I woke early in San Cristo­bal in an effort to get a few pic­tures before it got too late in the day. I was out and shoot­ing by 7:30 A.M., which is pretty early for me. I don’t have many pic­tures of San Cristo­bal, since there wasn’t any­thing to grab me. Very few nice pics, but I was glad to spend a lit­tle bit of time in the city.

I got back to the hotel 10ish, took a shower and started pack­ing my stuff to go. As I was load­ing up my bike, some guy comes out and starts talk­ing excit­ingly about my motor­cy­cle. After a bit of fum­bling, I find out he’s got a Yamaha 600, which is huge for Mex­ico (and fast every­where.) As I was mak­ing the trek back from my room a sec­ond time, he’s got another guy out there. The third time he had his entire group of peo­ple he was din­ing with out­side. I got a pic­ture of him sit­ting on my bike, and he got a pic­ture of me and every­body else around my bike. It was pretty fun.

After get­ting on the road, I went through some amaz­ing scenery. San Cristo­bal and the sur­round­ing areas are pretty high. I went through beau­ti­ful pine for­est, and after even­tu­ally los­ing alti­tude back into the jun­gle like set­ting you expect. The pine for­est made me think a lot of Seat­tle and sur­round­ing areas — It was very, very beau­ti­ful. One of the more inter­est­ing things to me about this trip (and the rest of my Mex­ico Jour­ney) is how peo­ple live every­where. I saw corn grow­ing on hills that I can’t imag­ine some­one being able to get to, and houses that looked like they should fall down any minute. The road, like most of the ones I’ve been on, was fan­tas­tic, but very, very curvy. Of course that slows down the Jour­ney. Both of the travel books I’ve had men­tioned that there are occa­sional “stop and grab” block­ades on this road, as early as last year. I don’t know if that’s because of, or in spite of, the Zap­atista. I didn’t have that hap­pen, but twice I had kids or young adults string a rope across the road at a speed bump, to get me to give money for some Catholic thing. Once I did, once I didn’t.

Slowly, I made my way some ruins at Ton­ina. I hadn’t heard much about it, but it was pretty cool. When I went got there, I was the only per­son in the entire place, other than work­ers. Hav­ing the place to myself was pretty amaz­ing. The pic­tures I’ve taken don’t do this place jus­tice. You walk about half a mile down the road and then take a right. You first enter a ball­fields, which is a pretty amaz­ing field, as those things go. As you exit, in the dis­tance you see this huge city. It’s sim­ply amaz­ing. The ruins I’ve seen so far are usu­ally spread over a wide area. This one was built up in one area, going higher and higher. It made it much more impres­sive. The trou­ble with the pic­tures was I had to be so far back to get the width, which hid the height. And of course it was in the early after­noon, which is the worst time for tak­ing pho­tos. One of the most remark­able things about this place was the incred­i­ble quiet. Occa­sion­ally you would hear a car go by, but oth­er­wise it was dead quiet.

After spend­ing a cou­ple of stren­u­ous hours explor­ing the ruins and climb­ing as high as I could I left. It was crazy hot while I was there, and I was wear­ing my motor­cy­cle pants, and climb­ing. I was drenched when I left, hadn’t eaten all day, and had very lit­tle to drink (hard to do on a motor­cy­cle.) The road got worse as you got closer to Palenque, which I think trans­lates into “the mid­dle of nowhere.” It started rain­ing, which wor­ried me a bit. As I was brak­ing for speed bumps, my rear tire broke lose a few times. It wor­ried me since that hasn’t hap­pened before, and I started dri­ving slower. I have plans to get new tires in San Jose, Costa Rica. My tires prob­a­bly have miles left in them, but I don’t want to worry about any­thing else. Too bad wor­ry­ing is in my nature. I prob­a­bly rely on my rear brake too much, but it hasn’t started break­ing loose until today. Maybe now is a good time to stop that habit.

Even­tu­ally I got to Palenque (the city, not the ruins.) I finally arrived about 7 P.M., which is later than I like to get into a room. I drove around for a while until I found a room with Air Con­di­tion­ing. I got, prob­a­bly, the most expen­sive room in Palenque, on the promise of being able to receive phone calls. After I checked in, I found out I couldn’t. Dammit!! At least there was cable tele­vi­sion and air con­di­tion­ing. By the time I’d walked around the city and found a place to eat, it was get­ting pretty late. I’d for­got­ten it was Mon­day, and most of Mex­ico has had Mon­day Night Foot­ball when I have cable, ableit in Span­ish. I wish I’d have been able to see it – I’m not a huge foot­ball fan, but a lit­tle slice of home is always nice. To top things off, I’d also missed Bev­erly Hills Bor­dello. Can it get any worse :)

As far as the town of Palenque, there isn’t much to say. It’s pretty bor­ing — just a nor­mal Mex­i­can town, but with a small tourist bent. Again, there were a bunch of Ger­mans here, and the two Aus­tralians I ran into at the ruins. The hotel, while very expen­sive for Mex­ico, did have a nice pool, so I got some pool time in. Flip­ping chan­nels, I came across the last half of “The High­lander” tv show, which was nice since I wasn’t feel­ing too well.

To get up early and see the ruins would take up a large part of the day, so I ended up stay­ing two night. Grum­ble. I’m glad I did, since today, I’ve devel­oped a pretty severe sore throat, and my back and neck are aching, which very well might mean I’m get­ting sick. Hope­fully a some­what easy day and plenty of sleep will keep me well, or at least stop get­ting any worse. I imag­ine it’s just a reac­tion to stress – of bor­der cross­ing, of rear tires prob­lems, of not being able to com­mu­ni­cate to any­one, being lonely, etc. I expected to get sick at some point because of my body being under more stress than nor­mal. If things get worse, it’s going to be my third time in three weeks.

My goal is to cross into Guatemala tomor­row (Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 2nd.) I’m not sure where to cross — the ideal place for me to cross is pretty close (3 hours) to where I am now. It’s a prim­i­tive cross­ing, and I’d have to hire a boat to get across the river, which wor­ries me for two rea­sons. One is more prim­i­tive bor­ders are a lit­tle more back­wards, and can be stick­lers for things they shouldn’t be, or try to get a bribe. The other worry is I get across the river, the bribe request increases, since I’m between a rock and a hard place. The prefer­able, but much fur­ther bor­der cross­ing is La Mesilla, which is sup­posed to be a very effi­cient cross­ing, accord­ing to sev­eral sources who have made the jour­ney. It would be a full day to get there, and I’d prob­a­bly have to spend the night in Mex­ico again. I’ve heard you should cross the bor­der in the morn­ing, in case it ends up being a lengthy affair. It would be bad cross the bor­der only to find your­self in a strange bor­der town after dark.