A Celebrity Week of Amazing Ruins, Brutal Speedbumps, and Fantastic RVers

Current Location: Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico
Distance Cycled to date: 8728 km
Number of Mexican television interviews to date: 1
Number of times we've been asked if we're twins in Mexico: At least twice a day, every single day. (Are they serious? We don't understand this at all - perhaps it's all the matching clothes)

The cool trip we envisioned has continued throughout Chiapas, as we have made our way out of the cosmopolitan, cool-in-every-sense-of-the-word city of San Cristobal, and down the mountains, into the jungle and explored some very awesome Mayan ruins.

Since leaving Puerto Vallarta, we have been following the blog of another pair of cyclists on their own adventure, heading from Pheonix to Panama. They seemed to be heading down the same route that we planned, so we regularily have been checking their blog in order to see what lies ahead. Their road descriptions have been great, and so we always knew when the big climbs would be coming. As we went along, we slowly were gaining on them, to the point where they would only supply us with a day or two's information. By the time we reached Chiapas we felt like we knew Jon and Britney very well - however, we had never actually contacted them, so they knew nothing of us. By the time we reached the orphanage we realized we were only a day behind them, and so as we biked to San Cristobal we talked about how funny it would be to be able to find them.

After we saw what a busy city San Cristobal is, we almost gave up - but, we kept saying, half jokingly that we have to keep our eyes out in case we see them walking down the street. As it turned out - we did. I ran out to catch them, calling them by name which caught their attention quickly. At this point I didn't really know what to say, but told them that we had been following them for quite some time. They were intrigued and perhaps a little frightened, but after I added in that my brother and I were fellow cyclists, we bonded like old friends. We spent most of the afternoon and evening with them, comparing notes and stories, and encouraging each other. To have experienced so much of the same thing makes it so much easier to appreciate how difficult some days are. (Although they don't seem to camp in ditches or on beaches nearly as much as we do - they seem to find hotels and eat in restaurants everywhere. We seem to be in a fairly exclusive class of extreme-budget cyclists).

They had decided to do a day-trip by bus to Palenque, and warned us of how terrible the road was, but we had already decided to cycle the route, and so we set off the next day while they were heading down the main highway towards Guatemala. We were fairly certain the highway from San Cristobal had to be mainly downhill, seeing as we were already over 2100 metres, and Palenque is under 100 metres in elevation - they laughed at our assessment, but we set out anyway. By the time we arrived here, we knew how wrong we were. We don't really know why, but they were 3 pretty tough days of biking. Up and down these mountains, and every time there was a stretch of downhill, these people put the biggest, most brutal speed bumps across the highway. You had to come to almost a complete stop to get over them if you wanted to avoid flying over your handlebars. It took all the joy out of going downhill.

However, while the actual cycling hasn't been that great, everything apart from it has been amazing. (It kind of makes you wonder why we're travelling by bicycle sometimes?) We saw our first Mayan ruins at Tonina, which were amazing. We were the first ones in, and climbed the pyramid and temples surrounded by fog all by ourselves for the first hour of the day. It was spectacular. Before leaving the town of Ocosingo, we were spotted by a local reporter for the state newspaper, and a local television station. He asked us a number of questions about our ride, and asked if we would do a short television interview for the evening news. We weren't the most confident in our Spanish, but we agreed, and he pulled the video camera from his backpack. Suddenly we had the camera focused on us, and both our comprehension and ability to speak seemed to disappear. We stumbled over our words, and in the end, we're not sure if we made any sense at all. We're pretty sure it was the worst television interview to ever be recorded - at least in the Spanish language. We would be very surprised if it didn't get voiced-over completely.

From Ocosingo we biked up and down some brutal hills in the hot, humid climate. For the very first time in Mexico, we started to feel that people didn't really like us. Always before this, everywhere we went people would call out and smile and wave - and suddenly, people were still calling out but they weren't words of encouragement anymore. The friendly smiles were replaced by sinister looks, and we found ourselves never wanting to stop, because we weren't very welcomed anywhere. We spent the night camping at the waterfalls of Agua Azul, where the unfriendly locals continued with subtle threats of needing to pay for "security" if we wanted to stay safe. Luckily, we met a couple from Ontario and another from Michigan who invited us not only to have dinner with them. but also to place our tent right under the awning of their RV where we would be safe for the night. Although we didn't sleep soundly, we didn't have any trouble, and left the next morning with everything we came there with.

We left Agua Azul, aiming for Palenque the next morning. Jon and Britney, our cyclist friends who thought the road to Palenque was trecherous, did however recommend the side-trip to Agua Azul. It was only 4 km off the highway, and did have camping available. However, they failed to mention the fact that those 4 km were the steepest downhill we'd yet encountered. Which was fine to end the day, but the next morning it took us well over an hour to climb those 4 km. It was not fun.

We made it to Palenque after cycling through more friendly villages. Smiles reappeared on children's faces, and we were met with many calls of "buenos dias" throughout the day. It was encouraging. We pulled into Maya Bell campground which came recommended from the RVers from Ontario the day before, and it was well worth the stop. We were instantly greeted with a celebrity welcome, with cameras flashing and questions coming from all angles. Our hands were suddenly filled with food, and before we could set up our tent we were told by 2 couples from Alberta that we wouldn't be staying in our tent tonight - they were so impressed with us that they were booking us into a hotel room there. We couldn't turn them down, and after checking in to our room, and enjoying a much needed shower, we were invited for dinner as well. (For 2 days in a row!) It was amazing to meet such generous people, again. The rain started for the first time since we got to Mexico, but instead of sitting in a soggy tent we were in a spacious room where we could dry off. The rain made the ruins a little less exciting for us - we hardly got to take any pictures at all, which is something that we really love doing - but even in the downpour the ruins of Palenque are still spectacular.

We know we keep saying how we're getting close to Guatemala, but this time we're serious. We really are finally getting close. It's only 2 more days from here to the border - however, because the sun came out today we decided not to leave as planned, and rather to write this blog entry, and possibly revisit the ruins to take some more pictures. It's pretty sweet stuff, and we wouldn't mind seeing it again. So as long as we don't do any more of these little additions, we really will be in Guatemala in a couple of days. We're aiming for Frontera Corozal, a little used border crossing where we'll have to take a boat across a river to enter Guatemala, so hopefully everything goes as smoothly as we've envisioned it. Maybe nice pavement once we're in the jungle of Guatemala as well? It seems like everything just works for us, so we'll just count on that continuing into new and unknown lands.