Welcome to Mexico!
One of the many unnamed, unmarked, and indecipherable forks in the road
I guess I have to go the other way
The storm that caused me to turn back to Moctezuma
Waiting out the storm that I eventually road through anyways
A crazy looking red tree that I saw through the woods from the road. I later found out that it´s called a tourist tree, because when the bark is exposed to direct sun, it turns bright red and peels.
View of Copper Canyon from Divisadero
The ride from Creel to Batopilas
Check out the road 5000ft below. It crosses the river and continues down the other side of the canyon for another 10 miles or so.
Keep your eyes on the road
What $10 will get you in Batopilas
And for the ladies, here´s the bathroom. The toilet water is ¨Clean¨. That`s the same stuff that came out of the shower.
Batopilas to Parral
Yup, I'm an idiot!
The beautiful courtyard of my hotel in Durango.
The cathedral in Durango's city center, across the street from my hotel.
The view from the rooftop of the hostel in Zacatecas
Breakfast... $.40 each
Heading into the old silver mine in Zacatecas.
Some friends from the hostel and I sporting hair nets and hard hats.
A shot of Zacatecas from the town´s gondola
The streets of San Miguel del Allende.
San Miguel del Allende
San Miguel´s famous Cathedral
Another one of the Cathedral.
While a heathen like myself tends to stay away from churches and cathedrals, these buildings are undeniably beautiful and covered in intricate carvings.
In both San Miguel and Zacatecas, anyone can go to the town and pull a permit to party in the street. I forget what the party is actually called, but it involves renting a mule to carry around two barrels of Mescal, and hiring a local band to provide the entertainment. When all is in place, you wander with your party through the streets and the entire town joins in. I was a little late with getting out the camera so I missed the mule. These were a bunch of school kids too, so unfortunately their mule was dry.
Not long after the party passed by, the rains came....again.
Tis the season....
The hostel´s courtyard in Guanajuato. Dorm rooms here run $6.50 a night.
The tunnels of Guanajuato. This is definitely the most confusing city I´ve been to yet. Not only are all the streets above ground one-way (and not depicted on my map), there is a genuine maze of tunnels under the city!
An exhibition at Diego Rivera´s House/Museum located in Guanajuato. The one´s with four eyes are trippy to look at.
The Mummy Museum in Guanajuato. The cemetaries around here are filling up fast, so families with loved one´s buried there must continue to pay to have them stay there, or they are exhumed and cremated. The soil in this region fully mummifies a body in 6 years, so some of the best exhumed bodies are placed on display in the Mummy museum. These mummies have their mouths open because the jaw drops as the jaw muscles loosen up. One woman (not pictured here) was accidentally buried alive and had her jaw open for entirely different reasons.
The first mummy ever exhumed in Guanajuato
One of my favorite places to eat. I stopped there on both my way in and out of Guanajuato.
On the ride from Patzcuaro to Colima, everything suddenly became green, and it's been so ever since.
One of the two volcanoes on the outskirts of Colima that I had hoped to climb. As you can tell, the weather was not cooperative.
Looks like I'm going to get wet again!
Colima to Manzanillo.
A great lunch ($4) in a small town that I forget the name of. It included fresh tortillas, and I learned that you actually have to tell the cook to stop bringing more tortillas or they will keep bringing them no matter how big the stack gets.
The beach in Manzanillo. I was a little disappointed, but the beaches further south would be more of what I was looking for.
A band that lived at the hostel in Manzanillo. The three on the right are father and sons and are some of the most down to earth people I have met on the trip. Their music was incredible, especially the father who played a wooden flute.
From left to right. 1. Natalie, a traveller from Germany who was staying at the hostel. 2. Cynthia, my spanish tutor for four days in Manzanillo. 3. Rebecca, a student from Canada who was doing a two month long research project in town. 4. Some weird guy that keeps showing up in all of my pics.
Downtown Manzanillo
A bit of an exaggeration, but these roads were steep. I would not want to live in the house at the bottom after it rains.
That's the beach I've been looking for!
The view from Hwy 200 heading south from Manzanillo.
Mexico's world famous Topes (speedbumps, Ramps, Jumps, Walls) They are everywhere and they certainly slow down traffic as they are intended to. This is one of the bigger one's, they're usually just a severe speed bump, and may be marked or unmarked.
If you look closely, you can see the tip of my surfboard sticking out of the barrel.
In Mexico there is no east, west, north, or south designation on street signs. I've come to three-way junctions, all using the same route number. Don't worry, it doesn't make sense to me either.
One of the countless coconut farms along the coast
A 4 inch long scorpion that was chillin on the wall above my bed in a hostel in Puerto Escondido.
Playa Zipolite
The hotel in Playa Zipolite. (A single room was $13 a night)
Looking East on Playa Zipolite
My less than charming room in Playa Mazunte. Bringing a mosquito net was definitely a good idea! Thankfully the beach more than made up for this sweatbox.
I've got crabs. I've never seen a crab scale a wall until I was about to call it a night in Mazunte. They're fast too. I had to chase it around, and it actually climbed up under my bed and was making it's way up between my mattress, the bedframe, and under my mosquito net.
Showers and toilets on the left, room down the hall on the right. (Playa Mazunte)
Nearly a Beachfront view though.
The road leading to the beach and my "hotel" in Mazunte.
Beach Shot of Playa Mazunte
Another one from Playa Mazunte
Yet another beach shot from Mazunte
A great way to recycle tires
San Cristobal de Las Casas
So much food so little time. Anyone allergic to bees would want to stay out of this portion of the market that had over 20 tables like this lining the walkway. The bees were swarming on everything and everyone.
Good eating!
Agua Azul
Sorry my head is getting in the way of the view
The falls at Agua Azul
Palenque
Palenque. I´m standing on another smaller pyramid, and there´s monkeys in the trees above my head.
My Cabana in the Jungle
A small stream running through the jungled portion of the Palenque ruins.
Another protest. It was hard to see what was going on, so I started asking people what the protest was about. Going into a protest, in a Zapatista hotbed, and not knowing what it´s about is probably not a good idea. Ironically, the people behind me laughed when I asked if I was going to have problems going through. It turns out, it was a bunch of local people stopping cars with nail strips, simply to spread the word that the government had failed to pay them something. Once they share what they wanted to share with you, they remove the nail strips and allow you to pass. Keep in mind, this is a major road. Imagine farmers in CT shutting down I-91 during rush hour with nail strips, so that they could share their opinion with you. Here, everyone let through coming the other way had a smile on their face when they drove past. The people in my land were out of their vehicles and laughing an joking. Nobody seemed to care that they would be held up for an undetermined amount of time.
