1-1-10

Hmmm, that's the first time I've written the date in the new year, not sure if I like it, resembles binary code.

The ride to San Cristobal was one of the best I've had in the world.  The road was in unusually good shape and full of great banked turns.  What looked like an hour's ride on the map turned into 4 hours of laughing outloud in my helmet and pushing the bike and me to our limits.

The road went from near sea-level to over 2400m where the bikes were sapped for power.  Along the way it was interesting to see the changing surroundings.  Palm trees and humid jungle gave way to corn fields and pine trees.  Laborers walking on the sides of the road seemed to trade in their machetes for hoes and muck boots.  Up high the smell of pine trees as well as a faint latrine-like smell instantly brought back memories of Boy Scout camp.

We eventually made it to San Cristobal where I had my first contact with another vehicle.  A cab pulled out in front of me and I swerved to the right and missed him mostly but skipped my left pannier off his front bumper.  I quickly looked back and saw that everything was still there on the bike, claimed 'no harm, no foul' and kept going.

San Cristobal was great as Marcos had said.  It's very similar to Antigua, Guatemala where I spent some time earlier last spring.  It's full of colonial style architecture, cobblestone streets and vibrant colors.  It had several walking-streets with interesting shops and an abundance of amber shops which I thought was strange.  There was a huge zocalo with large trees and several impressive churches.  I also found the first good coffee shop of the trip, owned by a gringa who went to CU Boulder briefly.

The hostel I stayed at was one of the nicer I've seen and had a group of people who couldn't have been scripted any better to portray the stereotypical hostel crowd.  There was the permanently drunk red-headed Irish guy who I saw trying to do a hand-stand whilst trollied at 9 in the morning.  He ended up on his back in a flower bed moaning.  Then there was the old hippie dude who never took off his sunglasses and smelled of tacos.  We had an annoying gringa who spoke painfully loud in very crude Spanish as well as the scarf-wearing Frenchman.  There were the American newlyweds, the never-happy Israeli and the deep-thinking feminist who must have said the word 'culture' once per breath.

During the day we rode to Sumidero Canyon that was filled with water thanks to a 240m tall hydro-electric dam about an hour downstream.  They had erected a huge statue of the dam builder, wonder if I'll be getting one of those anytime soon. 

We hopped on a lancha with 14 others and cruised along at a good pace, our wake leaving the only clean path of water amongst the tens of thousands of bottle caps floating in the water. We were told that the caps haven't always been there (Oh really!?)  The guide's excuse was that the caps had been brought in by a recent hurricane which might be true, but regardless of their previous locataion they had clearly been carelessly thrown on the ground which is the norm here. 

The vast majority of people here litter terribly.  When whatever is in their hands is no longer of any value to them, they simply open their hand and walk away.  I see this over and over and it's frustrating. I'd think a group of  people who live so close to the environment would be better stewards of the land.  Guess not.

The New Years festivities were done in great Mexican fashion.  Firework fights were rampant, and not just with some tame Roman candles, these guys had the good stuff. There were two main groups with fireworkers who would launch and throw them at each other across the zocalo.  This was great to watch, with near misses bringing applause from the crowd.

Between songs the band made an announcement that Sara Mickleson, from Michigan, U-S-A should come to the stage to as her purse had just been turned in by some honest person.  Sara quickly made her way to the front where the lead singer looked at her drivers license then at Sara and asked her with the mic why she doesn't like the blonde haired girl on the ID.  Sara then made an absolute fool out of herself by leaning over to the mike and saying, "Mi caballo es diferente ahora." Meaning 'My horse be different now'. She meant to say 'Mi cabello esta diferente ahora' meaning 'My hair is different now' .  The crowd erupted in laughter, I wonder if she ever figured out what was so funny.

Later the Mexican verion of Achy Breaky Heart came on which worked the crowd into a frenzy just before midnight.  There were bottles breaking, people stumbling about, sparkler jousting...all the usual NYE affairs.  Oddly enough all but a few songs were in English, though. 

New Years day we rode back to Palenque on the great road we'd been over several days earlier, this time though it was in a heavy tropical rain.  We donned our rain gear, put on our clear face shields and slowed things down in the corners.  We stopped at some ruins whose name started with a T.... not sure what they were called but were the best I've seen thus far. They were huge and we were allowed to crall all over them.

We eventually made it back to Palenque and opted not to return to the hotel next to the creepy funeral director. 

We had another prison-like room with what we call 'caja en caja' construction (box in box) meaning that the room was a near perfect cube with no windows but is rather tall, maybe 14' or so which keeps things cooler.  Our bathroom is another concrete box in a back corner, roughlly 4'x6'x8'. Caja en caja.  The nice thing about this design is that no sound gets in which is important as there seemed to be a good supply of fireworks, sirens and horns outside when we walked in.

"No hay mantas" I exclaimed to Luis, pointing out that there weren't any blankets ont the bed, just sheets.  I quickly realized that they didn't provide blankets because it would be 90 degrees with maybe 80 percent humidity.

That night we looked at the map for a while and decided to ride straight through to Tulum, almost 500 miles away because we didn't find much worth seeing along the way.  It would be our longest ride of the trip, but still doable.