The Mexican Independence Day, 15th September, we celebrated with all the great people at the Oaxaca Overlander Oasis. We spent a lovely time with all of them, enjoyed the lunch of the cooking class and went all together for the party at the plaza of San Maria Del Tule. Watching the dancers and the fireworks, listen to the live music and the speeches. And of course we had a few shots of Mescal which was offered to everybody out of a gigantic bottle. The final fireworks ended with a metal-torro loaded with fireworks which they toss around the plaza like crazy again and again. We were just wondering nobody was set on fire while they were doing that. As well we visited one of these days Oaxaca city. It is well worth a visit even though it is pretty touristic. Before everybody was leaving on Monday they organized a surprise birthday cake for Sascha – it was a day too early but they just wanted to celebrate somehow with him together: How sweet! We had to find a room for our spare tires which Calvin from the Overland Oasis kindly ordered for us and so we turned out to be the last ones leaving the place. But we were looking forward to meet one or the other on the road again as we were all heading somehow south…
On the way to the Pacific Ocean we had one more stop up in the mountains, in San José del Pacífico. The place is known as well for its mushrooms, but actually you do not need anything else except time to enjoy this beautiful place. You just sit down in between the clouds and mountains and watch the scenery. It turns out magical how the clouds form, change and vanish…
Down at the pacific coast we finally met Jason, a Canadian guy. We are in contact with him already since Baja but we never met so far. Two days beach, swimming, chatting and then we left together towards San Cristobal. The stretch was too long for one day ride and just before we reached the destination for that day a thunderstorm caught us. We found shelter under a gas station roof with many others for nearly an hour until we could make our last 30 km for that day.
San Cristobal is a beautiful city in Chiapas. The hostel allowed us to park all three motorcycles in their entrance/community hall so we did not have to worry at all. We liked exploring the colorful city, the churches and the markets for three days. One of these days we took the colectivo/little bus to visit San Juan Chamula. The town enjoys unique autonomous status within Mexico. No outside police or military are allowed in the village and they have their own police force. Pretty famous is the church of San Juan. They do practice rituals in there as chanting prayers and drinking ceremonial cups of Posh, sugar-cane-based liquor while sitting in groups on the floor which is covered with green pine boughs. The church is filled with hundreds of candles and a shaman is healing people at the altar area while bumbling and sacrificing/ killing a chicken. – Can we recommend visiting that place? Hard to say – we saw already many curious places or uncommon rituals. But hey it does not cost a lot and if you are close by just go and find out yourself. You will not find any pictures here from the inside as it is strictly forbidden to take any. And there are guards all around to enforce that! If they see you taking a picture or video they just take your camera apart apparently…
At the last day in San Cristobal we met Kelsey and Tim again from the Overlander Oasis and we went all together for dinner.
Now it was time to think about crossing the border from Mexico to Guatemala. We said `good bye´ to Jason and drove to Comitán de Domínguez which is only 80 km away from the border. We arrived at noon and enjoyed our last full day in Mexico while driving to the close by located Chiflon Cascades. It is wonderful place with several cascades, clear turquoise water and pools to jump in; and we were lucky as there were only a few people around.
On the way to there we met Mike, another motorcycle traveler from the States. We agreed to meet early morning at the gas station to cross the border together.
So in part II we will let you know about our challanges leaving Mexico and the lovely new country we finally entered: Guatemala.
