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Smugglers Blues
Hola from Mexico !
... Palenque to be exact. We just got here having come from Belize , through Guatemala . Why the Guatemala ? OK, the truth is I thought the ticket said GUAM ... OK, seriously, somebody has to pickup all that lost luggage from Guam . We are relaxing to a few cervesas and nachos after a long day. How long a day you say? Well lets start at the beginning:
Hit Belize City and decided to save it for the end, after all it looked like the worlds biggest crack house. (actually we are trying to work around the storms) Moved on by chicken bus (for safety) to the first of the lost Mayan cities, Xanantunich. Beautiful until we were washed back down the mountain in a flash flood (its the wet season and there are two hurricane systems moving north). Hitched to the border and made it into Guatemala to Tikal , the crown jewel of the Mayan world.
Tikal
Slept at a jungle lodge in Tikal where the archeologists stay and with the help of large doses of chloroquine, scoured the place in a couple days. The jungle is so thick you can't see the city until you are at the top of a temple looking down into the canopy. In the space of two hours I got attacked by bats in a cave, chased by a cotamundi, harassed by turkeys and had to run vertically down and back up a 60 meter temple on a cliff because left my camera at the bottom... all while being screamed at by howler monkeys, (Pictures to follow, no cafes in here are wired). Cool, very cool. Didn't know the bat was headed at me until I took a picture in the dark and it saw him freak out a foot from the camera...
The Border...
So we got word of an awesomely cheap tour van going to Mexico to the lost Mayan city of Palenque . After getting in the van, we were immediately took to a field in the middle of nowhere where a guy drove up and said he would not let us go anywhere until we gave him 300 US. I slammed the window on him and told him to get lost while telling the driver to step on it (I didnt understand what he was saying, the girl in the back translated later after thinking we were heroes). So we made it to the border but the van left without us. We had to chase it down to the riverside and catch the boat (canoe) to the Mexican border.
Several heavily armed patrols were swarming around the border while we squeaked through but suddenly we were mysteriously waiting at a shack in a little village in southeastern Chiapas . 3 scary looking guys squeezed in where the was no room (against my loud protests) and we coutinued through the jungle in a 100 degree mobile oven. Then things got ugly. We hit a roadblock an hour later and an army patrol emptied out our van. the three guys were taken by force into the bandwagon and carried away. I though one took my bag with him so I ran to the van and almost went with them. Apparently they though the safest way to move human cargo was in a tourist van. After a rather humbling wait we contined to Palenque and rolled in a few hours late today. Back to chicken buses for us. What a day... We begin the push south to Honduras tomorrow night.
MAN I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! Europe is too sleepy. I belong in the third world... ( by the way I wasnt saying that siz hours ago...) :-)
Buenos Noches Amigos and catch you later,
Joe
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