comitan is another nice city in mexico. the colonial centro is very similar to san cristobal…only bigger, warmer and with mre thing to see/do. plus, it’s on a hill, which adds some more texture to the city. shoe stores and barber shops take the place of starbucks here.

i??m afraid that the gps might not match up perfectly (there was poor spot reception). today, i got a bit lost but finally found el chiflon, which is an awesome 70m waterfall in the outskirts of comitan. the little park is a nice place for:
-rock climbing (they have a small wall there)
-swimming (they have some shallow pools in the stream)
-photography (they had a model being photographed there)
-ziplines (they have a few that traverse the falls)
-sleeping (they have cabins and hammocks….but also mosquitos)
…but be warned, even the path has topes!

this morning i walked around san cristobal some more. it??s a nice colonial town and i enjoy the lovely gardens and patios hidden behind the harsh exteriors (see pics).

san cristobal garden

as i continue driving further south, i notice changes. the scenery is now much more tropical & hilly (like hawaii). the people have darker skin (mayan influence?). the military checkpoint even noticed the camera & searched my car (better than anyone else has so far). and best of all, in the state of chiapas, the topes are few, small & with signs!

it was nice driving through the capital of chiapas…it’s nice to be in a city again…even if i don’t stop, just to see buildings that aren’t hotels and traffic lights instead of topes. the drive from the capital to san cristobal de las casa is awesome. it’s about 30 miles horizontal…but a few miles vertical…which brings you up into the clouds surrounding the capital. the temperature is cool & the landscape entirely different (more like yosemite). in a small valley up in the heavens is the tiny city of san cristobal. almost all the streets are small & one way. each block is a solid mass of building & wall, but behind this concrete exterior lie beautiful gardens and patios. na bolom, a great mayan resource (with over 9,000 books on the mayans) is a perfect example. behind the plaster exterior lies a large garden oasis where they even nurse trees to be planted in the forests of chiapas. lonely planet has some great advice on food and lodging…although they neglected to mention that you can sleep in their guest houses surrounding the gardens for ~$40/night….certainly not the cheapest option, but the proceeds go to the ngo.

mexico: they are hard, appear out of nowhere, come in all shapes and sizes, and nobody like them. but let’s back up for a sec and explain why they even exist. so far, all mexican highways i’ve been on go through towns and cities. literally, the freeway becomes the main street of the town (which sometimes may only have one road). so, instead of stop signs, people add topes to slow cars down. and these towns might be 5-10 km apart…meaning that on many highways you have to stop every ten minutes.
the best tope is smooth, painted with yellow/white stripes, has warning lines painted on the ground leading up to the tope, and has signs a few hundred meters before & at the tope itself. this is true about 5% of the time. Most of the time, a tope will have 1 or 2 of the above. And, about 10-20% of the time, it’ll be a perfectly camouflaged stump of concrete which you can only notice from about 10 feet away. in those cases, the shocks bottom out with a loud thump, followed by the scraping of the bottom of the *rusted* car against the asphalt. even when crawling over the bump, i’ll often get a ‘ping’ or scrape. i put *rusted* in accents, because about 6 months ago, i was driving in san francisco & my exhaust pipe broke in half. i paid a guy $20 to weld it together…and he said it wouldn’t last a month (because of all of the rust).
if the rest of latin america has topes, i’m convinced that they will be the demise of the sentra. not only are my shocks squeaking (more than usual), but now my breaks are (from all the sudden stopping) & i’m pretty sure my exhaust pipe has some cracks in it now.
one last note about why they’re pure evil. it’s bad enough that the topes are hidden…but they’re also completely random. sometimes they’ll even just paint the road to look like a tope, when there’s nothing there. other times there’ll be just one in a little town…or seven….or three; or maybe they’ll be back to back…or separated by 400 feet. in some cases, they’ll even throw one or two down after you’ve already left the town…one last chance for your car to break down in their town. and one last thing: for some reason (hint: topes) there are almost as many tire stores as gas stations in mexico. in the us, the tire manufacturers lobby the government; here, they just build more topes.

the devil

since leaving san francisco, ca, usa…i’ve probably passed by 6 or 7 other san francisco’s.

all along the coast is farmland. how great would it be to own a farm next to the beach….and just live off the land.

acapulco is beautiful, but so is the whole pacific coast. it does offer first class hotels, shopping, dining & an airport…which others may not. you can google the beautiful pics yourself, here are 2 other pics from the city:
#1: kinda funny. in the distance are beautiful hotels catering to rich americans, who are probably being served by these mexicans being tranported in a dump truck.
#2: puerto escondido (lost port) is now a major tourist destination. a few hundred km away, they even have a sign pointing it out….ironically, while taking this picture, i missed the turn and ended up at the airport.

…sorry roshan, i think you’re out of the running…peter, the sentra and i are taking you on next!

puerta vallarta is nice, but i was glad to be out of there this morning. route 200 is either a headache, really fun, or somewhere in-between. yesterday, it was plesant with great secenery, although you often get stuck behind trucks who don’t/can’t pull over to the side. then, you get to puerto vallarta, where the entire downtown is covered in cobble stones — that’s not too much fun to drive on. leaving puerto vallarta the road is a bit rough, but then leads into an incredibly fun (if not long) drive along the pacific coast. there are switchbacks, hairpins & straightaways…plus the periodic stray bull or aggressive truck driver (who takes half your lane). best of all, there’s no posted speed limit (or many cops). most of the time, trees & brush block your view of the ocean, but every few minutes you get to see an awesome view of the pacific (at times rivaling california’s route 1). note: this ride is probably awful for passengers.

i ended up somewhere around playa azul (my xo laptop struggles with google maps…so i’m not really sure where i am…but you can see the exact point on the map). it seems like a beach tourist attraction for mexicans, although at least one restaurant had an english/spanish menu. the beach here is great. even though the waves are pretty choppy, the surfers can’t resist & there were about 6 of them struggling to ride more than 20 feet at a time. the cool water perfectly compliments the warm air…every time you try to leave the water, the heat pushes you back into the ocean.

OTHER:
-i’m not sure if it’s the timing, the economy or the swine flu, but so far most of the places i’ve visited have been quite empty. it’s great being able to appreciate the beaches, museums, etc. without other people. (although, it might start to get lonely if it keeps up).
-i wonder how many of the mexican service industries stay in business. in today’s hotel, there are 2 other guests (and ~100 empty rooms). at lunch yesterday, i was the only one there (and there were three people in the kitchen). can my $5 USD lunch really pay for them all?

here’s a picture from route 200 taken with the timelapse camera in the car