Jungle fever

Hitting the road at 5:30am was a bit rude but well worth it for the drive through the mountains from San Cristobal de las Casas and down to the tropical lowlands of Chiapas. A thick mist surrounded the dense pine forests as we descended from the mountains, passing through villages dotted with simple timber huts and men heaving bundles of wood along the roadside.

Huge trucks and open-sided vans filled with people on their way to work screamed past us as our van negotiated tight hairpin bends. The obvious danger of the road was confirmed when we passed a smashed up semi-trailer - it had been carrying crates of eggs, which were smeared for hundreds of metres on either side of the road.

We stopped at Agua Azul - its foam-like water cascaded over smooth terracotta rocks into pools of turquoise blue water. Mexico has a lot of waterfalls, but we were pretty impressed by this one. Quite apart from the main falls, which crashed down on the rocks with a deafening roar, above it there were several other smaller falls with pristine falls just perfect for swimming. The water was crispy cold but deliciously refreshing.

Within a short space of time the landscape had changed from cool pine forests to dense rainforest. We stopped for the night at a jungle hideaway called El Panchan. Obscured from the road, it is a motley collection of thatched huts, campsites, restaurants and bars totally encircled by the rainforest.

We were all ready to whip out the tent and camp, but as we moved deeper into the jungle we noticed the air becoming thicker and more humid, and the prospect of rain drew nearer. With doubts about the water-proofness of our tent, we opted for a thatched cabin instead - which only cost a few dollars extra. It was lucky we chose cover. No sooner than we were safely undercover it started absolutely bucketing down.

For most people, El Panchan is simply a jumping off point to explore the Mayan ruins of Palenque. We were quite enamoured by it, and having no reason to push off quickly, hung around for a few days to soak up the vibe. There was quite a mix of people there, from the ubiquitous fire-twirling hippies and trance junkies there to celebrate the equinox, or culmination of the Maya Calendar and the full moon, to older couples and people with small children.

We were in danger of being ruined-out - having already visited two sites in the Yucatan and with plans to visit sites in Guatemala. But we were glad to have visited Palenque. Set deep in the jungle, many of the buildings are only partially excavated and still overgrown with huge trees and vines and covered in moss.

Palenque doesn't have a fuck-off pyramid like its more frequented cousin Chichen Itza, but it has plenty of other crumbling buildings and temples which you can clamber all over and explore. It seemed to be built in a slightly different style to the other sites that we had visited - mainly because it is a few hundred years older. Abandoned in 900AD, Palenque seemed to be constructed from clumsier building techniques using chunkier odd-sized stones.

Clambering through the dense jungle to check out the half-buried buildings was the most rewarding part of the day. We spotted a large black howler monkey - so-named because of the terrifying shriek they emit, sort of a cross between an asthmatic cough and a screeching bat. Hearing their roar makes you think of a large, scary monster, but your feels are quickly disspelled when you seen one crashing through the treetops.

San Cristobal de las Casas

The elaborately named San Cristobal de las Casas is the jewel in the crown of southern Mexico. It is one of those places I just had a good feeling about as soon as I read about it, and I'm pleased to report it has lived up to expectations.

Encircled by forested emerald green mountains, San Cristobal is cradled in the highlands not far from the Guatemalan border. It shares many features with other colonial towns we have visited, such as brightly painted shops, old-fashioned lamp posts and paved streets, but San Cristobal possesses an offbeat, slightly low key character that other towns lack.

While places like Oaxaca seem almost put on for the hoardes of tourists that descend on it constantly and look as if they are spit-and-polished for the occasion, San Cristobal actually feels lived in, and a little rougher around the edges in parts.

Two steep hills in the centre of town provide beautiful spots to grab an aerial vista of the town. From up here, its quickly apparent that the wealthy well-kept centre isn't reflective of most of the town. Beyond the ring road known as the periferico the treelined streets and painted buildings abruptly stop and everything turns the same shade of grey. The town's outlying areas are known as the cinturon de la miseria, or the belt of misery, and are mainly inhabited by indigenous people who have fled their land in other parts of the region in search of work and food.

Compared to most Mexican towns, San Cristobal has a lot of indigenous residents living in it or nearby. In the 90s, poor living conditions and marginalisation prompted a civil uprising, the work of a movement known as the zapatistas. They are named for freedom fighter Emiliano Zapata who helped kick off the Mexican revolution, an uprising of landless peasants, in 1910.

The Zapatistas, under the command of subcommandante Marcos - who always appears with a balaclava in photos - occupied the streets of San Cristobal, demanding an improvement in the living situation in the lives of indigenous people. The uprising prompted action in the federal parliament, but not many policies ended up being enacted.

The Zapatista spirit lives on strong in San Cristobal. Although the movement is not officially active, it is still a tense part of the country, in part also due to religious tensions between catholics and indigenous Maya, many of whom still have animistic beliefs.

Many indigenous Maya come into town to sell their produce or bail up tourists with their handicrafts. They carry babies on their backs in brightly coloured slings and wear black fur skirts and scarves to keep out the chilly mountain air.

Most of the people selling fresh produce, meats and grains at the market belong on one indigenous group or the other. A handful are camped out front, selling whatever bits and pieces they have managed to grow or acquire, unable to access the prime real esate of one of the inside stalls.

The meat section was the most striking thing about San Cristobal's markets as opposed to others I'd visited in Mexico. I saw some of the grossest stuff I have ever seen - my only regret was not whipping out my camera. Otherwise I'd be able to show you cow's hooves and trotters, skin and fur still on and also lurid greeny-grey cow's stomachs spread out on butcher counters. There were piles and piles of smelly dried fish and curious blue-coloured sausages that I assume must be a relative of black pudding.

The grains and beans sellers were impressive - apparently there are up to eight different varieties of black beans, as well as red, brown, speckled and several kinds of white beans available, all neatly presented to the consumer in open sacks. Most looked pretty similar to me but the customers were extremely discerning. They would run their hands through several identical-looking bags of beans before deciding which ones to buy.

San Cristobal and the surrounding state of Chiapas are big coffee-producing regions, thanks to the high altitude and plentiful rainfall the area receives. Coffee was introduced by the Europeans in the 15th century, but the real movement took off much later, when German settlers set up fincas or plantations. Chiapas is now Mexico's biggest coffee producer, with the lion's share coming from independent growers on two hectares or less of land.

San Cristobal probably has more nice cafes with great coffee than the rest of Mexico put together. For a country that grows so much coffee, its a shame that for the most part they follow the American model of serving it black and disgustingly weak. We visited a coffee museum in town and sampled the brew at a couple of the cafes, and it lived up to expectations.

Blissing out on playa Mazunte

The perfectly crescent-shaped beach at Mazunte is snugly nestled in a row of beaches on a sparsely populated coastline in Eastern Oaxaca. Until recently, Mazunte was better known for slaying turtles than as a tourism destination, because it was home to a turtle slaughterhouse. Fortunately as realisation of the turtle’s status as an endangered species grew, the operation was shut down and beachside bars and thatch huts known as palapas springing up in their place.

Getting to Mazunte from Puerto Escondido wasn’t difficult, thanks to Mexican public transport, which doesn’t seem to run to any kind of timetable but usually turns up when you need it. Finding a nice place to stay in proved more difficult – not for lack of choice, but because there wasn’t much on offer for a reasonable price.

The huts were either in new-age hippy retreats and far to expensive, or didn’t look habitable. One place we checked out offered us a bed for a bargain basement 50 pesos ($4) a night. The only catch was you would have to share the room with the landlord!

Eventually we found a thatched hut right on the beach for 120 pesos ($10) – it reminded me of a treehouse, as you had to climb up a ladder to access it. The top half of the front wall was open, affording a stunning view of the ocean. Thankfully the bed had a mosquito net otherwise we would have been eaten alive as there were no windows to keep the bugs out!

 

I’m glad we didn’t pay more for this place as the facilities were pretty basic. There was a problem with the plumbing, so we had no running water for the first 2 days, giving us another opportunity to refine our bucket-washing technique. The toilets didn’t work even with the water back on, so we used buckets to flush those too.

The place didn’t appear to be set up as a proper guesthouse. It was one of two rooms attached to the front of a series of huts where a family lived, and we shared the toilets and shower with them. They were really nice people but at times it felt like we were intruding on their lives, because every time we needed to use the facilities we would stare straight into their kitchen.

But with the room’s prime location – 40 steps from the ocean – these things were easy to overlook. Mazunte is a prime swimming beach, with stunning clear green water and waves that break close to shore so it is easy to swim up and down. I did laps a couple of times, and saw heaps of fish, including parrot fish, puffer fish and stingrays burrowing furtively in the sand.

One time I was cooling off after lying in the sun and I was gazing at some fish through my goggles when I felt a sudden, stinging pain spread over my face. I had been stung by a jelly fish! I think it was more the shock than anything else of having something wrapped around your head when you don’t expect it. I was pretty terrified, but the sting didn’t turn out too bad after I put ice on it.

Mazunte has lots of restaurants with chairs right on the beach – although thankfully they did not hog all of the sand, as happens in some places. The place had a nice quiet vibe, which was great for relaxing during the day, but it seemed eerily empty at night, Apparently we were there during low season (although to me this seems the perfect time of year to visit – hot, dry and no rain or hurricanes) which could have explained the lack of people. The other end of the beach, where the new-age place was, was slightly more abuzz with people but these were mainly annoying hippy deadbeats whiling away the time juggling, fire-twirling and not washing.

One night we took a bus over to neighbouring Zipolite, which has more going on in the way of bars and restaurants. Originally we had thought about staying here but the surf is supposed to be really rough (again, probably about on par with Bondi Beach) and not safe for swimming. The surf did look pretty rough, and we would not have been able to swim laps up and down like we did in Mazunte.

Zipolite’s long beach was lined with bars, and back one block the main street was filled with restaurants. We drank at the bar of an accommodation place that offered, among other things, hammocks for 50 pesos per night. The hammocks were strung up in a row, so if you slept in one, you were about half a metre away from the next person, which I think would do my head in!

I regretted our choice of cheap-looking restaurant as soon as our food was served. We ordered these giant taco things made on plate-sized tortillas called tlayudas. Instead of being crispy they were disturbingly chewy and there was hardly any filling in one of them – the lady had simply neglected to add the meat.

The buses back to Mazunte stopped well before we did, so we had to cab it back instead. We couldn’t find one anywhere in town, so we hiked up to the highway to try and find one.

Sure enough, we walked past a house and a guy ran out, asking us if we needed a ride. Turned out there was a taxi sitting right there in his front yard. The only catch was that it wouldn’t start, so we had to push it down the hilly driveway before the driver let the clutch out and ground the gear stick into reverse.

After five days of doing very little, we felt totally refreshed and ready for some more travel. Our next stop is the southern state of Chiapas, home to the mountainous colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas, tropical forests and indigenous Maya people.

Mexico’s sleaziest town

It’s a big call, but the sunny beachside haven of Puerto Escondido is surely home to the sleaziest men in Mexico. The fact that most women are more scantily clad than in other parts must have something to do with it, but I have never been leered, whistled, stared or catcalled at with the same gusto since I arrived in this country.

One breezy afternoon I put on a dress because we were going out that night. The hemline is well above the knee, but the top is rather conservative looking, with small capped sleeves and a high round neckline. I walked up the street to buy water, and was whistled at by about 8 different people within the space of five minutes. Guys working on a construction site (no surprises there), guys at the gas station, the guy driving the septic tank truck, even a guy driving a large air-conditioned bus gently tooted his horn!

Until now, I hadn’t experienced much of the ‘machismo’ that Mexican men are reputedly famous for. I have heard the odd sexist remark here and there, and I’m pretty sure men here don’t help out with the housework, but I’ve never been stared at quite like this before.

Palm-lined Puerto Escondido is an ideally-sized beach town. Small enough to have a laid-back, accessible feel, it is large enough to have a variety of beaches to visit, each with their own unique character. We stayed a few minutes out of town near Playa Carizalillo, a perfectly-shaped crescent with chunky yellow sand and vivid green water.

The beaches are connected by a rocky escarpment with amazing views of the whole area, from the town’s curved main beach to the long, straight surf beach of Zicatela. Another beach, Playa Angelito, looks to have been designated the Mexican family beach. Its sheltered cove was packed with children playing in the shallows, and rows of motorboats a little further out. Barely a square inch of sand was visible, as most of the beach packed with tables, chairs, deck chairs and umbrellas.

Mexicans take a different approach to relaxing on the beach to Australians. For us, beaches are places of relaxation, seclusion and tranquillity, as we lay down our towels far away from any other groups of people, soaking up rays and swimming wearing next to nothing.

Not a square inch of space left on the Mexican family beach

For Mexicans, going to the beach is a social event, a fiesta for the whole family. Nobody sits on towels on the sand – this is why beaches are almost completely covered with tables and chairs. Umbrellas are mandatory, as no self-respecting Mexican is prepared to sit out in the sun when there is the possibility of enjoying the shade.

Mexicans are not content to snack on icy poles or the humble meat pies as served in surf club kiosks in Australia. They want restaurant food. Beaches are lined with taco stands, sandwich shops and mini-restaurants selling all manner of seafood dishes as well as other favourites such as enchiladas and tostadas.

Surf beaches do not seem popular here as they are in Australia. In Mexico, there are also lifeguards at surf beaches but they don’t seem to do any actual life saving. If there is any hint of a swell or undertow, the beach is declared unsafe for swimming and nobody is allowed in. Meanwhile surfers have free reign and can use any beach they please.

We went in for a swim at Zicatela, which is meant to have dangerous undercurrents, but we were only waist-deep when we heard the ear-splitting whistle of a lifeguard ordering us out of the water. Apparently the rule is you can only go in 10m from the shoreline, which at low tide meant you could go in up to your ankles.

Sunset at playa Zicatela

So Mexican beaches are really fun places to visit as there is always something going on, but they are not necessarily the best places to kick back and relax!

The laidback atmosphere of our hostel in Puerto Escondido more than made up for the beachfront madness. Tucked away on a back street, the rooms were arranged around a palm-fringed courtyard containing swimming pool, lounge chairs and a cabana. It had a fun and friendly vibe and the comfortable common area made it easy to hang out and get talking to people.

Puerto Escondido was the perfect place to wind down after our cycling adventure, but we were keen to stay somewhere a little more low-key, where you could rent a cabana right on the beach for peanuts. Luckily there are a handful of these beaches within an hour of Puerto Escondido, so after three nights we were on the move again.

Mountain biking adventure



Cycling is the best way to really explore the countryside. It’s quicker than walking, so you can cover more distance quickly, and you can wind your way in and out of small laneways and backstreets and go off road to explore bushland. Buses, by contrast, ferry you between large towns so you skip everything else in between – villages, farms and forests – unless you take a special day trip there.



Starting off from a village outside Oaxaca City

We took a four-day cycle trip from Oaxaca to the laidback beach town of Puerto Escondido, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. To get there we traversed a mammoth mountain range – the Sierra Madre del Sur, riding through lush farmlands, a semi-arid desert, rugged pine forests, across creeks and through isolated villages. All up we rode 240km in four days on mountain bikes, up and down long steep hills on mainly unsealed roads.

A good thing about this tour was that it finished at our intended destination, saving us a 10-hour windy bus trip to Puerto Escondido. The tour came with the support of a van, which carried tools, spare bicycles, water and all of our stuff.

It was pretty slow going for much of it, as Oaxaca’s back-country roads aren’t exactly well-maintained. It’s a part of the country largely ignored by the government. In fact many of the roads are logging tracks maintained by the villages and don’t appear on any maps.

On the first day we hopped from village to village, riding on a mix of paved and gravel roads that went right past the back of farms and family homes and allowed us to peer into businesses and say hi to people we passed on the street. It also meant we had to dodge stray dogs, donkeys and small children.



The farmland was dry but productive, with rows of corn, lettuces, watercress and root vegetables. The landscape became gradually more arid and within an hour we were passing agave plantations – a blue-green cactus with pointy leaves that is used to make mezcal and tequila.

By now the paved roads had long disappeared and the rocky track was a sherbet-pink colour. It was also about 2pm and really starting to heat up. The track connected with the main road and we pedalled up to a nearby comedor or diner, run by a friend of the tour operator. We guzzled down the sweet rice water (tastes better than it sounds) and inhaled chicken with a peppery red mole sauce and giant plate-sized tortillas.

The first day we rode 60km on gently undulating terrain with only one sandy steep hill in direct sunlight. This was a warm-up for the second day, which was flat for the first k or so and then wound its way up through the mountains. Luckily this section was paved, as it proved to be one long hill. In 15km we had climbed 600m in altitude.



Adam with our guides "los dos Robertos"

The second section was a very satisfying downhill run with super-tight hairpins, before the road turned to gravel, rocks and sand. There were some steep uphills – I hadn’t realised how slow it is to ride uphill on a gravel road – and some terrifying downhills, where the whole bike was shaking and if I braked suddenly my tyres would slide out in a big skid.

We stopped for lunch and a siesta in a small riverside village, and stupidly decided to do the optional extra 15km after we’d had a break for nearly two hours. We thought, how hard can that be, but we didn’t realise it would be 90% uphill, with no shade. It was now 3pm, the temperature had climbed to a punishing 33 degrees.

It was awful. It seemed like on every hill, any possible shade was conspicuously absent, while the downhill runs were all lined with trees. I started to feel faint and dizzy, and decided it wasn’t worth continuing. Absolutely spent, I jumped in the van while Adam and Roberto, our guide, continued. It turned out I had called it quits just 100m before the top of the hill, which was followed by a long shaded downhill run. But the final few kilometres was a steep uphill into a mountainous hamlet where we would spend the night. Adam was completely exhausted after finishing this section!



The sign reads: "family planning - a good option to live better."
In the foreground Adam inspects the quality of the corn yield

We stayed at a family home in the village, and were fed fried cheese with salsa and refried beans for dinner and vegetable soup and charred cactus paddles for breakfast. I was surprised by how basic some of the towns we visited were. All had electricity but basic wooden or adobe housing and no running water, yet somehow people managed to run cafes and restaurants. We had bucket showers – with heated water, which was a nice touch.

The village overlooked a massive mountainous pine forest, whose tall slender trees blanketed the surrounding hillsides. The trees provided welcome shade as we cruised down the mountain, with some sections of the road covered in a red carpet of leaves. We rode the furthest distance on the third day – 75km – but the downhills and shade made it much quicker and more enjoyable than the first two days.

There were some uphill sections but we were able to get up some speed on the downhills, meaning we were able to power up them a bit better. Adam was thrown off his bike when he got a bit too excited on a particularly steep section and hit a big rock after rounding a tight corner. He had big grazes all up and down his left side.

As we began to descend from the mountains, the forest became more tropical and there were a number of coffee plantations. My ears popped as we raced down steep gravelly sections that were linked by tight hairpin bends. When we reached our destination, the riverside village of La Reforma, I felt as if I was encased in a thick, moist blanket of air. At the local comedor, bright red freshwater yabbies were the special of the day and served with avocado plus the ubiquitous rice and beans. They were absolutely delicious and tasted like a cross between crayfish and prawns.

We cooled off at a nearby waterfall, which cascaded down so powerfully that it generated a strong breeze. The water was deliciously crisp, the perfect antidote to the steamy conditions. We spent the night camping at the back of a family’s home overlooking the river. When I switched off the torch in my tent and laid back all I could hear was a deafening chorus of buzzing insects.

The final day of riding was made difficult by the oppressive heat. We got away a bit earlier today, but by 10am we were riding up hilly sections with no shade. When we stopped for a break at midday, and the temperature climbed a whole degree during the  20 minutes that we sat in the shade.

Camping by the river on the final night

The mercury continued to climb, and the next section was completely uphill with no shade. My tyres kept losing traction in the boggy sand and once again I was back on the lowest gear. I again started to feel faint so I got off and walked my bike up a steep section. But this time I was determined not to throw in the towel! I got back on and pedalled for a bit, and shortly after discovered we had reached the top of the hill.

We rounded the corner and were greeted with a breathtaking view of the ocean, and could see Puerto Escondido hugging the coastline just a few kilometres away. A big downhill run and speedy flat section through some villages followed, and before long we found ourselves opposite Zicatela, the town’s famous surf beach.

We made it!

Shifting down a gear in laid back Oaxaca

Encircled by majestic green hills, Oaxaca is a town that has eschewed the pressures of modern life. Although it has over 200,000 residents, it manages to retain an accessible small town feel, its many shaded plazas connected by a neat network of paved streets.

This is a town that completely shuts down on Sundays and there are far more churches (23 at last count) than cantinas. Indigenous women walk the streets carrying baskets on their heads and markets are the focal point of commerce. Small-family run tienditas dominate over big brand chain stores.

Main cathedral

But it is quickly evident that Oaxaca has benefitted from a big tourism boom. Most of the centre of town is set up for the gringo influx - the streets are lined with brightly-painted and well-tended galleries, handicraft shops, restuarants, cafes and bookshops. Regular services such as chemists and laundromats are confined to the grittier edges of town, where super-noisy local buses ply the streets.

It was quite a shock arriving in touristy Oaxaca from our little barrio in Mexico City as we had grown used to being the only anglos and getting stared at constantly - Adam's height attracts lots of attention. In Oaxaca, we started overhearing strains of Ameri-English instead of Spanish and everyone looked like us.

As you might expect, the pace is much slower in Oaxaca. Things really wind down in the heat of the day, and many businesses close for siesta. The streets were empty on Sunday, with most locals shifting to the Zocalo, or cathedral plaza to simply hang out in the shade of the giant trees, eating ice creams and drinking raspados, which consist of sickly sweet gloopy fruit syrup poured over a cup of ice.

Wedding car

Oaxaca's few modern-style supermarkets are easily outstripped by traditional fresh food markets, where you can find pretty much everything you need for your pantry - and many things you probably don't. We wandered around the larger wholesale markets, where many of the vendors would not sell you items in bags smaller than a 1/4 of a kilo. Others buy from the wholesale suppliers and resell smaller quantities in stalls around the corner.

The variety here is absolutely dazzling. Butchers specialise in either pork or beef and have just about every cut imaginable on display - including cow's head, offal and tortillas made from spongy pork crackling. There were chocolate and cheese stalls with big discs of dark, gritty Oaxacan chocolate and thick, dark lumps of pre-made red and black mole paste.

Mezcal vendors had rows and rows of different varieties, from completely clear blow-your-head off types to smoother, creamy opaque versions. In between the many fruit and vegetable stands there were stands of glass jars containing different types of herbs, flowers, seeds and cactuses used in indigenous medecine and witchcraft.

Oaxaca has an incredible variety of unique fruits, vegetables and herbs, including the caramel-like mamey fruit. It is also the home of chapulines, or dry-roasted grasshoppers, which taste remarkably good considering they are an insect. Oaxacan cuisine is richly flavoured with herbs such as the aniseed-tasting epazote, and an impressive array of leaves and edible flowers. Many of its dishes are based on complex-flavoured moles, or sauces where up to 30 ingredients are ground together and can take hours or days to prepare.

Dry-roasted grasshoppers

Oaxaca is a great place for just hanging about. There is lots to do culturally, with dozens of museums and art galleries and of course ubiquitous churches. But as much of an impression can be gained from just strolling around one of the shaded plazas or pedestrian-free shopping streets.

This leg of the journey provided some much-needed downtime after the past hectic week of last-minute sightseeing and farewell parties in Mexico City. We are also resting up to have plenty of energy for our next episode - a four day cycle through the mountains of southern Oaxaca state to the Pacific Coast, finishing up in the surfer's retreat of Puerto Escondido.