On we went. It was pretty much a dusty footpath the whole way up with some fabulous views – very steep in places and rocky clambering once or twice but nothing remotely technical. We made it in a respectable 4 1/2 hours, to ‘our’ comfy little shed with a fabulous view.

The following morning we made it up to the top. Not quite in time for the sunrise but we still had plenty of low light views. We had decided to have breakfast before leaving camp and taking all our kit so we could continue on our downward route from the top. This would enable us to take a less populated route down, and see different views. After a quick lesson in scree running down a mountainside we bounded down. The volcano’s outer layers are made of volcanic ash and ejected rocks, it’s very fertile for plant life, but also very uncompacted. At times the trail was eroded 3m into the soft surface – the trailside clifflets showed all the layers of successive events. The technique changed to little tip-toe steps down the steep loose sandy gravel. With only one slip between us both proved successful. There are some remarkably dramatic or epic youthful tourist (influencer?) descriptions of the hike online – it’s perhaps a lot harder wearing the wrong footwear whilst trying to Instagram at the same time. While we were both pretty knackered by the end, we weren’t as broken as after the easier San Pedro hike – the training, new boots, and toe care had paid off. In addition, Clare shrugged off a nasty attack of dodgy tummy that she had at the base camp.

Volcan de Fuego is famous for it’s very frequent low level eruptions – until 18th Jan 2025 – just three weeks before we arrived when it stopped. It has a long history of violent eruptions which resulted, back in 1776, in the capital of Guatemala being moved. Our masseur, a post walk treat/necessity, informed us that it hasn’t been so active over the last twenty years and now they are waiting to see if it’s building up for a big explosion or is actually dormant.

Luckily, girls in our neighbouring hut at the top of the mountain discovered that whilst we couldn’t see any glowing lava with the naked eye that night, cameras and phones could long-expose a red peak (they’re probably more sensitive to infrared than us). During the afternoon we’d been watching steam trails wafting up so knew something was happening. The night before, at 1:15am or so, a tremor had shaken our hotel bed in Antigua, a morning Google said it was 5.5 on the Richter scale. Something was occurring.

Guatemala – what have we missed? Well, it has to be said that our relatively unadventurous riding style means we didn’t make great loopy diversions amongst Guatemala’s mountain roads and tracks. There’s a lot of fun riding here for those with better skills and bodies. We felt it was too physically risky for us, even when we contemplated hiring lighter bikes and a guide. Even so, of the 90 days we’re allowed in the “CA4”, Guatamala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, we’ve spent over 40 days in Guatemala. Most of it stopped in cities.

Leaving Guatemala was a strange experience as we had been in cities and towns for weeks. The road to the border was back to rural. Vast expanses of wilderness, valleys and mountains but we were on a relatively busy road, and as is the norm in Central America there are very few places one can safely stop and take a few pics.

We try and take nice pictures, and occasionally succeed. I, at least, was really impressed by the postcard images by local Marino Cattelan (https://www.instagram.com/cattelanmarino/?hl=en). Lovely. Perhaps our own standards have slipped, or maybe we haven’t the time (great images rarely just happen).

Meandering through Mexico

Dec25

Mexico had such impressive pre-hispanic ruins that we gave them their own post. So what else did we do in Mexico? We certainly zigged and zagged. North and east of Mexico City to start with, then south to the Pacific coast, then north east again to Yucatan. Cheap, basic hotels are readily found in most small towns, but we generally pre-booked to stop in tourist hotspots.

After Mexico City and Teotihuacan, we travelled a short day’s ride to Real de Monte the Mexican home of Cornish Pasties and a British style graveyard dating back to the 1880s. Cornish miners were encouraged to travel the world to find work back in 1880s when Cornwall’s mining industry was collapsing. One intrepid group had arrived in Real de Monte. Families had packed up shipping everything from personal possessions to heavy mining equipment, and not forgetting the recipe for their prized pasties, to their new homes. The streets were littered with signs for Traditional Pasties, and we’d arrived amidst some kind of fiesta. It had to be done. We tried a few. My first mouthful almost reduced me to tears as the chilli, not a modest amount, scorched my mouth. I courageously swallowed it washed down with copious amounts of cold drink. Now my whole throat was on fire. ‘No chilli / Sin picante!’ became a new phrase in my Spanish vocabulary. Our Cornish friend, Tony, complained that they weren’t properly crimped. Neither were they limited to swede, tatties and mince. An interesting take was the rice pudding version. We tried a few others over the next few days.

Arriving in the town had been an interesting experience. Once off the main intertown route the streets were pretty much all cobbled. Garmin was navigating us to hotel accommodation which Gid often sorts out on-line, but had not this time. We would stop, he’d speak to the receptionist and a decision was made – yes or no. On this occasion, complicated by it being a bank holiday weekend, the first nice looking accommodation was deemed too expensive. We tried a couple of others which were full and ended up heading off out of the city centre. It was, naturally, rather warm, and compounded by the steep 45 degree cobbled lanes – a number of them being blocked by bollards necessitating a u-turn, or festivities linked to the bank holiday, I was getting rather fraught. Across the valley we’d seen an orange hotel halfway up the hill and headed for that.

Not so simple. The sinuous narrow roads were blocked by delivery trucks, the street names weren’t visible and who knows whether this road would actually go somewhere. The sat nav didn’t distinguish between the tiny streets and twittens with staircases. We ended up going far too high up the hill and clearly needed to head back down to find the orange hotel. Gid was leading. The road got quite narrow heading steeply downwards. I refused to go. Very quickly Gid realised it wasn’t such a great idea (steps, bollard) and was trying to u-turn. Nope that wasn’t going to work either. He accelerated at the grassy bank thinking that he might progress a little bit up it and then be able to roll back. Wrong! The front wheel went down not up, now he was stuck in the hole. I had to get off and help but was on quite a slope myself. I managed to turn my bike around by going into an entrance to my side. “Reception”, it said on the side of a rather grand looking building. Staff rushed out. They were keen to check my non-existent booking. I needed to help Gid. ‘Esposo stuck’, I repeatedly said pointing over my shoulder in a down the lane direction. Communication established two guys rushed off to pull Gid backwards. Minutes later he arrived by my side. After thanking the staff he asked me if we were going to continue looking for cheap accommodation. He must have seen the glare on my face as he conceded we were staying here, in possibly the most expensive boutique hotel in town. While there, Clare found that nearby was a rather exciting via ferrata course. She did (Clue: Photos not taken by Gid!).

Another box to tick was ‘the best roads in Mexico’. The Mex-175 was regularly near the top of the lists especially the section from Oaxaca down to the coast. Gid wasn’t that fussed about going to the coast but I was keen to ride one of Mexico’s top roads. Alex, in Mexico City, had told us it was through jungle which added to the intrigue. The road itself was a delightful mountain road, full of twisties some of them very tight. A little unsettling was the contrast between the bright sunlight which was at times dazzling and being plunged into darkness as we cornered round the base of another ravine especially as the road surfaces are very unpredictable with ruts & ridges, gravel & gullies, pot holes and generally broken surfaces in the mix. Not to mention topes (speed bumps), which vary considerably from signed, smooth sloped, rising mounds to severe unmarked, abrupt, high lumps.

Later we were on the Mex-190 which I think I preferred. The road surface was generally a lot better and the bends were more sweeping meaning we could maintain a higher speed throughout the twisties. The, at times, frequent cow on a yellow warning sign had vanished with a slinky big cat replacing it. Later came an explanation – you might see one of Central America’s last remaining big cats but it is illegal to purchase a jaguar the signage declared. Sadly we didn’t see one.

Pot holes which locals sometimes very kindly fill with anything from leaves and sticks and more usefully small rocks are everywhere. Cones are not unknown in Mexico, but absent officialdom, locals put rocks out, sometimes even painting them, usefully marking subsidence at the edge of the road. The lack of any such notification on a section of subsidence caused Gid a flutter or two when he nearly took the nearside round one “pothole” only to discover that the road was completely missing. The road had subsided down a small cliff. We’d just passed subsidence on the opposite side of the road with an approaching car not far from it. The height difference was about a foot which would have hit the undercarriage of most cars angled between the two. I wondered how the approaching car was going to handle it and had luckily taken the higher section when we hit the same problem going round a mountain bend. In quite a few places, the villagers seem to dirt-fill potholes in the village, then stand in the middle waving a hat for change. This also happens by a tope, or, they put cones out to bring the traffic to a near halt. Unfortunately, a motorcycle doesn’t have a change pocket (HD or BMW might, electric of course), so we don’t contribute. Similarly we leave unremunerated the occasional jugglers, snack sellers and screen wash merchants at traffic lights.

It can be tricky to get the correct balance between making progress and going slowly enough to avoid all the pot holes, especially when dappled shade makes the surface hard to see. It’s far better to be some way behind the vehicle in front especially through towns but not always possible because, inevitably, as a gap appears someone will overtake and fill it. Among days of biking we’re going to get it wrong somewhere. On one such occasion Gid hit a large hole at speed, the front suspension and tyre both bottoming out. He yelped! The bike felt ok but he could see the fork legs vibrating from 50mph – the cruising speed for these roads & bikes. At an approaching village we stopped for lunch and to asses the damage. Yep, he’d flattened a section of his rim, with four loose spokes. The massive front tyre* looked unscathed, and the tube obviously hadn’t split. We decided we could limp on but Gid was obviously disappointed and concerned. He explained that there was a problem with his bike to the waitress who cheerfully said the mecanico de motocicletas was across the road 10 metres down a dirt lane.

Moments later we were in his yard amongst an assortment of relics and a jumble of tools straining our Spanish to explain the problem. “Si, ahora”. He could fix it, right now. Verily he did. Off came the wheel, then the tyre. Out came the dead-blow hammer. Bing, bang, bong. Fixed. Well almost. Gid tried to explain about the wheel balancing and the need to mark where the tyre was situated to be balanced on the rim. Such interference was politely resisted, but our man – Tito – was very careful to line up the bolts to show the order of reassembling. That worked well until one of his offspring, keen to be a part of the intrepid fixing of the European’s bike picked up Gid’s disc that had been carefully placed on a seat, bolts all in place and put it upside down on the ground. That part was reassembled but back to front. To be fair, it was very much a family affair as one person held this or that while dad walloped it.

This process got the rim all but circular. Unfortunately Gid had hit close to the balance weights, which Tito couldn’t replace, so didn’t take off, so that bit wasn’t hit and was still a little flat. Tito was sure that he could do a better job so into the workshop they went. The wheel was placed on a big bearing press and a jack wedged in to try to press the last flattened part into shape. The result was pretty good so the bike was reassembled. Tito took a considerable time, with the traditional screwdriver fixed onto the forks as a guide, to tighten the spokes so that the wheel ran true. And it did. It must’ve taken 2 hours, albeit interrupted by other things. We guess that straightening moto wheels must be pretty common on that road, and fortunately the Him’s are steel rims with spokes. The charge was very modest indeed, we tipped a bit, and later added him to Google maps and Open Street Map – his business was undetectable to the phone generation, which clearly included his daughter, who was inseparable from her device.

*Tyres: Dunlop Trailmax Mission, 21″. It has huge knobbles for highway and dirt, deep tread, and weighs about twice the stock tyre, or indeed most front tyres. We both commented on the bike’s loss of steering response when we put them on. But they’re versatile, tough (fingers crossed) and long-lasting.

At the coast we stopped at Zippolite, a wonderful Pacific beach resort. It’s also Mexico’s only legal nudist beach, and a dangerous one. No, no – it’s because of the rip currents, it’s not a place for much swimming or beach toys. The beach boys, on the other hand, were out in force (did you see that!?). We did a tiny swim – there sure were strong rips- but it was nearly sunset. Gid’s still wondering if he should have done his morning run along the beach starkers – but none of the other runners did.

Although Mexico has around twice the UK’s population, it is much bigger – each Mexican has, nominally, over 4 times as much space as a Brit. So there’s a lot of wild country and wildlife. From the Pacific we headed north to Frontera on the opposite, Caribbean Sea, coastline, and took a river trip into the Pantanos de Centia nature reserve. Our hotelier had a mate, that old chestnut, who appeared very promptly at our hotel door, introduced himself as Negro Chon, and outlined the deal. It sounded fine, just exactly what we were looking for and he could pick us up from the hotel. All of this was agreed from our hotel room.

At 9:30am promptly Chon was there. And so was his car! It hadn’t passed an MOT in the last 30 years. No self respecting scrappy would touch it! Gid, who’s normally quite particular about working seat belts, got in the front, relieved, I think, that the door did actually shut (allowing for a certain amount of visible daylight around the edges). I climbed in the back. The door almost shut. Thankfully it wasn’t likely to rain. I needn’t worry about seat belts – the attachment point didn’t exist nor was the seat actually attached. In fact the whole car, inside and out, was totally rusty, wrecked or ripped. Off we went. It did seem to work. Around town Chon was perfectly cautious but once on his local road he changed up a gear. Chicane Chon would have left any grand-prix driver in his wake the way he spun the wheel weaving left and right avoiding the pots holes, using the dust along the tree lined edge and back to the other side. The boat trip with his son-in-law was tame by comparison, but we did glimpse a croc – eeek! – and a multitude of diverse herons as well as other birds.

The next mission was another set of ruins, Calakmul, but this time in the jungle that covers the south eastern part of Mexico. The site is quite large, but isolated with a slow, narrow, jungle access road. Pootling along it, ocellated turkeys were little concerned about our bikes, and Gid glimpsed silhouettes streaking across the road, one probably a marmol or ocelot, and later we saw a grey fox. A day later, still based in the town of Xpujil, we visited some much smaller, quieter ruins. For 30 minutes we sat quietly on top of a small structure, at treetop height. To our right, a bat falcon polished off something more like a small chicken than a bat, and on a path ahead of us a grey fox lounged in the sun. Perfecto.

That evening we rode back down the road to the “bat volcano” and watched 3 million bats stream out of a cave at sunset. The second largest bat cave in the world. Talking to a Scottish couple at the event they exuded excitement about the cenotes they had been to. It had become a theme in their holiday to explore as many as possible. They were telling us the merits of this cenote over another. We’d not even heard of these sinks holes / caves, many open to the public to swim in, which are abundant in this area of Mexico. Yucatan is dry on top, but made of limestone, it’s riddled with underground watercourses, many quite near the surface. Cenotes are formed when the roof collapses. Many are connected, and scuba diving them is popular. Our new Scottish friends had said that they were often warmer than their hotel swimming pool. Our posada (inn) in Xpujil barely had a shower.

But first, we had to return the maybe 40Km to Xpujil. In the dark. We knew there were a few big dangerous potholes on this stretch, but at least we had ample time and knew where to go. It was still terrifying at times. In daylight, we observed that Mexican vehicle lights are quite random – all sorts of flashing colours, indicators/hazards used according to all sorts of strange thought processes, none of them in the UK highway code, brake lights left broken. At night – well, Mexicans driving at night either have very little or total trust to the gods, or fit huge LED lamps that only half of drivers dip. Even though traffic was light, it was scarey – statistics confirm that it’s a massacre. Our worst moment on this ride was when truck B decided to overtake truck A with us oncoming. The road there was actually quite wide enough to do this, but the b*st*rd didn’t dip his huge LED floods and didn’t indicate that it intended to pass (they never do). We were completely blinded as it pulled out into our lane and couldn’t see the road 2 metres in front. It had taken us a while to realise what was going on, because most truck drivers did dip, and the relative positions weren’t clear in the dark. We pretty much came to a scrambly halt, unsure if in front of us was ditch, pothole, or road. It confirmed that riding at night in these parts was a very bad plan.

On a brighter note we spent much more time on larger single-carriageway roads, but the excursions were more interesting. Two of the pictures are points where we gave up and backtracked: One road shown clearly on the sat nav shrank and shrank until it completely ended in a logging camp. Another road was flooded out for maybe 50 metres.

A bit of research had us concerned at the cost of entry to some of the cenotes. Undeterred Gid came up with an area close by that had a few. He picked one that we visited enroute the following morning. It was fabulous! We’d become a bit wary as two of our selected underground attractions in the area had been closed since Covid. One was a cave system with paintings the other was an underground water system. Both shut. The chosen cenote was open, cheap and not highly populated. We descended about 5m down a wooden stair, to water level. There were two small diving groups who disappeared downwards to explore the cave system joining it to other cenotes in the area but the surface space was pretty much clear, except for their bubbles. The natural lighting was beautiful clearly lighting the stalactites and different colours around the cave. A guy who seemed experienced at the qualities of different cenotes told me that this one was one of the best because it had crystal clear water and you, together with the fish, could swim about in it. He commented that some of them are rather pokey holes with murky water. ‘The ones nearer ground level can be cold’, he added.

Looking at our Mexican travels on the map, there’s quite a zig-zag, but now we were getting to the end of the road Mexico. We decided to stop for a couple of days to catch up the blog and plan next steps. The east coast of the Yucatan peninsular is more beach resort than history, scenery and nature. We chose Tulum. Tulum the town had every tourist facility at a US price, but we found somewhere cheapish. After a stroll around Tulum’s small, but very scenic ruin, one of the few in Mexico to have been walled, we wondered down to the beach. But the sun went on strike at the sight of Gid’s bethong’d behind. Overnight it poured down with warm rain and into the next gloomy day which didn’t clear until the following afternoon making it perfect for updating the blog.

Wanting to finish this leg of our trip with something more Mexican we set off along the back roads and were rewarded with many rural villages. We had hoped to stay in an isolated nature reserve at Noh-Bec where we might see the elusive jaguar but the rain thwarted us.

Not able to make it to Noh-Bec, Bacalar, a low budget traveller town on a big freshwater lagoon, became our final Mexican stop. The signage on the board walk notified everyone that swimming was fine but stay 3m away from crocodiles and not to feed them. At the other end of the town the fort, Spanish built back in 1729 now a museum, was very informative. It outlined the succession of invaders from the Spanish perspective. In the mix was Sir Frances Drake. Whilst the text acknowledged that Queen Elizabeth 1 had given him a knighthood, to the Spaniards he was no more than a bandit.

Let’s sign off the Mexico blog posts with a reminder of Mexico’s colours.

And so to Belize…

From One Ruin to Another

Dec14

Getting back on my feet after a mad dash home to the UK for a week we ticked off some of the sights in Mexico City. The Anthropology Museum was great as it gave us an outline of the country’s past and the main civilisations that had ruled. Most Brits have heard of the Aztecs and Mayans (and Spaniards), but how about the Mixtecs and Zapotecs? The succession of dominant peoples, spread out over 3,500 years and a huge area make for far more than one history. But, the pre-hispanic architecture is rather consistent, and what’s survived often involves pyramids and carved relief panels. Here’s a few things dug out and displayed in CDMX and Oaxaca museums. Curiously, the reliefs are always highly stylised, but quite a lot of the pottery sculptures are recognisably human – an old canoeing acquaintance, a neighbour, and the 80-00s labour politician Robin Cook were all visibly there, in ancient clay. Creepy.

The first ruins we saw were right in the middle of Mexico City. To be exact, the Spanish had left the flattened remains under some houses and a square. The Aztec Great Temple was a compact site next to the cathedral – guess where the stones in that came from – that we mooched round in an hour or so. It was a bit like Roman ruins in the UK: Not actually that much left to see. The wall of skulls is impressive, but they’re carved, not real. Human sacrifice really was part of the deal in the Mesoamerican civilisations, in all sorts of contexts.

From there we headed North. Not progressing the mission again, but we were assured the Pre-Hispanic Ciudad of Teotihuacan was not to be missed.

We arrived at Teotihuacan mid afternoon having walked there from our posada (inn) in the village. Wow! It was huge – up to 200,000 had lived there at its peak more than 1500 years ago. We were asked if we wanted a guide that would whizz us around in a buggy. After all, he said, ‘It took three hours to walk around the exterior.’ Undeterred we set off on foot. Before long we’d gravitated towards the middle where, The Avenue of the Dead, a broad expanse edged with steps and structures to the sides. This avenue leads up towards the Pyramid of the Moon situated at its end sitting there beneath the Cerro Gordo hill. The Sun pyramid, now considered to be dedicated to the Rain god, Tlaloc, because it was build on a lake, had a moat around its base and four children buried one at each corner, which are all traditional for the rain god, was slightly off to one side of the Avenue of the Dead. We wandered across the grassy plaza towards the pyramid where a cute little snake shot out from near Gid’s foot.

We revisited the following day. This time perusing the site’s own museum which, as well as outlining the history of the site was full of artefacts discovered there, before starting at the base of the Avenue of the Dead. We slowly made our way up the centre taking various excursions to wander around and look in the ruins of the multi family complexes along the way – in awe at the size of the place, estimated as the sixth largest city in the world in its day and how it had collapsed so quickly at its end, around 550CE, having been established in the first half century BCE. The site predates the Aztecs, but nobody is sure who exactly was responsible for it. It was UNESCO listed in 1987. It has many visitors, and possibly even more souvenir sellers and guides. The souvenirs are often attractive, but on motos, we have to resist excess baggage – and dusting once we get stuff home!

The next on the list was the Great Pyramid at Cholula, with the Catholic chapel on the top. We were full of anticipation for the Great Pyramid and could see the church on top from our hotel window which presented us with the opportunity of getting the classic photo – the church with the volcano in the back ground, albeit with a few tin roofs in the foreground. What a disappointment the pyramid was. It was more ruinous than Teotihuacan which had set the standard. It is the site of 5 pyramids built one on top to the other which detracted from the ability to get a good idea of the structure of any of them. There was very little in the way of signage or diagrams showing how one pyramid interacted with the next. There are tunnels underneath which may help to see the structures but these are now closed to the public as is climbing up steps outside. And, a grumpy, thuggish-looking Mexican (well, we assume he was Mexican!) wanted to charge Gid 15 pesos for the Baño – the going rate across Mexico is 5! So, it is our least favourite ruin.

Palenque was next on the list. We decided, as usual, to leave the bikes in the safety of the hotel ‘private’ parking and catch a ‘collectivo’ (shared taxi) to the ruins. One appeared almost instantly as we reached the kerb but had the wrong destination displayed. Clare’s Spanish managed ‘No, gracias, ruinos’, where upon he whipped down the sign and stuck up ‘Ruinos’. Sorted then. We jumped in. Another well developed site: Much of the ruins are roped off to stop visitors clambering everywhere (which seems fair enough – sandstone and old stucco are quite soft). The ruins were beautiful and in a good state of repair. The excavated ones, that is. The site is huge, and only a small proportion has been dug out of the jungle. The sites we’d seen before had been in drier terrain, but this was definitely jungle. One big structure had an area open to the public to go and look at the tombs inside. The queen and her ladies in-waiting, situated on either side, each had a tomb. Waiting on the queen must have seemed like a good job until she died. King Pakal’s mausoleum remained closed – though we’d descended into the reproduction in Mexico City, at least, Gid had.

Calakmul – With zero budget accommodation nearby, it took us 1 1/2 hours to ride to the site from our hotel in the nearby town of Xpujil. We had failed to read, at the bottom of the sign in our room, that it was currently shutting at 13:00. Neither of us had noticed it on any of our other research. Gid stumbled across the information when downloading a site map as we were setting off out of the door. With the 90 mins to get there we’d have 90mins at the site. We decided to do it anyway.

The site hit the to-do-list because of its isolated location and the fabulous views across the top of the jungle. We were allowed to climb all over these pyramids unlike the more famous sites but we didn’t have much time there compounded by the weaving route in the jungle to find the ruins.

Chicanna – built around 850 AD. One of hundreds, if not thousands, of minor sites, this was no honeypot. We overlapped with one other tourist, and there were maybe three staff – no souvenirs. The Mexican government, as always, charged a very reasonable ~100 pesos to get in (about £4). A fabulous place. They were a much smaller set of pyramids than the other sites we visited. We read the signage and scampered (carefully) all over the ruins. For 30 peaceful minutes we sat on top of a small structure, at the height of the top of the jungle. To our right, a bat falcon polished off something more like a small chicken than a bat, and on a path ahead of us a grey fox lounged in the sun. Perfecto. Then in the evening we rode on to the “bat volcano”, and watched 3 million bats stream out of a cave at sunset.

Chichen Itza – was a different ball game (and has a huge ball game court). Being another one of the biggies and our arrival being at the weekend we joined the queues to access the carpark and again for the entrance. The entrance, gasp, was 800 pesos each, mostly a state tax (but the roads have improved). The site was good though. Being one of the later cities to have been built by the Maya corresponding with late classic and early post classic periods many of the reliefs are in good condition. Perhaps its jungle environment has helped. Stairways and interiors were roped off of course, but well kept, well labelled, and impressive. And walkable from our cheap but comfy posada – very convenient. This is in the north of the Yucatan peninsular, and the foreign tourists were less the previous well-covered elderly culture vultures, and more young holiday makers. Many were Mexicans as sites are free, or much cheaper, on Sundays, if you are a resident.

Tulum – a little gem by the ocean. We’d stopped a few days in the resort town of Tulum, just to catch up with ourselves and do a little planning. The ruins are picturesque rather than impressive. At this late stage of Mayan culture they were concerned with walling the town for protection, rather than impressing folks with pyramids. It would still have been a fine town when the Spaniards saw it in the 1520s, but this was a more modest culture than before, at least, its stonework was. The beach on our brief visit was glorious. The Caribbean Sea warm, clear, and blue, the sand white and powdery. But the sun went on strike as we arrived, declining the opportunity to toast Gid’s bethong’d behind. Tulum the town had every tourist facility, but often at a very “western” and expensive price.

Our tour of the ruins was interspersed with a few other distractions and adventures along the way, but there are so many ruins that are so photogenic that they deserve this posting on their own. We post this as we leave Mexico, but the Mayan civilisations extended far further south, so we’re not ruin’d out yet…

Mexico City

Nov26

From La Paz, on the end of the Baja California peninsula, we were heading for Mexico City (CDMX), because Clare unfortunately had to return to the UK for a week, on family business. We’d normally avoid such a big city, but it offers direct flights to London, and a couple of young Aussies we’d met in California said it was great fun. ‘Not to be missed!’ So, there we go. The ride started with an overnight ferry from La Paz to Mazatlán on the mainland. It was ok, but “bring your own tiedown straps” was a PITA. However – Be Prepared – we now have them for our next ferry crossing.

We took a pretty direct route from the Mazatlán ferry dock towards CDMX. UK FCDO recommended against going into some areas on the way, because of the threat of violent crime, which in turn meant our travel insurance would probably be null-in-void, even if a problem wasn’t crime related. Thankfully the toll roads are considered safe. We took them. They did indeed feel safe but stunningly boring. They’re big modern roads. The traffic is light, largely trucks – time is money – but Mexican trucks are rarely fast. Our Himalayans gleefully overtook them. Moto tolls seem modest until at the end of the day we realised we’d spent twice as much on tolls as fuel (fuel being roughly £1/litre). Ouch! Once in a FCDO “safe” area we took the normal roads as Mexican towns and villages are often vibrant and lively but the famous topes (speed bumps) and potholes need constant attention.

We did it in four days: Day 1 ended in Tequila (yes, it is! No, we didn’t), the local hills blue with the agave farms. Day 2 ended in Morelia. Not internationally prominent, but a lovely old centre to this provincial capital, so we spent day 3 there too.

Finally, on day 4, getting into CDMX was tedious, especially as we forgot to allow the satnav to use motorways. We wound our way round back streets in a very tedious fashion. CDMX is one of the worlds big cities – over 9 million people in the city itself, 23 million in the conurbation. But we got to our very nice CDMX apartment around sunset.

Our rather smart (think yuppie) accommodation in a block with 24 hour concierge and gated car park was in a modest neighbourhood. Busy, often tatty or improvised little shops and street food, lined these streets together with moto wrecks. But it really buzzed, enterprise was everywhere, broom laden folks kept it clean, the streets throbbed with traders.

It was a short walk to the supermarket, motorcycle workshops, and other useful things. I even availed myself of the local scrap metal merchant to replace a missing pull-up bar in the apartment (supplied & cut to length for $1). A longer stroll would get us to the Royal Enfield dealer, in the lower floors of a smart retail development – they even had one of those destination cafes, although perhaps wisely, it was associated with Ducati and Piaggio, not RE (but Chai would be nice!)). Naturally the city centre tended towards the posher end of things, but most places didn’t feel exclusive.

The city quickly grew on us. As our walks grew in length we started using the very diverse public transport. CDMX must have some rough areas, and times, but everywhere we went was busy and felt safe. CDMX is also crawling with diverse police forces, and when I went into a big car/moto parts place to buy some lamps, I couldn’t help noticing the security guard toted a shotgun – it was nearly as long as she was tall. Establishments of any size have security, although usually not so heavily armed.

At the end of our street, a single railway line ran diagonally across the grid of streets. I only ever saw one train on these tracks – a big loco very slowly pushed a few big hopper waggons. On the front of the first waggon, three workers perched, whistling and hollering to anyone who might be in the way. They not only at the diagonal junctions, but also along the track, as the railway’s spare space to the sides had recently been made a “parque linea”, with a pavement one side, and a cycle track the other. I found it a great route to go for a morning run, flat, easy to follow and not too busy. Turn at the Soumaya art museum for 5Km run, or Temple Wok for 8km. It took some acclimatisation though: CDMX is at 2,200 metres. If I connect the diagnostics to the bike, air pressure is reported as 11psi (sea level is nominally 15psi, although the air filter reduces it to 14.5). So it felt like hard work. I didn’t much trouble the numerous outdoor gym installations. And the hopper waggons? They were heading for the giant Corona Cervecaria’s gates. Must be barley, or collecting the spent grain.

La Dia de los Muertos

Unusually for us, we actually planned for The Day of the Dead, and arrived in time to enjoy the festival, before Clare flew home. It’s a visual and aural spectacle, so we’ll leave it to the photos…

Parade

Parade.

In the City

Apart from ruins, the oldest buildings are imperial Spanish, together with later ones from different republics or briefly the Mexican empire. They’re generally pretty ornate, going on florid. Many now crumbling, many in use and often cherished, especially churches. Above them gleam typical late 20th/early 21st century skyscrapers of glass. Much as any big city nowadays, although CDMX has many more vacant lots or little used old shells than London.

CDMX is also full of motorcycles. Mostly quite small, locally manufactured, all that’s needed for urban use. But there were quite a few bigger imports too, which made it easy to find somewhere to get the messy parts of the bikes – 18,000 mile service now done.

The aussies were right – it’s a great city. And that’s with us oldies eschewing the bars and nightlife.

Entering Mexico – Baptism by Fire and Paper

Oct22

We’d spent the previous afternoon filling in the forms at the campsite. Gid’s android translated the info into English. Mine didn’t. I felt as though I was signing my life away with a blindfold over my eyes. He was feeling challenged with his own form and didn’t need me constantly quizzing him. We finally got there. Paid up, two forms. Copies of this, copies of that. But one of them said we needed a paper copy and please arrive at the border with it. We were crossing the border on a Sunday and suddenly we needed a paper copy.

On the way out of our Palomar campsite we’d called into the local convenience store. The part time lady cheerfully said she’d ask the manager for a print as they did have a printer. It all seemed quite hopeful. The manageress arrived flushed and in a considerable flap. ‘I do wish you hadn’t offered to do this,’ she admonished her assistant. Despite three heads trying to solve the problems it was not going to happen – passwords, signals, connections – the list goes on.

Gid was keen to try the few random shops we passed. I was more, ‘Of ‘cos they’ll let us in. Are they really going to send umpteen tourists away?’ One more failed effort just before the Mexican border left us with no option. We progressed forwards. It all seemed very relaxed. There were a few officers there in uniform but they just waved us through. Gid exploded. ‘We can’t just go through. We need our paperwork stamped and the bikes need to be registered.’ He conveyed this to one guy who casually pointed to the office at the side and told us to go through the barrier and come back to do the paper work!

The Mexican immigration office was to the right on a one-way street. With no access to it we had to park further down the road and walk back. The señor in the office was very patient as we tried to locate, from among the umpteen forms we’d saved, the ones that he wanted. We emailed them to him so that he could print them out. Stamped and dated off we went. The vehicle importation was equally trouble free once we’d sorted out which paperwork equated to which bike and whose it was. Our recently hard-won, but very elementary Spanish hadn’t really been challenged, but it had had a little outing.

In. Now we needed some Pesos. Going down the main drag I spotted an ATM sign. We pulled in behind a car. Gid jumped off his bike and in he went. Moments later un hombre policia appeared pen in hand opening the pages in his ticket book. He pointed to the writing on the side of the kerb and said what must have been, ‘No Parking’.

‘Un momento, Un momento,’ I cried, calling to Gid through the intercom that he was about to get a parking ticket.

‘I’ve just put my card in, I can’t come now,’ he anxiously replied.

The policia was gesticulating that Gid’s bike needed be to moved. I indicated that I would move it. But of course as I swapped bikes mine was now illegally parked. I was trying to wiggle Gid’s bike round mine when Gid reappeared. Thankfully the policia seemed to despair of this comedy act and walked away. Two bikes two riders, money, we were off.

As we set off down the road Gid informed me that a high proportion of the population have never taken a test. Pay a little extra and the licence was yours is what most Mexicans did. Somehow I was sensing that and the signage wasn’t as clear as we’d got used to either. There were stop signs used in the same way as in the US but the accompanying stop line had been erased – some of the signs had suffered over the decades of time. I ploughed straight through one. Thankfully no one was coming. Later we learnt that irrespective of red lights, Alto signs and what ever, ‘Get eye contact!’ before progressing, that’s the important thing. Things seem a little “loose” compared to the UK, Spain or USA, but it works on civility yet is not remotely in an Indian or Indonesian league.

Further down the road I was overtaken on the hard shoulder. A car just came careering past me on the inside. Wow! What was that? The next half hour was a sharp learning curve. The hard shoulder albeit much narrower than the road lane was regularly used to over take. One vehicle straddled the solid white line that demarked the hard shoulder while the overtaking vehicle straddled the central solid yellow line. All sorted then. One good thing was that as the hard shoulder served as a lane, of sorts, it wasn’t full of debris. The crap was piled high in the pull outs and off the side of the road. No $1000 fine here for littering.

Another surprise was the trucks passing along through the towns and along the highways with armed soldiers masked and in full uniform standing in the back. Regular check points along the roads also told of the extent of the drugs problem in Mexico, a lot of it driven by the trade over the border in the USA. The nearest we got to being searched was one bored pair of young military guys asking where we had come from and where we were going. Other vehicles, mostly northbound, had numerous inspectors with torches pawing all over their trucks. The bigger the vehicle the more extensive the search. We settled into the new regime. The road to Ensenada passed through a scenic wine making area, and wasn’t heavily trafficked – a great introduction once we’d worked out the hard shoulder plan.

Ensanada was our first destination, for very prosaic reasons. But it was a joy to visit. The internet-booked motel was just fine, and after months in the western USA and Canada we could again wander around a town. While none of the pavements were consistently flat it had a centre we could amble through enjoying the atmosphere. Gid could have stayed a few more days, but after all the delays I was keen to get on. The plan was to travel the length of the Baja peninsular, then ferry across to the mainland. Interestingly, it was two weeks before the famous Baja 1000 desert race. We decided not to enter.

We’ve visited Spain a number of times and the similarities here were stark. In some towns with buildings set back from the road, many things were broken down or in need of repair with the occasional thing half built while others had large murals and were brightly painted with bougainvillea adorning the walls. Whereas the western USA has almost everything in town concreted over, in the pueblos the road had a wide apron of dust – of course, everything was coated in it unless it moved.

We’ve travelled fairly extensively across the globe, and it was a pleasure to see again local, improvised, low key services along the road. Home made as well as printed signs are common, and as Baja California is both very sparsely populated, and not highly developed, sometimes we needed to see that “man with a can” gas stop, or the little stall selling burritos (we hadn’t even been entirely sure what a burrito was). And every café had a “wifi” sign – the wifi may well have been the most reliable service. There were many “proper” gas stations, but interspersed with can men whom we really needed at least once pricey though he seemed. Very sugary pop is also always available, more difficult is avoiding it!

Another change – to us – is an expected one. In the USA we tended to avoid the trafficked and expensive megopolises, and skip from scenic park to scenic park, camping. In the less developed parts of the world, there are fewer campsites, debatably less safe, and our pounds go a lot further. So we tend to reverse the pattern and skip between cheap hotels in towns. Cheap hotels here can be jolly nice, usually best not booked through a big website – local rates are cheaper. El Hotel Frances was a memorable 19th century historic building, in rather mid-western style (but of probably tropical hardwood), but most are pretty new, Hispanically concrete. None has yet approached in cost the San Diego campsite!

We still felt very wary of much adventure in Mexico and there’s only one main road down through the Baja peninsula which was generally ok, two lanes, little traffic, and relatively few slow bits through pueblos. Occasionally it was a pristine new surface but at times a pitted pot-holed mess – no worse than our home town in the UK, but that’s not a 60mph road. On our Himalayans we didn’t need to lose much speed to plough through whatever the road surface threw at us. Along the grotty sections we even overtook some cars and trucks. We passed a road repair team on a couple of occasions. It was a truck loaded with tarmac and some spades. The truck stopped. Out jumped the team. One filled the hole, another raked it flat while a third flagged the approaching traffic. All sorted. Move on. They had their work cut out! More dangerous than the overtaking, and the potholes, was probably the occasional livestock, rare in the first place, that had gotten out of the fenced ranches and now munched at the roadside.

But plenty of the roadside was also lovely to look at, and especially in the north, quite curvy with fabulous views.

The country side we passed through changed from sparsely covered desert to a rich environment with many desert plants thriving. Despite my resolution to not camp in Mexico on the grounds of personal safety we did camp at Cataviña. We’d just passed a police station next to a deserted motel when we came across a small community: a campsite with two motorbikes and a tent inside a perimeter fence, opposite a taco shack and a fuel stop. Encouraged by the gated entrance and bikers already camping we went in and were enthusiastically greeted. We were staying then. Alexandros spoke reasonable English and encouraged our efforts in Spanish. He’d also done the southern half of our planned trip and gave us the book he’d written pointing out the pages that recorded his crossing of the Darien gap. ‘Three weeks for the bikes,’ he said. ‘Three hours by plane for us.’ We spent a fabulous evening sharing tales. A surprise bonus was the campsite’s tour of the desert by truck to see the painted caves just up the road and off in the desert.