Day 14 - Goodbye Mexico

Here we go into the next part of our adventure. We cross into Central America tomorrow; Guatemala. Wonder how different it will be from Mexico which was relatively easy and fun. We mostly traveled down the Mexican Pacific coastline except for when we got far south to Chiapas when we headed up into the mountains. Our two favorite towns in Mexico were Zihuatanejo, a harbor town surrounded by hills, and San Cristobal de las Casas, mountain town in Chiapas. Loved them both!

We travel every day for most of the day except for two days that we took off……one beach day in Puerto Escondido and one extra day in the mountains of Chiapas doing a river canyon guided boat tour. We hope that we aren’t taking too many days off cause we don’t want to jeapordize our deadline for meeting our boat in Panama…..but it is so hard not to want to enjoy some of this beautiful country! We think we are ok though because we have already done 2,400 of the 4,000 miles to Carti, Panama and we still have half our time left.

Our travels have included many winding, curving roads which is slower going but great fun on the motos. Road conditions have been surprisingly very good. However, there are a lot of small towns to go through which are sometimes almost just a few miles apart. That really slows us down because of all the topes (speedbumps) in the towns. Our bikes take the topes like butter which is helpful. We have learned to just pass by all vehicles when approaching topes because we can take them so much faster. We have bottomed out on a few though and were really thankful for the heavy duty skid plates on our bikes.
The big cities we’ve gone through, like Acapulco, are a total shit show of vehicles and honking horns. No driving rules apply! Horn and gas pedal are the only essential equipment for driving. Passing vehicles going 80 mph on the windy mountain roads is just fun sport....but the city driving at 25 mph is completely hazardous! Despite these conditions though, this is very much a motorcycle culture and most drivers really are considerate of us.

We had read about roads being blocked sometimes for days by people protesting one thing or another. We thought we would at least make it to Central America before we experienced one…….but we ran into a protest in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The vehicles were lined up for at least a mile. It’s a good thing we had read online about how to handle this situation because we just drove up on the wrong side of the road to the blockade. Bruce walked up to the protestors and asked “Que pasa?”. They asked “moto?”. Bruce said “si” and they said “passe”…..so we got to ride our motos under the ropes and around the tire blockade and continue on. It was awesome.

We are slowly adjusting to the lingo. We ordered guac and queso at a restaurant the other day (thinking of hot, melted cheese for dipping) and the guac came but no queso. So we asked, “queso?” and the waiter pointed to a little dob of cold grated cheese on top of the guac. We laughed. We listen to Spanish lessons through our helmet Bluetooth speakers every day while riding.

Cost of traveling is inexpensive. Decent hotel rooms (except for the one with bugs on the shower walls) range from $25 to 40. Breakfast is $3.50 and dinner is around $5-$6. Most importantly, beer is $1 at restaurants. Gas is the only expensive item…..around $3 a gallon.

Here we come Central America....the belly of the beast!
MB and Bruce

Pictures below:
Riding the coastline of Mexico.

Mexican version of secure parking....riding our bikes into the hotel hallway in front of our room.

Pictures below:
-Mexican hotel for $35! Bruce looking for morning coffee in Manzanillo.

-Couchsurfing lodging pool in Acapulco. Malecon in Zihuatanejo.

Pictures below:
-Mariscos soup for breakfast. Everything had to be deboned, skinned or shelled (including the turtle eggs which i felt guilty about). It tasted amazing but was a lot of work to eat.

-Hotel in Puerto Escondido.

-Celebrating the Day of the Dead....Nov 2.

-Puerto Escondido beach.

-The people of San Cristobal de Las Casas in the Mexican state of Chiapas and Bruce enjoying a beer

Boat tour through river canyon in Chiapas. Monkeys and crocodiles included. The garbage that collected in certain spots on the river was startling to see in the middle of all the beauty. As Bruce says, there are such dramatic extremes here between beauty and blight.