July 29
I don’t think I ever actually wrote the name of where were last night - right in between Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz, whose motto is “La Tierra de Inmortal Sandunga”, or “the land of the immortal sand dunes”. They are pretty epic… They look like mountains that were blown up and sand poured out. There is a mirador (view point) from in town in Salina Cruz, but if I do say so, the view of them was much better when we got to see them hundreds of feet above as we rode in from the west :)
Lovely easy breezy day to Santo Domingo Zanatepec. ~120 km away, an easy amount of kilometers. And the crop of today was wind turbines. Probably a 50 km stretch of them. Go Mexico. This part of Hwy 200 is very flat, but the views of the mountains were spectacular. And lots of white ibises. And a few rounds of “One Less Lonely Girl”. And we saw one gringo today! We made up a great narrative about him, he is a wind turbine engineer and he keeps a place in Oaxaca.
Found Hotel San Rafael with no problem and we were unpacked and walking around town by 2:30. The school, the cemetery, the chickens, the perros, the houses, the “construction”. The sounds and smells and puddles. A paved road intersected by a cobblestone mess. Just lovely.
On the walk back to our hotel (which is awesome! it has hammocks outside every room, AC inside every room, and is $280 per night) we found Restaurante El Higo. No one was there, but there was music blaring. Are they actually abierto? Or just Bajabierto? There is a teenager sitting behind the enormous speaker. I ask if they are open, she says yes, we sit outside. El Higo is just along Hwy 200 so there was heaps of good driveby fun, for both us as the people-watchers and the Mexicans as the gringo-gawkers. We order two beers first and don’t get served a menu. But there is a sign out front (neon pink cardstock, written with Sharpie) that advertises “Tacos de Cecina”. Ok! We will try some of those. We have had diarrhea for three days and we haven’t eaten any restaurant food in three days (since the chicken of shame). So if we are going to have diarrhea regardless, we might as well have restaurant food! We order five tacos (two for me, three for Ernesto). They are delightful. That pounding and chopping sound we heard during the 20 minutes it took for the tacos to arrive was her chopping fresh onions and cilantro and “tortillas hecho en mano” (making tortillas by hand). It didn’t take long to decide we needed more tacos. I need at least two more, and Ernesto thinks five should do. So we order seven more tacos. A total of 12 tacos. Truth be told, I could have eaten two more, and Ernie says he could have eaten at least three more, but best not to push our luck. By tacos-round-two the rain had arrived, but we were comfortably protected under the tin roofed porch of El Higo.
Soo… as we have been researching more about Central America we have come to learn we have made another mistake… It appears we will need our moto titles. Given the headache I had before we left Portland about my moto title, we now had experience on our side to know that getting a new/replacement is more difficult than getting a new/replacement passport. We googled, asked some folks… decided our moto registration was enough and we did not need the titles. Oops. BUT, da na na NAH. Enter Tonya, our dear dear friend Tonya… she has collected our titles from our Prescott house and is going to FedEx them to us. We have to pick a town with a corporate hotel, hopefully we will arrive to said hotel on Monday, she will mail, the envelope will arrive one to ? days later, then we’ll drive to the border the day after we get the titles… This could easily be a week hiccup, but we will make it work. I wonder which will be cheaper… overnight shipping from Portland to Tapachula? Or a round trip flight from Tapachula to Portland?
July 30
~175 km rainy ride to Pijijiapan, Chiapas (our ninth and final state in Mexico). The town is pronounced Pee-hee-hee-ah-pawn. Hee! Our attempts to blend in with a town’s people and places again failed miserably this afternoon. But it was still nice to explore, trip a lot on curbs, get honked at incessantly by taxis, catch up on the latest fashion and shoe prices, and eat a few tacos.
We experienced a major change in scenery today. Montane jungle was off to our left (or NE) most of the day, and during a few bits we got to drive through it. Thick and lush, every shape of leaf you can imagine, hot and humid and thick clouds. I know the reality is that the clouds are low and hug the mountains, but I like my version better which is that we have climbed so high and gained so much elevation that we have made it up to the clouds. Once we entered Chiapas, Hwy 200 opened up into four lanes, which is very luxurious! I’ve haven’t written much about this, but down here you need to watch behind you just as much as in front of you. Which goes against everything I learned about moto riding. Down here, unless there is no one around, you don’t get the whole lane. At any time someone could turn in with you, pass you, share with you, etc. Every moment I’m looking behind me is a moment I’m not looking ahead of me… so with hazards in both directions communication is key. Ernie always leads, so half of his communication to me everyday is the road hazards ahead (potholes, unmarked speed bumps, etc.) and half of my communication to him every day is “car passing” or “truck passing”. Why? Because they don’t actually pass AROUND you via the on-comming lane, they just sort of shove you off to the right hand side of the road. So it's much safer if you prepare and get out of the way. This is especially true for on-comming traffic, as there is a mutual agreement between both sides of the highway that the middle of the road (or straddling the yellow line) is for whomever happens to need it at that moment… so just hang off to the side/in the shoulder if possible and hope there are no rocks or potholes there. I can honestly say that I never thought I would describe a divided four lane highway as “luxurious”, but it is.
Our snack break today happened to be by one of the pedestrian overpasses. We’ve been seeing these things ever since we entered mainland Mexico, but haven’t ever seen a person on one, nor had we been up one ourselves. They are often in kind of chaotic areas where it wouldn’t have been easy to pull over. I took advantage and walked up it. It was quite sketchy. The stairs were unreasonably steep. There is no way that some slow grandma or pack of children would be safer on those stairs than if they just slowly walked across the highway. Why is everything in Mexico just a little bit dangerous? They even figured out how to make pedestrian crosswalks dangerous.
On our walk back to the hotel this evening we got a visit from the policia. Was rather humorous - they wanted to be sure us gringos knew if and how to call in the first sight of trouble. Mostly I think they were bored and wanted to visit.
A final thought of the evening… the concept of clean and dirty and laundry have been redefined since established campgrounds have no longer become “a thing” (and when we were camping, everything was just dirty all the time). Ernie and I both packed two sets of “warm things” and two sets of “cold things”. Four “outfits” total, if you will, two for each season. Most of which is quick dry, but not quick dry enough to dry in a few hours if we want to go explore in town without stinking of our terrible stink. In this weather, there is really no point trying to clean dirty clothes for another dirty day (exception being skivvies, which we have four pairs of), so instead of two outfits we seem to have one “clean” outfit and one “dirty” outfit. The clean outfit gets put on after dinner, after a shower. And the dirty outfit gets put on every morning before we pack up the bikes. Man… my dirty shirt is so dirty… the smell is fascinating at this point. Ernie’s too. I’m a bit tired of the green however, so I’ll think I’ll rotate out which shirt is clean and dirty come Central America.
I don’t think I ever actually wrote the name of where were last night - right in between Tehuantepec and Salina Cruz, whose motto is “La Tierra de Inmortal Sandunga”, or “the land of the immortal sand dunes”. They are pretty epic… They look like mountains that were blown up and sand poured out. There is a mirador (view point) from in town in Salina Cruz, but if I do say so, the view of them was much better when we got to see them hundreds of feet above as we rode in from the west :)
Lovely easy breezy day to Santo Domingo Zanatepec. ~120 km away, an easy amount of kilometers. And the crop of today was wind turbines. Probably a 50 km stretch of them. Go Mexico. This part of Hwy 200 is very flat, but the views of the mountains were spectacular. And lots of white ibises. And a few rounds of “One Less Lonely Girl”. And we saw one gringo today! We made up a great narrative about him, he is a wind turbine engineer and he keeps a place in Oaxaca.
Found Hotel San Rafael with no problem and we were unpacked and walking around town by 2:30. The school, the cemetery, the chickens, the perros, the houses, the “construction”. The sounds and smells and puddles. A paved road intersected by a cobblestone mess. Just lovely.
On the walk back to our hotel (which is awesome! it has hammocks outside every room, AC inside every room, and is $280 per night) we found Restaurante El Higo. No one was there, but there was music blaring. Are they actually abierto? Or just Bajabierto? There is a teenager sitting behind the enormous speaker. I ask if they are open, she says yes, we sit outside. El Higo is just along Hwy 200 so there was heaps of good driveby fun, for both us as the people-watchers and the Mexicans as the gringo-gawkers. We order two beers first and don’t get served a menu. But there is a sign out front (neon pink cardstock, written with Sharpie) that advertises “Tacos de Cecina”. Ok! We will try some of those. We have had diarrhea for three days and we haven’t eaten any restaurant food in three days (since the chicken of shame). So if we are going to have diarrhea regardless, we might as well have restaurant food! We order five tacos (two for me, three for Ernesto). They are delightful. That pounding and chopping sound we heard during the 20 minutes it took for the tacos to arrive was her chopping fresh onions and cilantro and “tortillas hecho en mano” (making tortillas by hand). It didn’t take long to decide we needed more tacos. I need at least two more, and Ernesto thinks five should do. So we order seven more tacos. A total of 12 tacos. Truth be told, I could have eaten two more, and Ernie says he could have eaten at least three more, but best not to push our luck. By tacos-round-two the rain had arrived, but we were comfortably protected under the tin roofed porch of El Higo.
Soo… as we have been researching more about Central America we have come to learn we have made another mistake… It appears we will need our moto titles. Given the headache I had before we left Portland about my moto title, we now had experience on our side to know that getting a new/replacement is more difficult than getting a new/replacement passport. We googled, asked some folks… decided our moto registration was enough and we did not need the titles. Oops. BUT, da na na NAH. Enter Tonya, our dear dear friend Tonya… she has collected our titles from our Prescott house and is going to FedEx them to us. We have to pick a town with a corporate hotel, hopefully we will arrive to said hotel on Monday, she will mail, the envelope will arrive one to ? days later, then we’ll drive to the border the day after we get the titles… This could easily be a week hiccup, but we will make it work. I wonder which will be cheaper… overnight shipping from Portland to Tapachula? Or a round trip flight from Tapachula to Portland?
July 30
~175 km rainy ride to Pijijiapan, Chiapas (our ninth and final state in Mexico). The town is pronounced Pee-hee-hee-ah-pawn. Hee! Our attempts to blend in with a town’s people and places again failed miserably this afternoon. But it was still nice to explore, trip a lot on curbs, get honked at incessantly by taxis, catch up on the latest fashion and shoe prices, and eat a few tacos.
We experienced a major change in scenery today. Montane jungle was off to our left (or NE) most of the day, and during a few bits we got to drive through it. Thick and lush, every shape of leaf you can imagine, hot and humid and thick clouds. I know the reality is that the clouds are low and hug the mountains, but I like my version better which is that we have climbed so high and gained so much elevation that we have made it up to the clouds. Once we entered Chiapas, Hwy 200 opened up into four lanes, which is very luxurious! I’ve haven’t written much about this, but down here you need to watch behind you just as much as in front of you. Which goes against everything I learned about moto riding. Down here, unless there is no one around, you don’t get the whole lane. At any time someone could turn in with you, pass you, share with you, etc. Every moment I’m looking behind me is a moment I’m not looking ahead of me… so with hazards in both directions communication is key. Ernie always leads, so half of his communication to me everyday is the road hazards ahead (potholes, unmarked speed bumps, etc.) and half of my communication to him every day is “car passing” or “truck passing”. Why? Because they don’t actually pass AROUND you via the on-comming lane, they just sort of shove you off to the right hand side of the road. So it's much safer if you prepare and get out of the way. This is especially true for on-comming traffic, as there is a mutual agreement between both sides of the highway that the middle of the road (or straddling the yellow line) is for whomever happens to need it at that moment… so just hang off to the side/in the shoulder if possible and hope there are no rocks or potholes there. I can honestly say that I never thought I would describe a divided four lane highway as “luxurious”, but it is.
Our snack break today happened to be by one of the pedestrian overpasses. We’ve been seeing these things ever since we entered mainland Mexico, but haven’t ever seen a person on one, nor had we been up one ourselves. They are often in kind of chaotic areas where it wouldn’t have been easy to pull over. I took advantage and walked up it. It was quite sketchy. The stairs were unreasonably steep. There is no way that some slow grandma or pack of children would be safer on those stairs than if they just slowly walked across the highway. Why is everything in Mexico just a little bit dangerous? They even figured out how to make pedestrian crosswalks dangerous.
On our walk back to the hotel this evening we got a visit from the policia. Was rather humorous - they wanted to be sure us gringos knew if and how to call in the first sight of trouble. Mostly I think they were bored and wanted to visit.
A final thought of the evening… the concept of clean and dirty and laundry have been redefined since established campgrounds have no longer become “a thing” (and when we were camping, everything was just dirty all the time). Ernie and I both packed two sets of “warm things” and two sets of “cold things”. Four “outfits” total, if you will, two for each season. Most of which is quick dry, but not quick dry enough to dry in a few hours if we want to go explore in town without stinking of our terrible stink. In this weather, there is really no point trying to clean dirty clothes for another dirty day (exception being skivvies, which we have four pairs of), so instead of two outfits we seem to have one “clean” outfit and one “dirty” outfit. The clean outfit gets put on after dinner, after a shower. And the dirty outfit gets put on every morning before we pack up the bikes. Man… my dirty shirt is so dirty… the smell is fascinating at this point. Ernie’s too. I’m a bit tired of the green however, so I’ll think I’ll rotate out which shirt is clean and dirty come Central America.