Mexico City (Distrito Federal), Chiapas, Tobasco, Guatemala and Venezuela
My journey to Central America took place after saying goodby to my dear Katten. K, who had approved my travelling plans, has a summer jobb in South Norway.
It felt good right from the start, my amigos in D.F. Ole and René did not show up at the airport as agreed. First I thought it was a challenge: “Can Kjartan figure out how to get from the airport, 21 PM, without talking spanish and without a propper destination address?”. After sending a mail from a CyberCafé it turned out that the guys was hanging around in their appartment planning to pick me up the next day… a funny misunderstanding. There is a seven hour difference in time and somehow they expected my arrival on Wednesday.
Ole, René and Carmen (Rene´s Mex girlfriend) picked me up in her Golf. D.F. is one of the biggest cities in the world and I, coming from little “innocent” Norway, gazed. The city is situated at 2240 meters above sea-level!
The language is challenge for me, I felt a bit handicapped. Almost no one speaks English. My friends introduced me to the D.F. A city with great art- and cultural museums, music, nightlife, huge differences in living conditions and a smell of abzucht. In and around Ole and renés apartment, which off course were surrounded by a big wall and deffence wires, we had much fun.
On Sunday we hired a Durango car (a big American) and headed south. At the journey towards Oaxaca we experienced a desert landscape, some very poore suburbs and a flat tire.
Swimming in the Pacific Ocean was terrific and challenging. Kjartan and René did not respect the wooden stick on the shore (wich supposedly signaled danger undertow – an undertow occurs where waves are breaking over rips. The force of the wave pushes the outgoing water down, creating an undertow. This downward force, however, lasts only a few seconds, because as soon as the wave breaks, the rip surfaces and so do you).
After a day or two we decided to drive to the city of San Cristobal and Palenque (the mountains of Chiapas). The road is situated next to the Guatemala border and is not recommended in the traveling guide. Happily we got through, we didn’t meet any gunmen but some hurricane damaged roads and some rather desinformativ native advice… Palenque was beautiful and cool (compared to the 40 degree celsius at the beach). The prespanish towns were amazing and the history reckless. The Zapatistas still exist in the area, but their weapons are now a clever PR- tactics, internet, music and ecological tourism. I dont think the contrabass cases contained any machine guns ; )
Trechinsky – Reliable Source, significant-minority viewpoints