From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Before leaving Tuxtla, we went down the Canon del Sumidero in a boat. It was 30°C, and the wind from the boat was !!refresh!!ing. But it got hot when we stopped to take a closer look at the vultures, the crocodiles, and the m!!onkey!!s that live along the sides of the canyon and the steep rock walls that line it. At its highest point, the walls of the canyon go up 1000m!

We picked up the rental car – after a rigorous and extensive inspection. The Europcar agent took note of every single minuscule scrape and counted the number of floor mats (4), license plates (2), mirrors (5 – two exterior, the rear-view, and of course the two vanity mirrors on the inside of the sun visors!), and wrote down that the cigarette lighter was missing as well as the car logo from the back. We were already familiar with the roads in Mexico, and so it didn’t surprise us that much considering how they drive here.

As soon as Heather arrived, we headed up to San Cristobal. It was a very pretty, colonial town with a large Mayan population. Mayans are usually quite short. I’m not very tall and I felt like a giant! We walked all around the city and through the markets.

From San Cristobal, we drove through Chiapas, past residential areas of Zapatists, and arrived in Palenque. The road was bad and very windy, riddled with “topes” (speed bumps). We had quite a scare when we had to break suddenly after coming around a bend because some local residents had put up a make-shift roadblock. The wanted us to pay to go through, ostensibly for road clean up – clean up that the women in the group were doing by lighting grass beside the road on fire. We tried to explain that we never throw garbage out the window and that we shouldn’t have to pay for its clean up. We even showed them that we had a garbage in the car. They really didn’t want to let us pass so we took advantage of another car going the other direction to drive past the barrier. Since we started driving, we’ve seen many passengers throw all sorts of garbage out of their windows... and they are not tourists...

Later, just as the sun was going down, we came across the tell-tale reflective tape of another long distance biker. We offered to help him and we handed him some water. It was all that he asked for, and all that we could give him. But we know how much of a difference a liter of water and a few friendly words can make on a tough hill. We thought about going back to find him once we had arrived in Palenque, but the dark night and the thought of military road blocks put us off.

We really enjoyed the ruins at Palenque, despite the heat and humidity. After the windy roads of Chiapas, there were only endless straight lines that took us to the ruins of Becan and Tulum. We were pretty much the only other visitors at Becan (there were three other cars in the parking lot) and we got to climb up the pyramids. At Tulum though, it was a whole other story. It was tourism en mass and everything that goes along with that. The parking lots were full of buses whose AC units were permanently cranked and made a huge racket, and there were souvenir stores flanking the entrance way with prices marked in USD and where the vendors called out to us in English. Far from the ruins, in the town itself, it wasn’t much better. The prices were at least double compared to what we had seen so far in Mexico. Along the coast, everything was more expensive. For a hotel room like we’d been staying in so far, they wanted more than 6 times the price: 2000 pesos for three, when the night before we had stayed in Becan for 300 pesos. We were finally able to find a little hotel for a reasonable price – but not next to the water.

It wasn’t really our scene. We did what we came to do – went swimming in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Ocean next to the ancient Mayan ruins, but tomorrow we will be back in the “real” Mexico!

A lot has changed in the past couple of days in terms of our relationship with Mexico and Mexicans. And yet we are still the same, we speak and dress the same. But instead of riding a bike with 30kg of luggage, we are driving a car. No more delightful encounters with helpful locals, smiling, friendly and honest! Instead, it’s annoyances, scams, and forced smiles in the hopes of making a sale.

We ran into that roadblock that we wrote about above. There was also the little girl who grabbed hold of the side mirror while we drove slowly over a speed bump and wouldn’t let go as she tried to sell us some of her corn. And then there are the gas station scams. Twice, trying to fill up the car, we had two different scams. You have to understand that you’re not allowed to pump the gas yourself in Mexico, they have attendants whose job it is to fill up the cars. The first scam involved distracting me by asking me questions and trying to get me to turn away from the pump. After a few minutes, they showed me that they’d put in 100 pesos, or about 12 litres and asked for the money. I know that that is not enough  to fill up the tank, and so I asked them (there were three of them standing around me, all “attending” to me) to fill up the tank. They reset the pump to zero and filled it up, to 250 pesos. Then one of the attendants took out a calculator and added 100 + 250 and showed me the total. Luckily, I had noticed that it took way longer to fill up the tank to 250 pesos that it had to fill it up to 100 pesos – more than four times as long. I explained to them that it just wasn’t possible that they had really put in 100 pesos worth the first time around and that I wasn’t going to pay them 350 pesos. There was a bit of back and forth between us, and then they discussed among themselves and finally jut asked me for 250 pesos. Oof! I think what happened was that the first time around, they just hadn’t reset the pump from the last person and then had tried to charge me for that amount too. Clever, no?

The second time around it was a little different. They showed me that the pump was set to zero – as if they knew that I was on to their tricks. As they were filling up the tank, they asked me a few questions, but not many because the pump stopped at 70 pesos. It must have been programmed to stop there. They took the nozzle out to show me that no gas was coming out when they squeezed it. But I knew that we needed more gas than that, and so I told them to keep going. They pushed some buttons on the machine and I saw the counter start up again, but not from zero. And they kept chatting with me, no doubt to distract me. Then, once the tank was full it was the same story: one of them took out a calculator and added up 280+70 and tried to charge me 350. I told them several times that I had seen that the counter had continued from 70 and hadn’t started again, and finally they gave in and I paid them 280 pesos.

It’s true that taking break has been good for us, but we are also looking forward to getting back on the bikes! Biking allows us to have real contact with the local people, in a much more natural, simple, spontaneous and honest way.

Sebastien

Our road trip is separate from the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire, but don’t worry, we are still going to post our adventures on the website to keep you all updated.