July 12, 1997 Huatulco (La Crucecita), Mexico This morning we drove on the nicest motorcycle road I've ever ridden on. About 60km outside Oaxaca heading South on Mexico 175 to Port Angel, the road quickly ascends from around 4k-5k feet to 8640 feet winding around more twisties than any motorcyclist could dream of. However it's not a good place for aggressive twistie riding as an over shoot could send you over a cliff with a 1000 feet of free fall. Most of the curb less, railless road instantly drops off giving stunning views of the green valleys below. The vegetation changes from deciduous forest to alpine with scents of pine, as the road continuously changes altitude. The twistie road through vegetation continues the entire 180km (112 miles) down to San Pedro Pochutla (just outside Puerto Angel). I would rate this road a 10 for twisties and elevation changes, A 9 for scenic beauty, and an 8 for road conditions. For the most part the two lane road was in good shape. There is a 20km section closer to the coast where the road gets a little rough. Also in some of the residential areas some dogs enjoy chasing motorcycles... Most know better. I was able to participate in the training of one by landing my boot across it's snout as I passed. Between the altitudes of 5k and 9k we were very comfortable wearing a liner under our leather jackets. About 60km from the coast we stopped at one of the several restaurants along the way that are positioned such that they have a beautiful view of the valley below. I had a wonderful chili rellenos stuffed with cheese while Sharon had a large chicken breast fillet in a verde sauce for cheaper than we could have gotten in most villages. We could see a blanket of haze in the valley below that looked like the coastal humidity that we were about to descend into. While beautiful from above, we were not looking forward to descending into it. We took off our liner, and then soon after we descended below 4k the heat and humidity began to build. Below 1k feet, it was hot. When I first spotted the Pacific ocean, I clicked on the communicator and said "WooHoo, it's the Pacific Ocean!". Sharon says back "Don't Yell!". Obviously she was getting hot. The view of the ocean from my vantage point was a beautiful blue bay inset amongst green vegetation. The road continued to wind through thick vegetation with few more glimpses of the ocean as we drove the 36km (22 miles) along the contour of the ocean. The roads near Huatulco are obviously all new with empty four lane roads leading from the main highway to the coastal bay. Huatulco is being built up by the Mexican government to be the next Cancun, but better so as to attract more foreign tourist income. 80% of the land around Huatulco is being conserved so as to preserve the natural setting around the bay. The result is a pretty bay surrounded by a forest. Huatulco houses some large resorts for foreigners to hang out on the beaches, however they are not yet up in full force. Club-Med has their largest resort here. Everything here is new and well planned out. The resorts are set inside and along the bay beaches. The "Authentic Mexican Village" called La Crucecita has been well planned and built for tourists to visit. It's also home for many of the Mexicans workers. The village has a sort of Disney World/Epcott center little mexico feel. Tourist shop vendors and some restaurant employees speak English which is very rare to find in Mexico. The oldest hotel in this town dates back to 1987. Walking around town with Sharon, I hear "special honeymoon prices" in English yelled out of a silver jewelry souvenir shop. Further down, as I walk by on the sidewalk, one souvenir clerk smiles at me and says "Hi", I reply with a "Buenos Tardes" and she looks embarrassed as if she just mistook me as an english speaking tourist. We arrived at low season when it's hot. While the resorts were way out of our budget, we stayed in La Crucecita where there are a few good value hotels. The first night there we were not able to find a hotel with a/c until after we booked one. When we went to bed, the temperature was 93 degrees, and when I woke up at 7:00am, it was 89 degrees. Amazingly though, I had the best night of sleep since before we went up into the mountains. The ceiling fan was on full blast all night. Since Sharon and I were both sick (me from a bad cold, and Sharon from some bad food), we wanted to baby our selves with a nicer room that at least had a/c. July 13,14 1997 Hutulco (La Crucecita), Mexico We checked into Hotel las Palmas run/owned by Guillermo Ugarte a Chilean who was buying into Huatulco early. We had met him the day before as he stopped by telling us how he liked BMW motorcyles, and that they were very common in Chile. "all of the police officers drive them, and some of them the enduros (GS) like yours", he said. Guillermo owns a hotel, and one of the best rated Oaxacan restaurants in the area. Guillermo told us that a Chicago Tribune reporter had visited, and wrote up a long article on his restaurant. Currently he also owns a souvenir shop, and was building another hotel with an ajoining Argentinean style steak house. He's active in runing his businesses, He socializes with all the guest of the restaurant making sure they have what they need, and that everything is alright. We talked with Guillermo for a while and told him about our plans. He gave us tips on places to go in Chile and gave us the name and address of his brother in Santiago. He wrote a little note on his business card to his brother telling him to take care of us when we get there. Guillermo says his brother knows how to take care of people... Yesterday, just after we pulled into town, we parked the bike and looked for a hotel. After we found one, I went to move the bikes, and the R100GS wouldn't start. The starter didn't make a peep, and the voltmeter was completely dead, however the headlights and ignitions lights lit up brightly. I pushed the bike 2 blocks to our hotel and decided to work on it in the morning when it was cooler. What a joke, it was almost the same temperature when I woke up as when I went to bed. In the afternoon, I pushed the bike to a shaded spot under some dense foliage on the side walk, and started to take it apart. Several locals stopped, asked questions and admired the big red bike. One stayed with me and gave me a hand. Even though at times I wish he didn't stay, I put up with his curiosity and over eagerness to help with a careful eye such that he wouldn't take apart something without me knowing. I had already tracked down the problem with my multi-meter to be a a fault somewhere in the kill switch. I attempted to explain this as he kept wanting to look for "solenoid". "Donde es solenoid...?" Augusto ended up being a big help. As it turned out, my well planned out rather large set of tools was missing one of the more obvious things, a tiny philips screw driver which was needed to take apart the handlebar console mount. Augusto said he had one, and ran off to get it Later, when I lost a tiny ball bearing that causes the stop click action in the headlight switch (Euroswitch), he ran off to a motorcycle shop and came back with two... unfortunately too big. The problem with the kill switch was that somehow the solder joint had broken where it connected to the the switch permanently turning on the kill switch. I turned my head and Augusto was biting the wire with his teeth attempting to strip the wire such that he could wrap the bare copper around the contact. I stopped him and then not knowing the word for soldering iron, I told him I needed a "pluma coliente" or "hot pen" to which he said he had one. We pushed the bike to a pizza place where he worked as a pizza delivery person. It turned out he was borrowing the tool from the owner of the pizza place, who in addition to making pizzas, makes money by pirating software, and happens to have a "computer repair kit" which contained a soldering iron. I got out my extension cord, and used his soldering iron permanently fixing the connection. When I put it back together, I had thought I might have lost one of the tiny springs that are in this little console. I asked if he might have a ballpoint pen which would have a spring. He didn't, but said he would get one. I gave him 5 pesos, and he ran off. While he was gone, I figured out that I had just put the kill switch spring in the wrong hole and it all worked just fine. Meanwhile, the owner of the pizza place came out and talked to me and asked me what I do for a living. I told him I was a computer programmer and wrote web browsers to which he got all excited. He asked who for? Since almost no one has heard of Spyglass due to their wonderful marketing strategy, I have to say for a company who wrote 80% of Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0. At this, he got all excited and said he couldn't believe it. He asked if I wrote it by myself, to which I told him no there were many people who worked on the browsers. He told me there is no way to make any money in Mexico writing software, so he sells pirated software. He told me his Pentium 130 with 1 gig drive and 15" monitor cost 36,000 pesos ($4,500) about 3 times the cost of what it would in the US. Meanwhile Augusto comes back out of breath with a ball point pen spring that is too large. He says that the pen at the souvenir shop was 11 pesos and I had only given him 5, so when the lady wasn't looking, he unscrewed the pen, extracted the spring, and then handed it back to her saying that he wasn't interested in it. I thanked him for his effort, but explained to him that I had already managed to fix it. Unphased, he was excited that the motorcycle was now working. I gave him 20 pesos to buy a six pack of beer for himself and thanked him for his help. He offered me the tiny philips screwdriver which was a very nice carbonized tip precision one for 50 pesos ($6.25). A bit better than I needed and more money than it may be worth, I decided to buy it off of him at his price since I really appreciated his help. Later, I thought with the set of morals amongst these guys, I'm not sure it was his to sell. That may be why he asked for so much since he may not have been the one who purchased it. Morals are a luxury item that I find are more often skimped on in third world countries... or it may be more correct to say morals are just different amongst various cultures. Our hotel had one of the excellent Mexican public telephones called TelMex Ladatel outside. ATT has a toll free number for calling from these phones that is as clear and easy to use as calling from the states. I was able to get the acoustic coupler to talk at 9600 baud through the pay phone and for the first time since Austin was able to download and upload e-mail with my palmtop computer. The public phones are easy to find all over Mexico. The trick for me is finding one within 15 feet of an electrical outlet. My palmtop which runs off of 2AA batteries does not have enough juice to power the PCMCIA modem without being plugged into the wall. Sharon and I spent the evening reading and replying to e-mail. It's really nice being in touch with friends and family back home this way. The acoustic coupler manual says it's capable of 28.8k bps with a high quality phone, However I didn't try any faster. My modem and palmtop have a max speed of 14.4k bps. July 13,14 Huatulco, Mexico On the 13th, we stayed in the hotel most of the day and rested since we were both sick. Occasionally we would venture out. The luxury resorts are situated about 4km from the newly constructed "Authentic Mexican Village". The luxury resorts look like any modern one found throughout the world. The 4km with nothing in between serves as a sufficient barrier to keep the locals away from wandering into the resorts. As a precaution however, the resorts are gated usually with a guard just to make sure the riff raff stays out. Tourists some time venutre into the example village, and really stand out. As I'm walking by the outdoor cafes, a huge shinny loud diesel luxury A/C tour bus with tinted windows pulls up that is about half as tall as the tallest building in town. The brakes give a wavering moan, followed by a blast of air from the pneumatic door as it opens. The first head appears cautiously scanning the horizon of this foreign world. Like a scene form close encounters, the aliens slowly come out to mingle amongst the indigenous population of this land. For the most part they stick together in groups and flock towards the familiar sights such as the souvenir shops. The more courageous may be seen venturing out more than 2 blocks from the bus landing sight, however English greetings quickly trail off, and there are few souvenir shops beyond this. Three blocks later, and it really does *begin* to look like an "Authentic Mexican Village". We drove by the various resorts and entered the beach at the Sheraton. The blue/green waters are beautiful in the closed bay. The white sand has a rather steep rake as the waves come in strong. It was difficult to wade at knee level since standing on sand, made me an obstacle for the waves to knock over. It was much easier to tread water and flow with the surface as the waves came in. It really was quite tiring swimming in this water since the waves were so strong. I don't know how this changes during the winter season which is the popular foreign tourist season. We were surprised to see so many mexicans here. There really seems to be a large disparity between incomes in Mexico. I'm surprised to see so many locals staying at these $100-$200 per night resorts. We saw primarily family vacationers at these resorts and restaurants. Unlike in other towns where eating out we saw woman with other woman eating and men with other men, and rarely a kid. Restaurants around here had families sitting together. At the beaches and in the pools, the kids looked like they were having a blast.... July 15, 1997 R80G/S 25527 R100GS 17298 Juchitan de Zaragoza, Mexico The alarm went off at 6:00am, however, we didn't stir until about 7:15am after sunrise. Sharon was slow to get up since she didn't get much sleep with frequent visits to the bathroom during the night. The last two days she's been suffering from some likely bad food. I ate a quick breakfast of hotcakes and coffee while sharon preferred to stay away from food. A couple hours later, and we finally got on the road. The road just outside Huatulco winds through a mostly flat/ partially hilly terrain covered with green bushes and short trees. The road runs along the shoreline but about 5-10km away, too far to gives any glimpses of the Pacific. As we drive down the road, Iguanas ranging form 6 to 12 inches long dart off the road quickly waddling with their head up. We came across what looked like the remains of a squished diamond back rattle snake. He looked like he had been squished earlier this morning. Last time we encountered a rattler on the road was outside of Winnie, Texas. A little further down the road we came upon a feast in the midst. There was a smelly bloated cow keeled over on the side of the road with what I would guess was about 75 vultures. lined up along it, on top, and all along the branches in the trees. It was eerie in that there was almost no movement or sound amongst all the black vultures with large bodies and small heads as if they all had their heads bowed and were saying grace before the feast. The bloated cow didn't look like it had been torn into yet. It wasn't obvious as we passed how it had died. 80km past Huatulco we came to a military checkpoint. 100 and 50meters from the checkpoint going both ways there are men posted as a sort of last shot should some decide to accelerate on through the checkpoint. Mexico, isn't a good place to mess with the law... This checkpoint consisted of about 20 men all wearing full coverage military helmets and carrying M-16s. Despite the heat and vicious sun, they were all fully uniform dressed in dark blue combat fatigues. They waved us down like everyone who passed. A soldier directed me to the side, and then asked me to turn off the motorcycle to which I did. I said "momento", and got off my bike to help Sharon put down her kickstand, which is our usual ritual for stopping. The soldier then asked "Identificacion?" I got out my Mexican tourist and vehicle papers out of my safety pinned and buttoned front pants pocket which is where I also keep my passport and handed it to the soldier. He wrote down some information from my papers onto a computer printout he had in his hand. Meanwhile another soldier pointed to my left tank pannier to which I opened it for him, and then the left tank pannier side pocket, then the right side pannier... discovering that I use my tank panniers for carrying guide books and toiletries like deodorant and shampoo. The first soldier says "David Thompson", to which I say "Si". He asks where I am from. I say "CHeeCAHgo" (Chicago). Sharon asks me if my keys are handy for her bike since she is separately being questioned and her bike searched. An older officer who has been standing in the background and looks like he's likely the one in charge steps over to the officer asking the questions, I quietly hear my name mentioned. The soldier doing the search then asks to look in my fanny pack. I take it off and offer it to him, but the older officer in charge makes a gesture suggesting that I hold onto it. The searching soldier looks and finds out my fanny pack contains my binoculars, flash light, pocket computer, compact camera, and phrase books. Meanwhile I here Sharon say "CHeeCAHgo" in the background. He then asks to look in my seat bag. I pull up the rain fly, and he unzips one of the pockets. He pulls out the nylon bag containing my walkie talky battery charger looks in it, and then puts it back. He seems satisfied and then steps back. I look over at Sharon, and I see that all of her panniers are being opened up and looked into. The older officer in charge steps up to me and asks where I am going. I tell him "San Cristobol". He asks if we rode the bikes all the way from Chicago, to which I tell him yes and that it took 4 weeks. He points to the GPS mounted on the bike as if to ask a question, but before he does, Sharon behind me asks for some water. Her search is over. I remove the water from where it is mounted on the handlebars, but she is now distracted by some more questions. I take a swig of water, and then start to cough as some goes down my wind pipe.... A moment later, Sharon then attempts to squeeze some water into her mouth. At first it doesn't come and then it blasts out into her mouth and all down her front side. I snicker and so does the officer in charge. We're both done, and so I back up the R100GS for an easier take off for Sharon. We both hop on our bikes and take off. Driving past the serious looking soldiers posted 50 and 100 meters past the checkpoint. I spend the next half hour thinking about this checkpoint. More so than the checkpoints in the North we passed through, this was a serious professional group of soldiers. All fully armed, they look equipped for drug or munitions runners. I don't know whether they were looking for drugs, or a weapon neither of which I possess. Given what they were looking at, I would suspect drugs. US offers big economic incentives for Mexico's assistance in fighting drug trade. A couple months before we left, the white house praised Mexico's assistance in fighting drugs, and the appointment of a Mexican general as the drug tsar. A week later, another US department (NSA?) voiced that it had information that the same general had been receiving $10+ million from Colombian drug sources embarrassing the US and Mexican government. When Colombia lost its "ally in fighting drugs" status with the US, which resulted in it's loss of US economic incentives, they declared they would halt their coca field herbicide spraying programs, and other military drug intervention programs, to which congress decided to change that status approval from a yeah/nay to a partial ally rating so that the same might not happen to Mexico. I would imagine anyone fitting a particular profile, or acting nervous (like choking on swig of water!) would be more thoroughly searched. It's still unnerving to be searched by 20 men carrying M16s and wearing helmets, but I'm starting to get used to it. I still can't believe they have soldiers with automatic weapons posted at toll booths. I can't imagine blasting someone because they skipped a $1.45 toll. Intimidation to keep the peace seems to work. Today while walking on the square in Juchitan de Zaragoza, there were two smiling T-shirt wearing cops sitting in the shade with rifles at their side. It seemed odd among all of the flower peddlers on the square, but I'm sure it kept the flower shop lifters at bay. I suppose it's no different from the pistol carrying officers in the states, or the uzzi carrying police in France. We stopped in Juchitan as a break for a long journey to San Cristobol. We found a nice hotel to crash at. We walked down to the town center to pick some money at one of the ATMs in the area. On the way back, we stopped at a hardware store to pick up 2 four foot bicycle combination security cables. These are for locking our jackets to the coat rack in the hotel room when we step out. They're the most valuable items that we leave behind in the hotel. Everything else is usually locked away on the bikes. July 16, 1997 Juchitan de Zaragoza, Mexico We stayed in our hotel the entire day! Sharon mustn't venture out more than a mad dash from a toilet, and I have to carry a wad of kleenex for my nose. I got caught up on my journal, did laundry, listened to the short wave, and sewed up the rip in my pants. Sharon worked on her journal, took long naps and studied the guide books researching our future stays.