Chiapas & Yucatan

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Oaxaca City is the home of national hero Benito Juarez, Mexico’s only indigenous President and one of only three indigenous leaders ever elected in the Americas - there are statues, buildings, roads and memorials across the country that are dedicated to him. He is remembered as the great reforming President credited with breaking the power of the Catholic Church, leading the country through the French invasion, improving the rights of indigenous people and making primary education free and compulsory for all - his birthday is a national holiday in Mexico.

On the outskirts of town, there are numerous archaeological sites, attractions and villages; the highlight of which was Hierve El Agua, a series of natural springs that run into infinity pools on a cliff-edge. The water has created mineral formations that look like huge frozen waterfalls on the side of the mountain. Other excursions from Oaxaca included the ancient Mayan settlements Monte Alban and Mitla ruins. Oaxaca is one of the most earthquake-prone regions in Mexico and the fact that many of the original structures are still standing is a testament to the engineering expertise of the Mayans.

From Oaxaca we faced the decision of whether to take a 12-hour overnight bus straight to San Cristobal de las Casas or go west back towards Mexico City and visit the town of Puebla before catching a flight to San Cristobal. We opted to go to Puebla and found ourselves back at Mexico City airport; completing an entirely unplanned loop of the central part of the country - although it still ended up being cheaper and quicker than taking the minibus to San Cristobal directly.

With 70 churches in the historic centre alone - locals claim 365 in total - Puebla is the religious heart of the country - the Spanish dubbed it their Jerusalem. It is the Battle of Puebla for which the City is most renowned for though, a key event in history whereby the heavily outnumbered Mexican army defeated the French led by Napoleon III - a success commemorated by the annual Cinco de Mayo celebrations across the Americas.

During our two days in the state, we also made our way across to the neighbouring town of Cholula, home to the Great Pyramid of Tlachihualtepetl – (meaning man-made mountain). Standing 450 metres wide and 66 metres tall, it is the largest pyramid ever built - twice the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It also lays claim to the honour of being the biggest monument ever built by any civilisation to this day but because it was concealed by vegetation, the Spanish invaders didn’t notice it and mistook it for a hill - fortunately, they also missed Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza and Palenque.

San Cristobal is situated in a highland valley amongst a pine forest and it’s a popular stop off point for travellers entering Mexico from Guatemala. It can get quite cold here due to the altitude and, as we don’t have much in the way of warm clothes, we were pleased to discover that our room came with a wood burning fire. The town of San Cristobal is famous for its pedestrian-friendly cobblestone streets and with this in mind, we joined a guided walking tour around the city that started at 9am and somehow, following a ‘couple’ of drinks with the other members of the group, resulted in us getting home at 2.30am. Our guide had mentioned that in Mexico ‘we don’t need much of a reason to celebrate’ so in the spirit of that, we celebrated the quality of his walking tour by making the most of a generous happy hour at El Cau. Melissa continued her obsession with sampling the quality of local wines by selecting a vintage called Blanca de Blanc, all it was missing was a chequebook and pen.

After a 24-hour recovery period, we booked a tour of the El Canyon de Sumidero with some of the other backpackers from the walking /drinking tour. The trip included a boat ride through a crocodile-infested Grijalva river - it wasn’t dissimilar to Katherine Gorge in the Northern Territory - where we saw monkeys, vultures and herons among the riverbank wildlife. The bus drove us to three separate miradors where some of the vertigo-inducing viewpoints were perched atop cliff walls that climbed one kilometre above the canyon floor.

The seemingly straightforward 68 miles from San Cristobal to Palenque morphed into a tortuous 9-hour driving adventure thanks to the unofficial road tax implemented by villagers in the isolated mountainous stretches of the highway. The direct road through ‘bandit country’ had been deemed too risky by the bus company; therefore they plotted an alternative route - a detour so lengthy that we ended up arriving in Palenque via the state of Tabasco. It was a minor inconvenience when measured against the experience of visiting the ancient Mayan City of Palenque though; buried deep in the jungle, it is one of the most authentically preserved sites in Mexico. Howler monkeys and enormous Iguanas were on display in the surrounding area, and we spent a few hours in and around the 7th Century settlement before driving south to for the afternoon at the majestic Agua Azul and Misol-Ha waterfalls.

Virtually every Mayan ruin we have seen contains a ball court - venues that were used to host popular ball games in which the winners were sacrificed to the Gods. It’s not much of an incentive to win that. I definitely wouldn’t be giving 100% if I was playing - there must have been plenty of 0-0 draws.

As we made our way across the northern part of the Yucatan, we stopped off in the walled City of Campeche, where the old town is protected by fortified defences that were built in response to constant pirate attacks led by the infamous Blackbeard, whose favourite tactic was to fight with lit fuses in his ears to make himself look more ferocious – which just sounds ridiculous.

Next up was Merida, the capital of Yucatan and the extraordinary ruins of Uxmal, before we continued to Valladolid via the town of Izamal - nicknamed La Ciudad Amarilla (the yellow city) as most of the buildings are painted gold. We used Valladolid as a base to visit the nearby ruins of Ek Balam and Chichen Itza. Our accommodation here was part of a Chinese restaurant, the owners couldn’t have been friendlier and were determined to ply us with a free banquet whenever we left our room.

We knew that it was important to make the most of our proximity to Chichen Itza by getting there as close to opening time as possible, thereby beating the hordes of people making their way from Cancun and Playa del Carmen. Although the main pyramid El Castillo was quite impressive, we thought there are better ruins in the area that don’t receive the same level of attention – namely Ek Balam. We finished up as crowds began turning up by the coach load and we spent the rest of the day escaping the heat by swimming in the nearby cenotes which are natural sinkholes created when the ceiling of a cave collapses.

Our next destination in Yucatan was Isla Holbox – or paradise - as the signs above the many water hammocks that are stationed across the island proclaim. The island is 26 miles long and just one-mile wide, the majority of which is uninhabitable mangrove and most of the population is concentrated in what passes for the town centre. Golf carts and bikes are the most common method of getting around the sandy streets, with almost no motor vehicles allowed on the island. There are no high-rises or international hotel chains on Holbox, and all businesses are independently owned. They don’t even have an Oxxo convenience store – a staple of our time in Mexico. The crystal clear green/blue waters are the primary draw for tourists here, and there is a 3-mile-long sandbar just off-shore that we used to walk over to Mosquito beach - accompanied by a flock of flamingos along the way. Watching sunsets are a popular activity for pretty much everyone on the island, and there are countless spots dotted around the north-west beaches that provide a perfect view. A lot of venues around the town square and its surrounding streets promote live music nights and when the bars did eventually shut, most of the crowd spilled out onto the unpaved road for an impromptu street party - facilitated by the combination of the local shop continuing to sell beer and the band, who seemed happy to carry on playing until sunrise.

Playa del Carmen and Cancun are about as Mexican as Donald Trump, with English spoken everywhere and all prices - triple what they were elsewhere in Mexico - displayed in USD in order to pander to tourists too lazy to work out the exchange rate for themselves.

The islands of Isla Mujeres and Isla Cozumel, located a short ferry ride from Cancun and Playa del Carmen respectively, were a far better proposition than the mainland towns - offering a more laidback and authentic feel in comparison. It was particularly noticeable in the evenings, after all the day trippers had departed - the number of tourists dwindled and the town felt much more sedate.

As Cozumel is a much bigger island than Isla Mujeres - 28 miles long with no bus service, just taxis who enjoy a monopoly on the transport business - we decided to rent a car. We scouted around for a reputable company, a search that led us to a household name that we knew we could trust: ISIS. There was a sign at the dock proudly boasting that Cozumel is the ‘Safest place in Mexico’, although we were sceptical as we’ve heard the same claim five or six times on our travels so far - not in Acapulco though strangely enough. We encountered our first spell of bad weather here, as the sub-tropical storm Alberto hit the east coast of Quintana Roo, although we seemed to escape lightly compared to the States.

Back on the mainland, we were lucky enough to snorkel with giant sea turtles in the wild at the coastal town of Akumal. As the endangered green sea turtles feed on the sea grass just off the beach, we didn’t need to pay for a boat to take us out and our decision to invest in our own snorkelling gear paid off straight away.

The coastline ruins of Tulum were next up as we continued to move south down the Yucatan peninsula - our highlight here was the Reserva de la Biosphera Sian Ka’an. The nature reserve covers 1.3 million acres, takes up 10% of the state of Quintana Roo but only a third of the area has been completely explored. The eco-system here is home to 379 species of bird as well as manatees, four species of marine turtle, howler and spider monkeys, crocodiles, the rare Jabiru stork, jaguars, pumas, ocelots, pink flamingos, toucans and tapirs.

I was admiring the lagoon when I heard the cries of: ‘I’ve lost me shoe, I’ve lost me shoe.’ I turned around to see Melissa knee deep in what she was convinced was quicksand. It wasn’t. It turned out that she’s completely ignored a nearby sign warning of a mud bank.

Our penultimate stop in Mexico was the town of Laguna Bacalar; it is referred to as ‘the lagoon of seven colours’ due to the number of different shades of blue that the freshwater lake exhibits. The town is a relatively undiscovered gem; we only heard about it from fellow travellers who highly recommended that we should include it in our trip. At present, the town is untouched from upscale tourism, however it is gaining popularity as an attractive alternative to the more crowded Tulum.

Bacalar has ‘Pueblo Magico’ status, an honour bestowed upon designated towns that are deemed to be rich in unique cultural, historical and natural heritage - there are 111 of these magical towns throughout Mexico. We took a sailboat tour of the lagoon alongside a couple we met from Brooklyn, unfortunately our guide wasn’t exactly a font of knowledge when it came to the lagoon, which should have been his specialist subject really. His stock reply to any questions was ‘I don’t know’, but he did offer some insight into the development of the town, saying that it had changed dramatically in the past two years with a rapid escalation of tourists passing through. That change will only accelerate in the upcoming years as the town is discovered by more and more people. We were staying in a newly finished room in what can only be described as a construction site, the couple who own the place couldn’t have been friendlier and we hope for their sake that tourism does increase - at a sustainable rate - in order for them to profit from their investment.

Karl Pilkington said that he enjoyed Mexico because there are no rules and everyone just does what they want, which sums up our own experience here too. Anywhere else in the world, that would be a recipe for disaster, but here the chaos seems to work. The best example of this mindset we found came in our final stop in Mexico - the border town of Chetumal and our intended exit point into Belize. It was here that I took the photo that encapsulates the madness of the country as well as anything I had seen in the previous five months: it was of a sign prohibiting swimming in the bay due to the presence of crocodiles in the area - standing less than 10 meters from a water slide. If there’s fun to be had, not even the threat of being eaten alive will stop the Mexicans.

After just over 5 months in which we travelled 4067 miles to 33 destinations (excluding day trips) through 18 states, using a combination of cars, trains, ferries, planes and buses, it was finally time to leave Mexico, a country that is lacking in nothing for independent travellers. We loved our time here; from the fantastic food to the unique history, culture and natural wonders; to the warm, friendly people who are all part of what makes this amazing country one of our favourite travelling experiences ever. If Central America is half as good, we’ll be more than happy.

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[D MJ Binkley]

Vibrant colors
Fantastic architecture