San Cristobal to the Southern border of Mex

Riding again, heading South East now to San Cristobal Del La Casas as we want to cross into Guatemala at Le Mesilla, which is reportedly a better spot to cross than on the busy PanAm highway. Once again the road did not disappoint, it started off straightish and cross-winds that would blow and gust enough to push the bike to the edge of the road. It must be like this alot as there was a huge windmill farm on both sides of the highway. We had seen online that it was -21C in Cochrane today so we will not get much sympathy as we ride in a very windy 31C. The terrain transitioned from coastal plains and the occidental terrain back up into the mountain landscapes, thus the road also changed back to never ending curves, these ones could only be negotiated at about 20kph, the road was not only twisty but came with steep grades and sloping roads. Very interesting concept, I just wonder if it was intentional or how it turned out. Once we got used to the road, the scenery and farmland in the high country was amazing. I will never again complain about having to mow grass on a hill, these people farm corn and some type of vined fruit on the sides of 75 degree hills.


San Cristobal is home to the oldest preserved church in all of Mexico. It is also home to numerous other churches, monasteries, language schools, and other very interesting and old architecture. The camera is getting a workout here, as are we, there are stairs everywhere. This is a truly old city, the streets are very narrow, two small cars wide, most streets are one way to avoid possible collisions and other traffic issues.

These are the stairs that lead up to the church which can be seen at the top.



The food is again great and the people all very friendly, they always return our smiles with smiles of their own and big auctioneer type comments in Spanish. We have no idea what they are saying, but it sounds friendly. :).


After an amazing walk around San Cristobal we ate dinner at a little kiosk style restaurant that had tables set out front adjacent to a small park. This was very handy for the street vendors to walk up and ask if we wanted any of their wares, we declined gracefully and were bid “Buenos noches” as they left. We retired to our room early as usual to download photos and write a bit. The hotel has no heating system so it is crisp in the room and a little damp, the way to compensate this is with thick wool or fleece blankets, I suppose this is similar to any moist climate whether inland or coastal.
The morning brought an amazing 6C and light mist of rain, by the time we left the sun was trying to break up the clouds so it warmed considerably. We headed to Comitan in preparation for the border crossing on Sunday, we heard that Sundays are good to cross as there is less traffic. It was a relatively short ride (80km and 2hrs), which was a nice break from the previous days. Comitan is spread out along the highway for what seemed like 5 miles or more. We ended up riding all the way through out into the country then back tracking in order to get the lay of the land. On the very outskirts was a big Walmart supercenter with Sam’s club, Burger King, and a couple of other big box stores, in a way it was nice to see something familiar but also disappointing that soon the smaller vendor stores will be a thing of the past as the Mexican people will change their habits in favour of the “American Style” stores. We never went into the Walmart but we have frequented a couple of Mexican stores of similar concept to Walmart and/or Costco, the prices are good and they seem to have everything from tires to bananas. These stores are good for our grocery supplies of water, some fruit, and road snacks, but we prefer to hit the small stores for other incidentals.
Once settled into the hotel and Brenda’s bike secured in the lobby, we headed out in search of a hose clamp. It may have been helpful to look up “hose clamp” in the Spanish Dictionary before we left but that would have taken a bit more organization that we could muster today. Due to the layout of the town, most everything was available along the business frontage of the highway, we did however take a couple of detours into the side streets in search of a auto parts store, which took us on some very narrow and rough streets. The streets are also a mixture of concrete and cobblestone, one ways, blind corners, speeding taxi’s and of course incomprehensible signage. Oh ya, the hose clamps cost $1 for two and is called a clevisio, makes sense, kinda like clevis. The clamp was to replace the rad hose clamp that started dripping again, no biggie, just a couple of minutes of tinkering and job was complete. In the end I didn’t use the new clamps, just repositioned the existing one and all leaking stopped. Oh, and those tires I bought in Phoenix are still being carried as luggage, the rear tires we have just keep going and going, so until they get bald I guess we keep hauling the spares.

Tomorrow, border crossing, this should be fun!!!