50.0 Too hot to handle

The heatwave continues. It is not only very hot on the bike but also when we go wandering. A man needs his hat. Paul got a replacement Panama in Cuenca in Ecuador after being told that the one he had brought with us was beyond repair at a Panama hat factory. The damage was due to him rolling the hat up as he had been told to do. He then managed to loose the old hat whilst visiting Cotopaxi. As we don't have room to carry a special hat box on the bike Paul also has to roll up the new one to carry with us and it is suffering just like the last one. It is currently looking as though it might not make it to the end of the trip.

From Palenque we headed south to San Cristobal de las Casas. We felt slightly on edge about this. There are a number of sources of information we use on our travels and the road from Palenque to SCdlC has a bad reputation. Not about its condition but about road blocks, rope blocks, attacks etc. - basically highwaymanism or banditry. Some of the reports are quite serious. But we saw nothing and had no problems whatsoever. There were only two points of interest on the road: one a convoy of six or seven black, with blacked out windows, cars and pickups with men dressed in black with black balaclavas standing in the back going quite fast in the opposite direction. Certainly not your average police, if police at all. And second, the number of speedbumps, reported to be in excess of 500 which makes riding 200kms very hard work indeed; we rarely got out of third gear.

San Cristobal also has a reputation for people getting very ill. You can find websites that speak of sewage mixing with the water supply because Coca-Cola syphon off the good water at a bottling plant; other sites telling you to shower with snorkel and mask and beware, never brush your teeth with tap water; make sure the bottled water has its seal intact, don't eat fruit or vegetables, beware of juices and ice cubes etc. We didn't get ill.

And then there are the petrol stations. They don't accept cards so you have to pay in cash and then they give you the wrong change; the pumps are not set at zero; they aren't properly calibrated etc. The only issue we have had is leaving within 5 minutes after having filled up as the attendants usually want to chat with us about the bike, the trip, where we come from and the Premier League.

All this builds up so you become wary of people. We are not saying that all these bad things don't happen, but we are having a great time and everybody is being really nice - if you forget the two Immigration officials... All this Internet stuff can really give you the wrong impression and make you act the wrong way towards others who are being genuine and nice with you. However nobody would read bland, boring Internet posts and those sites wouldn't then generate the requisite number of 'hits' to maintain the advertising income.

Anyway, putting the road needed to access San Cristobal to one side, the town itself was great. Far bigger than we thought it was going to be and also lively and cool temperature wise, primarily due to it being at an altitude over 2,000m. Our accommodation gave us recommendations for an afternoon cafe, a wine bar and a restaurant. We are not sure what is written on our faces but the cafe was French and run by a lady from Normandy and was magnificent; the wine bar was cheap and gave you free tapas and was run by bikers - yes Paul bought the T-shirt and the restaurant served vegetables in quantity. So we had a pretty good time in SCdlC and would tell everyone that they MUST visit and ignore the interet.

We used San Cristobal as a base to visit the nearby Sumidoro Canyon. This too was very impressive; there seems to be enough water here compared to elsewhere we have been as the level was maintained throughout the dry season - soon to become wet season, need to hurry up. The river starts in Guatemala and is dammed and part of an enormous scheme with a number of dams and hydroelectric plants along its course. The crocodiles were a bonus. As was the trip being quite short, which meant we could get back to San Cristobal for our afternoon coffee and cake.

Having dilly dallied about, we needed to do some kms. The clock was ticking. It's often quite nice and interesting to take the back roads, 'the roads less travelled'. However if this means speedbumps, we much prefer to travel the road less speedbumpy even if it is a toll road. The intense heat doesn't help either. So apart from having some very nice food at Salina Cruz, we left it as we found it and scuttled on to Puerto Escondido. 

Puerto Escondido has some incredible waves. Totally scary. We thought about venturing in but didn't quite make it. Paul hadn't quite recovered yet from the caving and snorkeling adventures. It was also the most uncomfortable place we have been as far as climate is concerned. Only 34°C but in excess of 80% humidity. If we went out we simply couldn't keep up with the washing. But... we did find a French (Canadian) bakery/patisserie near by...

The accommodation also had a rooftop restaurant with sunset views and some very cultured food. Food genuinely has been a super plus point in Mexico both from the variety and the flavours. There has also been significant stodge available for Paul when in need of comfort food. One thing not on the menus is sea turtle. Sea turtle has been banned as a food in Mexico since 1990. And having not really ventured out of our accommodation due to the heat, we rode further up the coast in the late afternoon to take part in the 'liberacion' of baby olive ridley sea turtles. We are not sure as to whether the claimed environmental credentials of this are true or not - eggs are taken from the nests to protect them and also provide the hatchlings that are then 'liberated'. But we did enjoy it.

Twenty six days left.

49.0 And now as we wander, our thoughts ever astray

North of the border, down Mexico way...

Everything had been going so well. Checking out of Belize was just about paying some money and the officials helped us with the formalities. Then we fell on a Mexican Immigration official who was auditioning for his role as God in a future film. When asked how long we would be staying in Mexico we said we could not be precise, but one to two months sort of thing. We are both allowed 180 days. Our man was not happy. He asked again. We repeated. He then scribbled 35 days on the pieces of paper. Mexico is a huge place. We were not happy. Françoise went back and, Oliver like, asked for more. She even suggested he could put a 1 in front of the 35 to make it 135 days or change the 3 into an 8 to make it 85. After all, it was only a handwritten scribble on a piece of paper - that we then had to take to a cashier, pay some money, and then return to him to stamp our passports and let us into the country. It wasn't as though it had been written in an official document (yet) or entered into a computer. The official said that he would have to call his boss. His boss was clearly ahead of him in the pecking order for the role being auditioned. He became a tad aggressive and told us that, should we want to stay for more than 35 days, we would need to show him proof of our departure from Mexico with a plane ticket - we pointed to our motorcycle helmets on the seat next to us - AND give him day by day proof of all our hotel reservations. Clearly we don't have this and who knows what you are supposed to do if you are camping? So all this means we are stuck with 35 days.

For the two of us it would just be a fine for overstaying our welcome. However in every country you have to obtain a Temporary Import Permit for the vehicle. With Mexico you have to pay the equivalent of 400US$ bond that we would also lose if we stayed too long. The real issue is not that, however. If the TIP has expired they impound the vehicle as well as cashing the bond... bye bye Harley.

So we were somewhere between despondent and angry as we headed to our first stop in Mexico. We had some online chat that evening with other motorcyclists and it seems that the auditioning has been going on a while at this border crossing and, yes, we should have been given the 180 days and no proof of what we were doing or where we would be staying was required. As we mentioned, Mexico is a big country and it will be somewhere between 4-5,000km for us to exit no later than the 19th June at the planned border crossing into the USA. There are shorter routes but we had already identified a border crossing for the USA ESTA paperwork.

We came up with three options. Option 1 is to go to a big city and find a Mexican Immigration facility and try and extend our stay. This might not have a strong chance of success, would cost more money and if it didn't work we would use up some of our 35 day allowance.

Option 2 would be to cross the border between Mexico and Guatemala and come back in again, but this time from Guatemala, hoping that we would get more than 35 days. This was tempting but apart from costing exit and re-entry fees we feel we are living on borrowed time at present with some seriously hot weather and the impending rainy season that should already be upon us.

Option 3 is simply to take the 35 days as a little bit of additional spice to our adventure and run with it. So that's what we are doing. Our plans were never that fixed anyway, so it might be a bit of an exaggeration to say we are totally replanning things. However some things have to go and the first thing we have given up is the Yucatan peninsula - known for its beaches and Mayan ruins amongst other things. We are not really beach people, Paul hasn't got over his snorkeling with sharks in Belize yet and we have seen some Mayan ruins already. That's our logic to assist with 35 days.

We had already planned our first stopover in Mexico before all this happened and we had a very nice stay at Bacalar overlooking the lagoon which is supposed to have seven colours, but we could only see two, maybe three at a pinch. Bacalar was almost like a normal European town with lots of cafes and restaurants BUT it is still mega hot and being the softies that we are, we still need A/C where we sleep unless we are at altitude. We didn't do much planning in Bacalar, apart from deciding we would head west to Palenque to see some more Mayan ruins in the jungle and that we would not be able to get there in a day. The only place we could find to stay was only 120km away but at least it would reduce the distance. 34 days left.

The road we took in the morning was in excellent condition but it was awful. Train tracks have been pulled up throughout South and Central America and train travel is virtually non-existent. However in Mexico they are building a 1,600km line, the Maya line, and some of it runs parallel to the road we were riding on. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lorries carrying big lumps of limestone, medium lumps of limestone and gravel either as excavated material or to make railway embankments with gravel ballast for the sleepers. There were also a number of precast concrete yards along the route making concrete sleepers and other structural items. All this meant that as well as the lorries and their fumes there was dust everywhere. It looked like it had been snowing. Everything is also baked hard with the heat and lack of rain. The locals are hoping that the vegetation will be 'cleansed' when the rain comes but we have our doubts. In the meantime, people are living in dust clouds with no water. Our accommodation was a one room, perhaps two, establishment in the middle of a forest on the outskirts of nowheresville - expensive as usual due to it being nowheresville. The town itself, Xpujil, had no water, so perhaps paying extra was worthwhile? And it wasn't the first time that we have eaten at a Petrol Station but this one had no wine or beer, Mexican laws...

The following day was a long ride, 360km, into Palenque. 41°C when we arrived according to the hotel; 37°C feeling like 49 °C according to the website we use. And the road was immensely boring. Steamy jungles are often mentioned in books. Well it was either steam or heat haze or dust or all three. We are not the most lively in conditions like this after over five hours on the bike! But Palenque town is quite nice and what we thought was a late night disco/club we could hear from our room turns out to be another Evangelical Church - on a Saturday! That promises for Sunday... 33 days left.

Mayan ruins seem to be everywhere. There have been signposts everywhere along the roads we have travelled on. It seems that the encroachment of the jungle on the cities after the Mayan abandoned them has both preserved them by hiding them and partially destroyed them by dislodging the stones. In Europe abandoned fortifications were often plundered for the stone which was then used to build other structures in the surrounds - but not here. Palenque is very similar to Tikal and perhaps smaller. As for Tikal, only a fraction, 2%, of the site is visible and that is possibly/probably the most important part. However the hill behind the main Palace compound is said not to be a natural hill. Is it another temple covered in jungle? Because the area is designated a National Park further excavations are not permitted. Where are these Universities wanting to trial their latest ground penetrative radar technologies? Again like Tical, the reliefs were all in stucco which has long since surrended to the jungle. Red, from cochineal is thought to have been the colour of the structures. 

There seem to be many differing theories on Palenque but the fingers of drought, deforestation, overpopulation seem to be consistent with those of Tikal. It also seems that the structures were built by slaves and these slaves were the spoils from warring with other Mayan offshoots. So Mayan infighting didn't help the cause either. What is said to have been different in Palenque is that at one time it was ruled by Queens rather than Kings. It is still very hot so it's hard to undertake long visits, even of just 2% of the site. The walk back through the jungle and along a stream was therefore actually quite refreshing. The Tropical Greenhouse at Kew Gardens will never seem that overpowering again. 32 days left.

48.0 There's a time when it comes to us all...

We struggled again with our Spanish on entering Belize. The Customs' staff looked puzzled and we didn't quite understand them either. After 5 mins it clicked. They speak English here. Albeit what we think is a very heavy Jamaican type English. This isn't the light touch of Death in Paradise! It also became very evident once we had cleared Customs. All signage on buildings was in English. Road signs were in English and in miles. Speedbumps, when announced, were actually called 'Bumps'. After six months of being 'chicos' and everyone's 'amigo', Paul was now 'bro' or 'bud'. But some of the English isn't obvious, for example the sign that said, 'Dis da fi wi chikin'.

But all this didn't stop us trying to speak Spanish when we didn't need to. We were getting a tad muddled up. We didn't have much planned for Belize except collecting the badge that would signal the end of Central America for us. But a Canadian couple we met in Panama suggested we visit a cave and also go snorkeling. So we did.

First, the cave. Our Mayan exploration continued as this cave was used by Mayan leaders to plead with the Rain Gods for rain. First they ventured into the front part of the cave, 'the Light Zone', where they left food offerings. The Rain Gods were not that interested in tortillas so when there was no rain in recompense for the tortillas, the Mayans ventured further into the cave to do some ritual blood letting. This didn't seem to do the trick either with regard to the coming of the rains so further into the cave they went, about 500m in total. Blood letting clearly hadn't been sufficient, so here it was sacrifice. Child sacrifice. Believed to be the children of the kings who had built all the Temples. You find the skeletons in the cave. 

Because of the nature of what's in the cave, cameras are not allowed, so the photos are not Françoise's. There are also more details on the Internet including audio descriptions. The Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave. Clearly, at the time in question there was no rain, so the cave was dry. It's not dry now. It's also a limestone area so when the next rainfall did start, probably about 1,000 years ago, some of the skeletons got all messed up by the waters. Over 1,000 years some of them got covered up by stalacmites and other deposits. So nobody really knows what is in the cave and there are no plans for any intrusive investigations. They are just waiting for someone to come along with some portable ground penetrative radar equipment they want to test. The caves are now wet. There was a swimming bit but we were issued with life vests which suited Paul...

From San Ignacio we rode to the old capital of Belize when Belize was British Honduras, Belize City. 'City' is just a name but then again the population of the country is only @400,000. Despite having been independent for quite a while, a very young Queen Elizabeth still appears on Bank notes and coins. Apparently us Brits liked the mahogany from here and hence the colonial outpost. From Belize City we took a 90 minute boat ride to the island of Ambergris Caye and then another boat to go snorkeling. 

Paul was allowed a life belt for the snorkeling but nonetheless... 

He was assisted (ie towed) on the first snorkeling 'dive' by one of the guides who insisted on calling him, 'Pops'.  We suppose when you are in your mid 60's you have got to the time of life where this happens. For the second dive the two guides stayed on the boat whilst we were all in the water. They stayed on the boat so they could throw fish bits into the water. The area where the 'dive' took place is called Shark Ray Alley. We swam with sharks, 4' to 6' long; nurse sharks that is. And although they are known for being docile they got into quite a tizz over the fish entrails.

And that was Belize. And that was Central America. It has taken us a lot longer to cross Central America than we planned. All hold-ups have been of our own making! And because of that we are questioning whether we will now make it to Alaska before the cold sets in. It's still very hot here and it does affect us; 40°C in the shade as we are writing this and feels like more due to the humidity. Although we have A/C in lots of the places we stay, it struggles to cope with the heat. One day Françoise's phone lit up with a message saying that the phone was too hot to be put on charge. However, in some repects we are benefitting from the heat in as much as it seems that the rainy season has been delayed. 

The heat aside we have had no issues in Central America and have enjoyed quite a sociable time, meeting a lot of interesting people on the way doing similar things to us or quite often a lot more extreme. There are the people who have sold up their home and are riding their motorbikes or vans until the money runs out, there are the people who are planning their trips in years rather than months, and the young couples who have just had enough of working. And there was the 65 year old French father and son who set off from San Francisco on their Decathlon bicycles in September 23 for a two year jaunt to Tiera del Fuego, but are now thinking of going on to Africa afterwards. But in our minds, always, is the fact of how lucky we are to be able to do all this.