| The Great Misadventure |
|
|
|
| Saturday, 12 March 2005 | |
|
What happens when 4 locals from Playa del Carmen emabark on a road trip adventrue? Here's the way I remember it..... Four of us were sitting around Captain Dave’s on the beach drinking beer when someone said:"Why don’t we rent a car and drive around the Mountains of Chiapas?” “That’s a great idea!” we responded, and The Misadventure began. The characters in this drama are as follows. The names are changed to protect the guilty...... 1. CSP: That’s me, and the acronym stands for Cenote Sam of Playa...I was the mountain driver, and the self appointed First Sergeant. 2. PIM: He was the flat land driver. 3. RYAN: He was the reader and the pyramid climber. He kept us in stitches with his dramatic reading from the tour book. 4. BOO BOO. BOO was not allowed to touch the steering wheel for reasons that would be obvious if you knew who he really was. BOO was the official TOPE spotter. He was very good at this; yelling “TOPE, TOPE!” as loud as possible. On some occasions he would frighten the other adventurers to death, including the driver, who would then slam on the brakes thus putting the car into a slide and crossing the topes sideways. If you have never performed this maneuver...DON´T... This is for professionals only and only after 6 beers, minimum.
Day 2: We toured the Palenque ruins for my third time. This is one of the most spectacular of all Mayan ruins. It sits in the mountains of Chiapas and is in a bit of a haunted setting. The Temple of the Cross rises to 70 Meters (230 ft.), and it along with Tikal, El Mirador and Tonina, are the 4 highest temples built by the Mayan. The highlight of this tour was to be a steam bath to purify our souls. PIM promised a Mayan would come out of the jungle with mushrooms. I guess we were supposed to take them to the kitchen to be sliced, cooked and added to our steaks. That is what you do with jungle mushrooms, is it not? Day 3: We trekked on into the Mountains of Chiapas to San Cristobal. This is a 125 mile adventure that took us 5 hours (or about 24 miles/hr).It is through the heart of Zapatista country. It can be said that this is a difficult drive at best and only for the adventurous and stupid. It can also be said this is not for the faint of heart or for a sane person. The mountains are full of curves, without guard rails, but with plenty of Topes. Some of the topes are so bad you can’t get a car over them without dragging bottom. We stopped at the Misol-Ha Waterfall, the Aqua Azul Cascades, and the ruins at Tonina. Tonina is magnificent. It sits on top of a mountain, with most of the temples on top the mountain. Parts of the mountain are leveled to form terraces with the sides of the mountain covered with stone to give the appearance of a high and grand structure. The temples rise to 70 meters (233 ft.), but look much higher. The few buildings on the floor of the Acropolis include two ball courts, one of which is 233 ft. long making it the longest of all Mayan ball courts.
Day 5: We went to the Mayan villages of Chamula and Zinacantan. This was Sunday and the villages were having their open market. We had to sign promissory notes that we would not take pictures during our visit. The scene in the church was something else. Services were being held. The floor was covered with palm fronds. Mayans were sitting on the floor in front of loads of candles, all involved in prayer and chants drinking cokes and a liquor of some sort. Outside the church the square was full of Mayan people all dressed in traditional clothing. The village leaders wore special straw hates adorned with ribbons. Each hat signified the rank on the council.
Day 6 continues...We stopped at the ruins of Edzna before getting to Campeche City. This is another excellent ruin site, although a little smaller that many of the others. It’s famous for the Temple of 5 Floors and has some incredible Masks Day 7...Back to Playa...For some reason; I couldn’t talk my fellow adventurers to stop ay Ek Balam. All in all, it was one h$%# of a trip...We drove 1400 miles through the states of Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas and Yucatan, and saw some of the most incredible sights we have ever seen! Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
By CSP
Day 1: We roared out of Playa del Carmen, and headed for Palenque. At one point RYAN announced that he was going to soil his pants if the driver did not slow up. PIM and I looked at each other and simultaneously said..."Put a towel under him." and roared on. We stopped at the interesting ruins of Kohunlich. This is a very extensive Mayan site, but it is relatively unknown, it was my second time there, and I still don’t have much information, except that it’s expansive and famous for the Temple of Masks. I believe it is close to the size of Coba and Calakmul, which are both around 70 square KM. As far as I can tell these are the two largest sites in the Mayan world. I would guess that Kohunlich is about 40 to 50 square KM.
Day 4: On to the town of Chiapas de Corso, almost to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas. We took a boat ride down the Sumidero Canyon. This is an incredible canyon with mountain tops rising 1000 meters (3300 ft.) above the river, and the walls are almost vertical to the sky. Did I mention it was a two hour round trip, by car, over a highway at least as bad as yesterday’s trip. I let PIM drive the leg. He astounded us by demonstrating his mountain driving skills that he had learned in Ohio. He was especially good at accelerating downhill after getting through a death defying hairpin curve. He then slammed on the brakes going into the next curve and sliding around it. At one point, I asked him how the brakes felt...This question became a daily question...We stopped for beer. I discovered the front hub caps were hot as hell. I then took the keys away from him and sat him in the back seat to keep an eye on RYAN. You wouldn’t think anyone could wander away from the inside of a car when it was moving, but we never knew.
Day 6: Back up or down the mountains to Palenque and on to Campeche City. We out did ourselves by deciding to leave before sunrise to make sure today’s passages would be completed before sun down...you do not want to be on this highway after dark. To make a long story short, we got to the Mountains 1.5 hours before first light. I had forgotten that it gets light about 1 hour later when you are 600 miles west of Playa. The windshield kept fogging over, the heater defrost wouldn’t work and we had to run the A/C to keep the windshield somewhat clear...and we navigated ourselves back through the tope mine field. This was the most difficult drive of my life!
Show/Hide comment form
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|