8at guano crazy

It’s been a while, we’ve been trundling around a fair bit and we’re writing this on our last night in Mexico, assuming all goes well tomorrow at the border…

We spent our first three whole nights in a row in one spot for the first time since our trip begun, we must be getting lazy. Our chosen destination was “Overlanding Oasis”, run by a lovely Canadian couple who built an amazing home on the outskirts of Oaxaca in the village of El Tule. Basically, they parked their 50’s bus, converted into a motorhome, in an old restaurant then built a workshop on one side, a kitchen, lounge and bathroom on the other side and still use the bus as a bedroom and study. Outside of this unique setup they have room for overlanders to set up camp and stay incredibly comfortably. We met a great German family there who fed us too much delicious Tequila and the next day we set off to hungoverly explore the village and city. The village’s claim to fame is that the tree with the biggest diameter in the whole world lives there, it certainly is chunky and a quick Wikipedia search checks out. Must be true.

 

Another local attraction is a “petrified waterfall” which was quite pretty in the clouds. Our fancy tyres came in handy making our way up to a little camp nook off the main road in the rain. Didn’t get stuck, yessss.

Every two or three days we have to find groceries since our fridge is small and our appetites not so much. Mainly the small fridge... Google maps led us astray, and as we scratched our heads looking lost in a small village, a man walks over to talk to us. Fighting with the language barrier, we explained what we were seeking and he calls his wife over to help. Expecting a few arm gestures and some pointing, we are overwhelmed when she hops in the back of the van and kindly guides us through the maze of a village to a small shop that seems to stock everything. We grab some supplies, manage to buy her a couple of things (she didn’t actually need anything), and she even helped pack our bags. We drop her off, chat some more and admire their swimming pool built for the village, and head on the way yet again overwhelmed at the kindness and generosity of Mexicans.

We head out to our first Mayan Ruin experience, a sweaty hike from a car park up a hill. On the way we encounter the ugly ugly ugly bird that is so ugly. A river that needs crossing, in a van that needs washing, so we use our brains and get two things done at once.

So we make it up to the ruins, and you can see below Jenny intently taking a picture. But what is it? Is it a pyramid structure? Is it a temple?

NO! It’s another cactus rocking out whooooooooohhhoooooooo

The ruins weren’t very spectacular, we won’t bore you with our bad photos of them. But it was a nice car park to spend a night in.

Our lil’ home is a little tall but we decided we didn’t need to worry about the winds, but as we progressed across a valley a fair bit of steering was required to keep on the black stuff. This was the strongest wind we’ve driven across, with scrapes on the tarmac and flat spots in the bushes telling tale of many vehicles folding their wing mirrors in the hard way.

Further through the valley we find hundreds and hundreds of beautiful wind turbines, gentle giants creating huge amounts of clean electrickary. Apart from one, which died.

Sneaking past an open gate we manage to find a row of these monsters to stand under and gawk at in admiration and minor terror that these ones might explode like the other one. They are so huge! It was great to see so much investment in clean energy, but that positivity was soon wiped out.

Midway through the wind turbine farm we see a rubbish sign, expecting to find a bin we are shocked and saddened to see that this is a place to dump your rubbish, but not into a bin, rather into a big pile by the side of the road where it will either burn slowly or blow away. Plastics, metals, anything and everything gets thrown onto a pile by the side of the road, by the sign telling you to do so. In the shadow of clean, renewable energy a pile of waste slowly burns.

Our next camp spot is a lake where the fishing rod makes its first appearance mainly as a decorative and ineffective tool for catching fish. Which I think is normal? We needed something for the hand not holding a beer. Just as the sun is setting, and we are enjoying our relaxing evening two severely intoxicated locals turn up and just would not leave, we got bitten, it got dark, we couldn’t understand a word they said and still they wouldn’t stop trying to talk to us. It wasn’t threatening, it wasn’t friendly, it was just plain drunk and as soon as they finally left, we moved far away for fear of a return appearance.

The sun rose, flip flops were fixed, the severity of the previous evenings bites became apparent.

Sometimes we shower like superheroes.

Another town we were recommended, San Cristobal, turned out to be quite a pleasant place to sit outside a pub and have a few drinks. We even managed to be outdone in the “Who looks the most like a tourist” competition.

As a touristy town, it is surrounded by attractions to draw the crowds out except in the week at this time of year we are the crowd by ourselves. So we made ourselves at home enjoying the cool altitude of highlands, dried our towels and fixed today’s broken thing. There’s always something broken.  This site, Grutas de Marmut, has a huge underground cave system you can wander around in almost falling over the slippy rocks while looking upwards enjoying the ambience. We also found where those damn ants in the van were coming from, a nest they made in a book!! Bastards.

Now for some Mayan ruins worth showing you short attention spanned readers (actually you’ve made it this far so that wasn’t a fair accusation). Built from the years 300 through to 600 AD, this huge set of temples built onto a reshaped hill was certainly an impressive thing to clamber all over trying not to fall and die. Yet again being out of season meant we basically had the place to ourselves, and where we expected an entrance fee as reported by our guiding app, a policeman manning the entrance booth told us there was in fact no charge. Result!

A creepy ass snake like tree vine thing.

More ants were found, tracked back to underneath the fiberglass top. It was removed, they were exterminated. And todays thing that needs fixing? The brakes!

Squeamish? On our penultimate day in Mexico we happened to be passing a “Bat Show” so we made the short walk into the forest to find the big ol’ hole in the ground from which this show emanates. Finding a surprising number of other people at this remote location, a tour guide gave us some details and then before we knew it a whopping 3.5 million bats began to leave their cave over the span of half an hour, twisting out and up through the trees in a huge squeaky flurry. The force of their flying could be felt with a significant mammal generated breeze with the occasional slap as one collided with a tree or rock (sonar interference?). A falcon that was perched on the far side for ten minutes before the bats began flying dropped into the furry cloud, legs outstretched and just plucked dinner from the air with minimal effort. Standing at the side of the sink hole, bats would whoosh past your head with incredible precision making their way off into the night. Not wanting to get rabies we decided best not to try and get in their way, and headed back to our sneaky abandoned quarry campsite safe in the knowledge that there were bats out there hunting down on those pesky bugs.

We were about two days away from entering Guatemala’s west border about five days ago, but in keeping with our flexible and adventurous way of life, we decided to head north to cross over to the Caribbean coast and visit Belize. It wasn’t on our radar until a Tequila fuelled conversation with our German overlanding friends, but isn’t that how the best decisions are made? So that’s where we are, on the Caribbean in the rain about to attempt cross our third border. Wish us luck!

Due to absolutely infuriating technical issues, there will be no map for now and we'll try and get it updated once we care enough.

Fixed it maybe!
Mapdiddilymapmap