"Southern Mexico: From culture to coast...."

The following morning I packed the bike, programmed the GPS, (hoping it wouldn`t let me down navigating out of the city) thanked Garry for his hospitality and help and headed into the fray of Mexico City early morning traffic.

Having spent a few days there, I was a little more comfortable on the roads and very soon found the road which would take me eventually to my next destination which was the beautiful colonial city of Oaxaca. While I was researching the trip in England, I had come across a brilliant website www.brainrotting.com which documents by superb video footage, the travels and exploits of Graham Styles who has been on the road riding through the Americas for two years. He very kindly responded to my request for help and advice before I left England. He recommended Oaxaca very highly and so that was good enough for me! Needless to say, it was going to another long day in the saddle.

About 6 hrs later I rode into Oaxaca hoping that I could find a hotel quickly. After a long, arduous day`s riding the last thing you want is to do endless circles around a new town/city trying to locate the right hotel. By “right”, the criteria has to be, cheap, wifi, secure parking and preferably within walking distance of the centre to save on taxi fares. This time, the recommended Hotel Jimenez was easily located and fitted the criteria. Unfortunately, on many occasions,(this being one of them!), the promised wifi fails to function in the bedroom and so any internet communication more often than not has to take place in the hotel reception area. Just another minor irritation (or major one, depending upon how tired I am) that has to be endured on the road.




Oaxaca has an abundance of cultural influences and many activities were taking place around the central plaza. It was a great place to sit, sip on a beer and watch the world go by. Which was pretty much my “modus operandi” for the day. The evening brought its inevitable thunderstorms and the following morning my planned excursion to the famous Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban were under threat with even more rain and low cloud.

Monte Alban(“White Mountain”) was one of the main reasons for visiting Oaxaca and I wasn`t prepared to come all this way and not go because of the weather, so I ran across the road and bought an umbrella (another article to be somehow strapped to the bike from here on in!) and joined a small group of students for the short bus ride up the mountain. As a group we hired a local guide so as to get the most out of the tour. The site itself is amazing. The Zapotecs had somehow managed to completely level the top of the mountain to build their sacred site. It would be a huge undertaking today with countless bulldozers, how on earth they completed it in 500 B.C. is a mystery. They were certainly extremely advanced and had worked out well before Galileo and Copernicus that the earth orbited the sun and not vice versa, without the aid of powerful telescopes. A fascinating place.

That night I spent a pleasant couple of hours at my now favourite restaurant on the plaza and discovered a new Mexican beer, Bohemia Obscura! Not so obscure any more, and now my new Mexican beer of choice! While sipping my beer I was contemplating my route from here. My two options were to head north towards the Yucatan and take in the famous ruins of Palenque or to head south and to one of the beach resorts of the Oaxacan coast. I was tiring of the constant rain and decided to head for the coast and either Puerto Escondido or the small fishing port of Puerto Angel. The downside of heading south was the tortuous, winding mountain road that took 6 hrs to negotiate in ever increasing heat and humidity. By the time I arrived in Puerto Angel, I was too tired to ride another 40 minutes to Puerto Escondido and I settled for the sleepy fishing port instead. I quickly found a hotel right on the beach and despite the outrageous expense (£20 per night), I decided to treat myself and stay 3 nights to rest and recover and do nothing at all.



Nearly 4 weeks in Mexico and this was the first time I`d been to the coast. It actually felt like a brief holiday as I fell asleep that night to the sound of the waves lapping gently on the shore. However, my sleep was fitful, as often happens when I have something on my mind. The day I arrived I decided to have a quick check of the bike and discovered my rear brake pads were very worn. Obviously too much trailing of the rear brake on those hours of mountainous roads. Shit! As much as I`d tried to control my speed through gear shifting, I`d clearly over used the rear brake. O.K. now was an opportunity to change the rear pads having done the front ones in Hermasillo.

I know that all this stuff is a piece of cake for anyone with a modicum of technical ability, but it just seems to take on a task of bigger proportions in my imagination. I couldn`t relax until I`d completed the task successfully, so giving up on further restless sleep, I was up as the sun rose and down in the hotel restaurant area (where they`d let me park my bike for security). Having re-checked the procedure in the bike`s manual, I set to the task as the hotel staff looked on with curiosity. It seemed to go pretty smoothly and I just hoped that the pads wouldn`t be binding on the disc when I came to leave the following day. But for now, I was satisfied and spent the day writing, video editing and watching the fishermen plying their trade.

On my walkabout the previous day looking for the “cajero automatico” (ATM), I`d noticed a tiny little bar on the beach which was obviously the haunt of the local fishermen from the port, so decided to have a quick beer there. The bar consisted of a few scattered white plastic tables and chairs (the kind of cheap garden furniture you`d get from B and Q) and the barman, with mandatory dirty white vest and half smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth. I settled in a chair opposite a group of 5 local fishermen who were involved in a loud, animated, and clearly drunken discussion, and ordered a beer. I nodded across to them and raised my beer (thought it wise to ingratiate myself with the locals) when one of them staggered over to me and offered his hand,

“Mi amigo!” he slurred, with one of those drunken smiles, you know, the kind were their eyes are half closed like “Lord Charles”, the ventriloquists dummy!

“Si!”

“Mi amigo!” He said again, pumping my hand like a long lost friend. One of his friends smiled at me making a drinking motion with his hand as if I needed confirmation that he was drunk. One of the group spoke a little English and I spoke a little Spanish. There followed an interesting half hour while we conversed about his fishing business, football, the price of lobster, child support in the U.S. my “Journey For Hope” and what I thought of Mexico. Somehow, I think we all managed to understand most of what was said, apart from the drunk who spent most of the time hiccupping and chuntering , “Mi amigo!” as he emptied yet more bottles of cerveza. Having enjoyed practicing my Spanish and endeared myself with the locals with a few “Viva Mexico`s!” I waved goodbye to George, Jack, Raphael, Raymundo and the drunken one and wandered back to my hotel to prepare for my early departure the following morning.

The next major destination was going to be San Cristobal de Las Casas, but it was too far to do in one day and so I planned on making it to the major industrial port of Salina Cruz about 4 hrs ride along the coast where I would spend the night before the 6 hr ride to San Cristobal the next day. As with my stay in Santa Cruz, California, Salina Cruz sounded a much nicer place than it turned out to be. I arrived in the heat of the day and had difficulty locating the hotel I was looking for and then spent the next hour riding around in circles trying to find any hotel that was suitable, by which time I was losing a huge amount of fluids and was feeling very weak and dehydrated.

Eventually I had to pay over the odds for a place that was at best O.K. but by that time, I was just desperate for anything. I dragged my bags up to my room, got out of my sweat soaked gear, grabbed a quick shower and collapsed on the bed exhausted. After resting a while I took a quick walk around the centre and confirmed my suspicions that there really was nothing attractive or worth seeing in this most functional of towns. I headed back and busied myself with the incredibly tedious chore of editing and uploading video footage, this occupied the next 3 or so hours which were spent in the hotel`s restaurant as the promised in room wifi failed to function. After such a disappointing interlude I was eager to set off the following morning for what I hoped to be the beautiful old town of San Cristobal de las Casas