Back to Mexico

We left the relaxing and amazingly picturesque Lake Atitlan and rode northwest towards Mexico and our second last border before we enter the States. The ride there was full of curves and I mean absolutely full of them; it seemed like the bikes were never upright! We climbed higher and higher along the twisting mountain path, reaching a frigid 10,000 ft in altitude. They say the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina has a lot of curves, well the road to Mexico and beyond could possibly put it to shame. After leaning our body's over the bikes like MotoGP riders for more than an hour we arrived at the border, and the fun began. The paper process began to leave Guatemala, and so did the issues. To leave Guatemala you need to have this paper that shows the border officials that you were indeed a tourist in their country. Tim and Shaun had their papers still; Chris however, did not. The original plan to travel to South America and not back up through Central America led Chris to throw out some unnecessary papers in Panama. Unfortunately though, these papers became necessary once more on our travels up. Hours after exhausting our limited Spanish trying to figure out what we needed to do, with the help of a local who spoke English we learnt that Chris would need to file a complaint with the Police concerning his lost papers, and that this could take a few days or a week, in truth nobody knows. Chris enlisted the help of a local to show him where the Police Station was, and went there to sort it all out. Once there he spoke to the Policemen who had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, they had never ever heard of this complaint for the loss of this document and subsequently told him to leave. By now we were coming on 3 hours at this particular part of the border, so we decided to make like bats and get the hell out of there. The border officials did not like this one bit! Across a very small bridge and we were now out of Guatemala and on our way to Mexico. The same logic for all of the other borders we had been through also applied for this one. Go to this window, get this stamped, a photocopy of this, now another stamp and a fee... the list goes on. The final window we went to, a lady behind the desk was telling us we had to pay $300 each or $400 in Tim's case for the bikes. For what? You may ask, well that is a fabulous question because we also have no idea why. Very reluctant to pay this large amount of money when we didn't have to when we entered Mexico the first time, we spent more than 2 hours trying to work a way around this or at least to understand why. We eventually understood that this $300 and $400 were deposits for the motorcycles, most likely so we wouldn't sell them in Mexico (not sure why we would), and that we would supposedly get this money back when leaving Mexico. Very, very reluctantly we forked over the money as we realized there was no way around paying it, that is unless we wanted to head back to Guatemala where we were most likely fugitives by now. It was well dark by the time we made it through the border and we now had the issue of finding a place to stay in Tapachula, a town just across the border.

Fully rested after the previous long day, we left Tapachula and made our way west towards Oaxaca. This was a destination however it was to far away for a single days ride, this meant we would have at least one way point before arriving there. We decided that this way point would be in a town called Tehuanatepec which lay midway between us and Oaxaca. The road there was great until we hit a road block about 100 miles away from the town. Trucks and cars were backed up for miles at a complete stand still, the cause being a protest about the local government. We rode past all the stopped vehicles hoping that the villagers would be nice enough to let us through. Approaching the crowd we saw over 100 people, many armed with machetes which they loved waving around. Once we stopped we were bombarded with people yelling at us in Spanish to go back, and that it was impossible to pass. All the while waving their machetes. We decided very quickly to retreat to a safe distance and review our options. We learned from one of the many truck drivers waiting there that they had been there for more than 7 hours already and that they could be there for many, many more. Another truck driver told us of a route, that we had also noticed on our map, that appeared to be a service road for a train track. This route effectively went around the road block but would add another hour to our journey due to its length and the fact that it would mostly likely be a dirt road. With night approaching, we decided to turn around and try our luck with the service road. It took some time to find it, but we did, and it was most definitely a dirt road. There were others following us in the attempt to avoid the road block, and the long wait for it to disperse. Nearing the end of the dirt road and almost back on the highway the path became even more rocky and steep. Shaun was at the back and was bouncing over the rocks when suddenly his rear wheel locked up and the bike slid all over the place. Shaun managed to stop the bike without falling and came to realize that the chain had come off the entire rear sprocket. This was great news since we had all feared that it had broken. A little road-side maintenance and the chain was back on the sprocket and adjusted, and we were off again headed to the highway and our way point: Tehuanatepec.