Given that I’m less than a days ride from Guatemala I was thinking about some of the differences I’ve noticed between Mexico and Belize. Other than Canada these were the first 2 foreign countries I’ve ever been to. Since I was only in Belize for a relatively short period of time I can’t judge too much but the couple things I noticed were that the major roads in Mexico are much better than in Belize, the trash problem is nothing in Belize like it is in Mexico and the people in Mexico are far more vocal in their greetings (honking/waving/whistling although when you do end up talking to someone in Belize they are extremely friendly). Couple other things: people don’t drink the tap water in Belize, Snickers bars can be found in most road-side stores here, there are a lot more private vehicles on the roads, shower curtains are standard and all toilets have seats on them. No flushing toilet paper here either–use the garbage cans for waste. Hot and cold water taps are rarely labeled and never on the same side in both countries. Chinese people seem to own almost all grocery stores and a lot of the restaurants in Belize.

I went over to grab some dinner tonight and realized that I’d forgotten to account for the time zone change when I flew back into Mexico from Florida. So for the last 2 weeks I’ve been an hour ahead of everyone else.

Monkey Bay ended up being a mess. A group of students staying there were up until 1am (my time) making a bunch of noise and then these stupid dogs started barking at 4:30am. The place they stick you to camp was also overrun with fire ants.

I haven’t mentioned the World Cup but let me tell you it’s all people talk about here and every TV has it on. When Mexico was playing last week at 7am or something like that every bar/store I passed was full of people watching the game. It’s just crazy yet I still couldn’t care less about soccer.

I’ll be in town for the next 3 nights hanging out and waiting for Karin and Marten’s arrival on Sunday night. There’s lots of things to see here so there’ll be more posts.

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Other than a lot of sugar cane fields there’s not too much in the way of scenery. I miss hills. On a positive note the people here are extremely friendly. I’ve had more fist-bumps from strangers on the street then I ever have. And the food… it is sooooo good. Had this garlic pepper shrimp tonight that was awesome. Most of the restaurants are air conditioned which is great because then I don’t have to chase nasty flies away from my dinner. So other than the stinking road and that things are a bit more expensive I like it here.

Orange Walk Town is pretty neat. It seemed from reading different web sites that it would be really touristy but its not that way at all. I even found a place (Baba’s) that changes Mexican pesos. There’s a decent-sized river that runs through town that you can travel up to see the ruins at Lamanai (used to be huge Mayan city). I’m going to skip it because staying an extra day for the US $40 tour plus the cost of the motel (US $35) is way too much.

I sure miss having detailed GPS maps like I did for Mexico. I’m using the Garmin WorldMap v4 and it only has major highways on it. That didn’t help when it took me 15 minutes to find my way out of Corozal this morning.

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Weather in Chetumal, Q. Roo when posted:

Temperature: 30 °C, Humidity: 70%, Wind Speed: 6km/hr, Cloud Cover: broken clouds

I was prepared for a long day but it never came to that thanks to a sign that I hadn’t seen in almost 6 months — a campground. I checked my GPS and saw that it was right next to a lake so I jumped on the dirt road hoping for a nice, lake-side spot with a little store stocked with cold beer. That dream ended quickly but it was just because tourist season is over so most things are shuttered up for the summer including the little store and the restaurant that sat empty. The guy pointed over next to some mangroves and said I could pitch my tent there. After setting up camp I went for a nice, relaxing swim in the turquoise waters of Laguna Bacalar, the second largest lake in Mexico.

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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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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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The place I stayed was a pit though. It was like a zoo in my room. The bug count after 2 nights was: 1 moth, 1 monster cockroach (not kidding–it was so big I could see the different expressions on its face as I chased it), 1 smaller but equally repulsive cockroach, 2 long worm-looking things, many ants and a big, cute lizard. To top it off, the first night it felt like things were biting me while I was laying in bed. I ended up unpacking my tent, laying it on top of the sheets without using the poles and crawling into that. That lasted almost all night until I woke up in a panic because my arms were trapped in the netting and then I couldn’t unzip the door in the dark.

When the sun gets a little lower I’ll venture out and take more pictures–I’m enjoying the AC but this town has a bit of character and needs exploring. When I first got here I detoured off the main road to check out a monastery built by the Spanish back in 1560. Then it was into the centro area where I saw signs for the Cenote De Zaci. A cenote, for those unfamiliar with them, are sinkholes of various sizes whose roof collapsed thus creating reservoirs. All of the towns in the Yucatan are built around their own cenote since they are the only source of fresh drinking water on the peninsula. They are also very sacred and the ancient Mayans used to chuck people into them as human sacrifices so their gods would be happy. About 50 skulls were found in the cenote at Chichen Itza. The one here in Valladolid is smaller but it had a lot more going on visually. Birds were flying around, people and fish were swimming in the water and huge stalactites hung from the roof.

I stopped at another place a few miles outside Chichen Itza called the Balankanche Caves but never got to go inside. Unfortunately the folks that manage this place aren’t very business savy. It was 9:30am on a Monday when I got there. The parking lot was empty and no one else was around aside from the 3 guys working there. A sign said the 45 minutes tours leave on the hour assuming that a minimum of 6 people were in a group (no self-guided tours available). One of the guys said if just one more person showed up he’d take us down at 10am. Ten o’clock rolled around and of course no one else showed up. I waited 15 more minutes and left. Not sure why they didn’t take my $70 pesos and run me down there by myself.

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The ride north through the rain forest was a little disheartening. When I was flying over the Yucatan into Merida I could see where huge swathes of forest had been leveled to support the burgeoning population. It shouldn’t have surprised me when I saw it up close even though they try to mask the damage by leaving a strip of trees next to the road. You can’t hide much from a guy on a bike though (or Google’s satellite view which is what I used to see the damage on Vancouver Island or in the Yukon or in Alaska or in northern Alberta, etc.). If anything this trip has sure made me realize how brutally destructive we are.

Apparently I had a map/GPS/brain meltdown yesterday. I rode right by the archeological site of Mayapan. My GPS was right but the stupid IMTB map showed it way further to the northeast. I don’t know why I didn’t trust my GPS or clue in when I rode right through a town called Mayapan. I don’t remember seeing a sign so I’ll only take 99% of the blame.

It was wickedly hot again today. Getting up at six helped but the clouds usually burn off after lunch and then it gets toasty. I did some math and I spent about 40% of the time it took me to get here resting. For a 50 mile ride that makes for a long day.

I’m staying here for 2 nights so I can go check out the most famous of the Mayan sites, Chichen Itza. Looking forward to it.

Update: At the coffee shop I popped onto the internet for a minute to check the news since its been almost a week. AP had a story about the Gulf oil spill that I didn’t even want to keep reading. God I hate every one of those greedy SOB’s who caused this. Since moving to Florida in 1992 I’ve traveled countless times to the Gulf coast from The Keys up to New Orleans. To think of the devastation this is causing makes me sick. I can’t even imagine how bad this is going to get.

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One thing that ended up being a surprise was the allergic reaction I had to the 3 cats living at Stephanie’s. I thought I was going to die after the 1st night but after taking Allegra(?) for 2 days I woke up on the 4th morning and didn’t need to take the allergy medicine. All the horrible symptoms I had just went away (and the cats are still alive). Not sure how that happened but it made the rest of the stay there much better.

After the often very stressful time in Calgary it was nice to just relax and spend time with my Dad and his gf Linda in Atlanta. As usual whenever I’m doing something I enjoy Microsoft comes along and tries to sabotage things just like it used to do when I was a 9-5 guy. I ended up spending almost 8 hours fixing a broken Windows repair install that took forever thanks to the strangest BIOS issue I’ve ever seen (the OS drive kept going away). All this just just to fix a broken installation of Office. In the end everything was fixed and I got some delicious homemade brownies out of it.

Florida was a blast. Spent a lot of time with family and friends. Wish I could have stayed longer. Big thanks to my Aunt Leigh Ann and Uncle Alan for letting me crash on the couch, drive the car and eat what’s sure to be my last home-cooked meals for a while.

The journey back into Mexico was easy enough. The guy who stamped my passport in Merida didn’t ask me a single question. Took a taxi to the bus station and only had to wait an hour for the bus to Hopelchen (mistake since I could have just caught the bus in front of the airport and saved myself from paying a way overpriced fare). My bike was right where I left it in the storage room. I can’t thank Hiram enough for letting me keep it there for that long.

I hung out in Hopelchen yesterday trying to get my new bike stuff organized. My favorite new item is a GoLite umbrella. It has a really high UV protection rating and should be perfect for the times I need a break and shade isn’t available. I left my old front panniers at the motel in Hopelchen–maybe someone there will get some use out of them.

Today marked my first day back on the road in over a month and damn did I get beat up. It is so freaking hot here. I can’t even count how many times I had to stop just to get some shade. The first thing I did when I found a motel was turn on the cold water in the shower and just sit under the spray. I can’t even imagine trying to camp (or sleep) in my tent when it’s this hot. I’m in the shade under a ceiling fan now and I’m still sweating. I’m missing the AC in the motel last night. It was so cold I had to sleep in my sleeping bag.

The (large) ruins at Uxmal are 11 miles away so I’m going to stay here tomorrow and take a bus to the site. That way I don’t have to ride there just to have to ride back this way again. The ruins from today were from a place called Kabah. It was right off the road so I couldn’t pass it up. The size of the ruins came as a bit of a surprise. The two main buildings were huge. The sites in this area flourished around 800 AD and were built using an architectural style called Puuc. The highly decorative masks on the facades of the two main buildings definitely stood out from the other places I’ve seen. Saw a fat lizard hanging out under a tree too.

Mexico–I missed you and your crazy, ever-honking drivers, errant garbage piles, stray dogs, wandering livestock, loud noises and especially your incredibly generous and friendly people.

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Since things are stable up here I booked some flights to get me back on the road. First stop after I leave here is Atlanta to visit my Dad. I’ll be there for a couple days and then I’m flying to Fort Lauderdale to see some more family and hang out with my friends.

On June 2nd I’m booked on a non-stop flight via AeroMexico to the city of Merida. From there I’ll hop on a bus for a 3 hour ride to the town of Hopelchen where my poor bike has been awaiting my return. I’m glad its flat in that section of Mexico because I suspect the first couple days are going to be tough. I’ve been eating like a pig up here and might have packed on an extra pound or two.

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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