06/09 That stupid twisted ankle yesterday ended up costing me a pant leg! The only pair of pants I have are those ones that have the zip-off pants legs so you can wear them as shorts. Well I needed something thin to hold some ice next to my foot so I was using one of the pant legs. Apparently I didn’t see it when I was packing this morning and didn’t realize it was gone until I was in Tulum. I suppose I could take a bus back but I’ll end up just not worrying about it because it would be too much effort for a something I won’t need for months.

Tulum is way more touristy than I would have expected. I mean there’s a 7-11 here for Pete’s sake. I did indulge and had lunch at a Subway. It’s been a while. There are lots of gringos here and just about all the people in the service industry speak a little English. Thankfully, the tourist crowd here is not at all like the weird hippy hostel crowd that dominated San Cristóbal. Most of the people are with families or are probably on a day trip down from Cancun.

After lunch I settled into a motel (with internet!), took a shower and hopped in a taxi over to the ruins. This section of coastline lies along the Caribbean Sea and it’s pretty stunning. Lots of rugged shoreline and white sand beaches. The ruins are from a city that dates back to 1200 AD. The site is very well maintained and aside from the location I wasn’t quite as enamored with this place for some reason. Not quite sure why. Maybe I’m just bummed about the pant leg.

Update: For some reason the site layout goes berserk when I add certain pictures. The rest are all here.

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06/08 It was sure nice to finally leave Mex-180. There’s a lot of traffic heading between the 2 big destinations on the Yucatan–Merida and Cancun and it didn’t help that there was major construction most of the way. I did get lucky and had a couple miles of unfinished, yet hard-packed road to myself and for a little while a very rare dedicated bike path. After Chemax I started heading south down to Coba on a brand new highway. It had a nice wide shoulder so I could check out the ever thickening rain-forest.

Just got back from hiking through the Coba archeological site. It was founded all the way back in the 7th century. The entire area encompasses 19 square miles although the main clusters of buildings are within a mile of each other. I still ended up walking at least 4 miles. You can rent bikes or hire a pedal-driven taxi cart but the raised causeways (called “sacbeob“”) to the different areas are under the forest canopy so there was lots of shade and I preferred to walk anyway. One of the sacbe actually leads to another site 62 miles away making it the longest known Mayan road.

All of the buildings were completely enclosed by the rain forest, much more so than any of the other places I’ve visited. The highest structure, Nohoch Mul, rose well over the tree tops offering a great view. Of course climbing up to the top wasn’t a problem but when I got there I stepped down off a rock to take a picture and almost twisted my ankle right off. It smarts pretty good and tomorrow I’m sure it’ll a lot of fun to ride on.

Staying at the only motel in town. Its not too bad although prices are always higher in touristy areas (or if you have the only motel). It was $300 pesos which isn’t horrible for a very clean room and decent shower. I did have to chase a scorpion around the room for a bit but I finally caught it and let it go outside. First time I’ve ever seen one. There’s some toilet paper stuck under the door now so it can’t get back in.

Sticker shock of the day was a bottle of sun screen (FPS 50 / ~8 fl oz). Cost US $15. I knew I should have picked up more in the States. The pharmacy also had some more malaria tablets which I’ve been looking for since I got back.

Broke 13,000 miles.

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04/14 Arrived in the very well-maintained town of Hopelchen and found a decent motel (Hotel Los Arcos). There’s an internet cafe next door so I went over to check for some news on my sister. Unfortunately the news wasn’t good but this web site isn’t supposed to be my diary so we’ll just call this the worst day of my life and leave it at that. Barring any other changes in her condition I’m still planning on heading up there when I get to Cancun.

Lot’s of farmland today. I was surprised to see a white guy wearing a straw hat driving a tractor down the road. It was such a strange sight that I turned around and took another look just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. When I made it to the town center I was even more surprised to see strangely dressed white people all over the place. Turns out they are Mennonites and are quite harmless from what I hear. Apparently the Mexican government hooked them up with some free land so they settled into the area and started growing whatever it is they grow (I think the fields I rode by were corn).

This state is definitely the second worst in Mexico as far as the amount of trash along the side of the road. Number one was Guerrero. There are even a couple large garbage dumps although that still didn’t keep some morons from dumping their garbage right at the entrance to it.

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04/13 3 hours of riding around and I finally found a place to stay. Maybe I was getting a little picky but it seemed like everything was over-priced or just a little bit scary. None of the places I looked at were even in the central historic district. At 3pm I tracked a place down near the edge of the city and took my first bus ride back into the touristy area.

Campeche is a very cool place. It was founded back in 1540 and its the oldest Spanish city on the Yucatan peninsula. With no natural land or sea defenses it was an easy target for pirates so a wall, 26 feet tall and a mile and a half long, was built. The wall ended up getting torn down to make way for the growing city but the original gates and bastions still stand.

There are several very large supermarkets here and I went a little crazy buying things. One thing I picked up from a hardware store was a 5″ pair of vice grips. Since I break bolts all the time now maybe I handle some field repair work.

I’m going to change my route to try to get to Cancun a little faster. My sister is still in a coma but she’s stable so I’m going to push on and try to get there in a week. From there I can fly up to Calgary and know that all my belongings are in a safe place.

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