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Mexico

I arrived in Mexico city as the sun was setting. After the usual formalities I took a taxi to my hotel (the Dragoman joining hotel), unpacked, and rested in my room, watching, bizarrely, an old Monty Python program on the TV.

I had a couple of days to look at the city before the trip started, so I started out on foot the next morning. Rather worryingly, for me, was how easily I was getting lost. I kept finding myself walking in completely the wrong direction. Mexico city was very much like many other Latin American cities that I've been to, an enjoyable mix of old dirty and modern clean. In one street there'd be mucky street kids selling stuff, and in the very next street would be expensive shops with well dressed clientele.

Meeting the group

The truck trip started in the usual way, with a meet and greet session in one of the hotel's meeting rooms. Our trip leader was Clair, who spoke perfect Spanish and had been running the trips for a couple of years, this was to be her last. The co-driver was Grif, ex-RAF, this was his first trip as crew. After the meeting, again fairly standard for Dragoman trips, we decamped and went to a different (much cheaper) hotel in Mexico city. The rest of that day was spent wandering around the city in the pouring rain. The morning after I made the mistake of ordering eggs rancheros for breakfast, which turned out to be scrambled eggs with lots of chillies. Chillies for breakfast! Yes, I was definitely in Mexico.

After a short drive we came to our first camp. Here the crew did their usual "this is how to put a tent" lecture. As I had already decided not to bother with a tent on this trip, I didn't bother listening in. Instead I setup my camp bed (I'd had enough of sleeping on a foam mat and had brought a cheap camp bed with me) under the shed roof that we were using to cook in, and then helped setup the kitchen tables and peel some potatoes.

Teotihuacan

Our first, of many, ruins site was Teotihuacan, not far from Mexico city. Our guide here was a short man going by the name of Gorilla. He was very proud of his Indian decent and proved to be an excellent guide. One of the strange things he showed us was how to make the sound of a quetzal bird, by simply clapping his hand. The noise of the clap bounced off the temple steps and came back as a sort of quack. The quetzal bird, Gorilla explained, was sacred to the Aztec and Mayan people. After his tour, Gorilla left us to roam this vast site on our own. Dodging the many souvenir vendors, I managed to climb, in my unfit state, to the top of the main pyramid.

Tequilla flavoured locusts

The next day saw us driving towards the colonial city of San Cristobal and the Yucatan. On the way we saw Popucatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, visited Monte Alban, ate dried locusts in Oaxaca, saw the tree with the greatest girth in the Americas, we took a motor boat ride through the amazing Sumidero Canyon (unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me so you'll have to take my word for how amazing it was). We stayed in beautiful San Cristobel for a couple of nights in an amazing multilevelled hotel. Unfortunately my room mate, Ian, snored (not his fault, lots of people snore), so I got precious little sleep. This, I decided, was going to have to change before our next hotel stop. Fortunately Clair (our leader) arranged for me to join up with Jim, a quiet American non-snorer, whose company I enjoyed for the rest of the trip with him as my room mate.

Chiapas

San Cristobal is in the heart of the Chiapas region of Mexico. This is a well forested mountainous region, bountiful in both oil and timber. But instead of these natural resources benefiting the local population, all of the wealth had been syphoned off by rich northerners. This inequality came to a head in 1994 when a wellington booted, balaclava helmet wearing guerrilla group called the Zapatistas took action. Through their actions a better deal was worked out for the people of the area.

Our next historical site was Palenque, on the way there we stopped off at the waterfalls at Agua Azul. These falls were a series of low cascades, with a swimming hole at the bottom, and a number of bars and cafes next to them. In the heat, I retreated to the shelter of a waterfall-side bar and sipped ice cold beer. Some of the others took the chance to cool off by taking a swim. After I had had my fill and they had dried themselves off, we finished our trip to Palenque.

Our campsite at Palenque was about a mile from the main historical site, in the edge of some tropical jungle, with its own bar and swimming pool (life's hard :-).

Palenque was the first historic site that I'd been to that was as good as I had imagined. It's in the middle of the jungle, although it has been sufficiently cleaned up to make walking around it easy. After the obligatory guided tour, where among other things we learnt that the Aztecs didn't have the arch, we were allowed to wander the ruins alone. This was great fun, very Indiana Jones. Then it was a short walk down from the temples, through the jungle to our camp site and a refreshingly cool swim in the pool.

That night, at the Palenque camp site, the heavens opened (not surprisingly, as it was the rainy season and it had been raining on and off since I landed in Mexico) and my cunning plan to sleep under the truck in the event of rain was shown to a bad idea. The rain water simply cascaded down the truck's sides and dripped under it, to where I had intended to sleep. Fortunately the truck came complete with a side awning, so I slept under this on my camp bed, my bottom just clear the wet grass. In the morning I was woken by the deep whooping roars of a troop of howler monkeys somewhere close by in the jungle.

The group on this trip was made up of the usual mix, there were Aussies (there are always Aussies), Brits, Americans, Kiwis, a German, Dutch, Danish and a Norwegian. And as usual there was a certain tension between members of the group. Two of the woman were having definite problems being in each others company.

A long drive took us to the city of Merida. Here we stayed at a truly bizarre hotel. The interior had been decorated by someone who was definitely smoking some strange cigarettes.

Our short stay here enabled us to do some chores (the ever present laundry), buy souvenirs and drink some fine coffee. We also celebrated a birthday here, with a party and cake on the pavement outside a local restaraunt.

Next up came our visit to the ruins at Chichen Itza. Climbing to the top of the sun temple, I couldn't resist the urge to christen it the moon temple, by doing one.

Later, that evening, we came back and sat through, their sound and light show. A truly awful experience, which I spent looking up at a satellite crossing the tropical night sky.

Bug bites

After the civilised comforts of Merida we headed into the jungle to an Indian village called Pac Chen. Here we stayed for one hot steamy night in open sided wooden huts, next to a lake, in the middle of nowhere. Some of the group used the hammocks that were already strung up for us, but thanks to my length (height) and my inability to get a mosquito net hung, I opted for my camp bed on the floor. As you can imagine, being next to still water in the middle of a tropical forest, the insect life was plentiful. Even though I was dousing myself with 60 % DEET repellent, I was still badly bitten. Some of these bites became infected and caused me to have large puss filled blisters on my legs that were a centimetre in diameter. They took ages to heal.

The next day we were shown around the village, which still used ancient building techniques for their houses. Thanks to the money that tourists like us brought in, they had their own school (built using modern concrete) and teacher. We were also shown how one half of the village was more prosperous than the other, this, our guide Otto said, was due to it being protestant as opposed to the poorer catholic part. I'm still not sure that I believe this. The protestant "missionaries" had made great inroads into this catholic country by translating the bible into the local languages and dialects of the indigenous peoples.

The road out of Pac Chen was the only time on this entire trip that the offroad capabilities of the Dragoman truck were needed.

We continued on to the Yucatan peninsular and camped right at the beach edge, within site of the Caribbean and the sound of the waves. From here we visited the tourist town of Playa Del Carmen and I indulged myself in a pizza and some ice cold beer.

Cave diving

We also, while in the area, went cave diving in the Cenote cave system. Well, I say diving , but for most of us it was snorkeling. We rented wet suits, masks and snorkels from the guide company, who also provided us with buoyancy aids. It was then a short ride into the forest, standing on the back of some truly dilapidated trucks, to the entrances of the cave system. The mosquitoes here were ferocious, even in the bright sunlight and with high strength repellant on they still bit us. The entrance to the caves was down a ladder in a hole in the ground. We spent two hours slowly drifting (no swimming needed thanks to the buoyancy aids) with the currents in these freshwater caves, marvelling at the sights. At some points the roof had collapsed, here the daylight broke in and the forest above was growing down into the caves, but most of the time the only light was from our hand held torches. Little fish (lord knows what they lived off) would swim to investigate us, but always kept just out of reach.

After lazing by the beach at our camp, we set off for the ruins at Tulum. Unfortunately, I could hardly walk, thanks to the infected bug bites from Pac Chen, and so sat it out in the air-conditioned comfort of a Sub-Way sandwich shop. I was told, by the others, that the ruins, situated right at the sea's edge, were spectacular

After Tulum we drove to the border and onto Belize.