July 1st to 2nd, 2004

July 1st
Johanne belts out ‘Oh Canada’ as we zoom away from Tehuantepec at 9:30 am. The road is flat, straight, and boring; a rival to the Guerrero Negro monotony in the middle of Baja California. We burn past flat cultivated fields and some dense bush. The wind starts making advancement difficult and we’re a weeny bit pooped when we stop for some ham and cheese sandwiches under a tree just after the town of La Ventosa. We made it through a random military immigration checkpoint with just a wave, good thing cause our tourist cards have run out. The wind continues to knacker us as we push down the flat road through the middle of a large open swamp. We are very hot and the installation of a roadside gas-line is making a lot of dust, which sticks wonderfully to our sweat and recently sun creamed skin. Grease combines with sweat and grit to make us feel just right. We approach a long line of stopped vehicles due to a roadblock in a small town up ahead. We coast past the cars and trucks for a good hour, squeezing between trucks on occasion and arrive at a roadblock after having said good afternoon (buenas tardes) to every single person we saw. The townspeople let us through with many loud cheers and refuse to tell us why it is that they’ve stopped traffic. We take a couple of pictures and ride on down another line of cars in the other direction. The rain begins to pour down and we’re mercifully relieved of some grit. We stop in Niltepec to get water and food and camp on their baseball field. Three horses run freely around us as we set up the tent in the rain.

July 2nd
We down a Spanish omelet, say goodbye to the horses and a jogger, and move out. The road is making a beeline for the mountains and it is so hot that we can’t keep from sweating (nor do we try). Noon approaches and passes and we are desperately looking for a place in the shade to wait out the heat, beautiful meadows with trees and streams float by our hallucinating eyes but everything is behind a fence or too far away. We finally find refuge under a bridge and bathe in a stream before lunch. I think we might enter the State of Chiapas today. We leave the shadows at 4pm and are shocked at how the sweat instantly starts pouring off us. The insta-sweat has us running for the first provider of cold drinks. We see a “Hotel Restaurant” and stop to ask permission for the partaking of lemonade in large quantities. The place seems to be more of a “Truckstop Brothel” than a “Hotel Restaurant” but the lemonade is forthcoming and in quantities that please trucker’s bellies. A radio tuned into the trucking frequencies buzzes in a corner, kitsch plastic plants adorn the tables with nailed on table cloths, and various dubious products hang from the ceiling fit to be cut own and consumed (bags of water, plastic women). A woman in an extremely revealing outfit chats suggestively over the radio with passing drivers. Refreshed and disturbed we continue on our way. A short while later we arrive in San Pedro Tapanatepec, we scoot around the village in a vain search for white gas with which to cook and head into a steep mountain climb around six. The fatigue smacks as we pass the odorous municipal dump, which is nothing more than a roadside spot where it is officially permitted to throw garbage over the side of a steep hill. Johanne can barely move and energy food don’t help so we find an uneven spot to pitch the tent and hide our bikes a little way off in the tall grass. I prepare dinner as best I can as I too am loosing consciousness. . A little after the bugs come out I serve up some rice with black mole and some half toasted peanuts (we’re running out of gas).

Stuck in Tapana, banana