As the crow flies, it’s only 420km through the central highlands from San Cristóbal in Chiapas, to Oaxaca City, but the only feasible routes detour way-down to the coast. Pacific or Caribbean – either way it’s around 800km. A potentially jam-packed arribada turtle beach on the Pacific side lures us in that general direction, but we’re torn with our timing… torn between lingering in places of beauty, or rushing in the optimistic expectation of resolving our on-going windscreen saga. Such are our daily overlanding dilemmas. In the end, we find some (non-Mayan) rubble and a lotta, lotta baby turtles….
San Cristóbal – (not) a chance meeting
Cuthbert’s open-bonnet surgery
At the end of our last blog, we had limped up 2,200m to San Cristóbal with a broken engine fan-coupling. So how did that all end? Well, it’s fixed now (thankyou for asking 😊). Once the new part arrived from UK, Marcus spent a few days dismantling Cuthbert’s whole front end to fix him up (click here for how). There was the inevitable cursing and ranting that comes from any man with a spanner in hand and a job to do, but as always, Cuthbert is back in full working order. Now we have a noticeable absence of clunking-noises from the engine. Marvellous!
Chamula, near San Cristobal
Also in San Cristóbal, our path finally crossed with fellow Brit overlanders James and Clare (This Big Roadtrip) who are south-bound. Social media is responsible for a massive change in many aspects of overland travel in recent years. Nowadays, there’s so much shared info available on a pocket-sized, shiny screen and we no longer rely on chance meetings with fellow travellers. We’ve been FB friends with James and Clare for ages, so we felt like we already knew them when we met.
Vehicle maintenance palaver aside, San Cristóbal is a very cool place. The sort of town where travellers can get ‘stuck’ for a while. It’s an atmospheric place, with decent coffee shops, a cool climate and a great campsite within walking distance of the centre. What’s not to like? A great time, not to mention much nosh and beers, were had over a few days before we said farewell to James and Clare and headed off in opposite directions.
Crocs and Falls
Onwards Pacific-bound, our first stop was the Sumidero Canyon near Tuxtla Gutierrez. We’d seen pictures and it looked pretty good; the river winding through the deep, deep gorge looked like a perfect Boaty McBoatface opportunity. It’s a while since we’ve had chance for a paddle in our inflatable kayak and we’re getting withdrawal symptoms, but sadly, he can’t have an outing here either ☹. The problem, as we had in many places of the Yucatan Peninsula, is crocs… bloody big crocs. Maybe they would like a chomp at Boaty, maybe they wouldn’t. But looking at the size of them (and more particularly, the size of their teeth) we really didn’t want to find out in practice. Disappointing, but paying for a seat on one of the many tourist boats ploughing up and down the river seemed a wiser choice. Worth the effort too.
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- Sumidero Canyon – not with Boaty McBoatface 🙁
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- THIS is why we didn’t take Boaty!
Aguacero. Nice, but…
Also on the way down to the Pacific, we made a small detour to Aguacero Falls. Most overlanders in Central or South America will probably roll their eyes at the suggestion of (yet another) hike to a waterfall. We’ve lost count of how many we’ve done and rampant apathy washes over us at the mere thought. Aguacero is probably an exception to this, but if there is one fall worth seeing in southern Mexico, it must (in our humble opinion) be El Chiflón near Comitán. If your waterfall tolerance levels are waning in southern Mexico, save your effort for that one.
The Fiat that Wasn’t
Our final stop en-route to the coast was the distinctly unremarkable town of Juchitan. Why stop in an such a place? Well, it (apparently) has a Fiat dealer. And Fiat is the same company as our Cuthbert’s Iveco. We’re clinging to a hope that although there are certainly no Iveco outlets in North America from which we can order a new windscreen, we might just be able to persuade a Fiat dealer to import one for us through their supply chain from Europe.
Now… we could reasonably be accused of naïve optimism with our Fiat supply-chain theory, but we couldn’t reasonably have anticipated that the Fiat dealer, as advertised on the Mexico Fiat website, would be a mere pile of roadside rubble when we got there. Bugger. And it was such a cunning plan! But all is not lost. In around 450km we’ll reach the much larger town of Oaxaca where Fiat will hopefully at least exist. With the proverbial ‘carrot’ of a potential new windscreen dangling on a string before our eyes, we head onwards.
Turtle Power: an arribada turtle beach
Along the Pacific coast, we stopped off at Playa de Moro Ayuta, a very rare arribada turtle beach – there are only a few worldwide. From Mr Google we knew that ‘arribada’ is a nesting phenomenon of the Olive Ridley sea turtle, when thousands of them nest on a single beach around the same time. It’s known as ‘predator swamping’: the turtles deposit more eggs in the sand than predators can consume, thereby increasing the hatchlings’ chance of survival.
After gestation of around 45 days under the sand, all the eggs start to hatch around the same time (not surprising really, given that they were all laid around the same time) and it’s our lucky day… we just happen to be passing around hatching time! Approaching the 6km long wild and desolate beach, we saw little back dots and what looked like scraps of white paper all over the beach as far as we could see. The black dots were baby turtles and the white scraps were discarded turtle egg-shells.
Taking a closer look, we were shocked to see how many of the ‘little black dots’ were clearly ex-turtles. Thousands of scattered tiny hatchlings lying dead – it was heart-wrenching. But thousands more of them were survivors, scrambling between their lifeless siblings. The survivors had a long schlepp to reach the sea. Some little chaps were racing along energetically to the lapping waves, but others looked utterly exhausted, struggling to put one flipper in front of the other. It’s a brutal survival-of-the-fittest out there… natural selection we guess. Local ladies were out collecting the survivors into buckets and depositing them into the sea, so we helped collect any that we could find that still had life and gave them a lift to the water.
As we ferried the weaker ones across the beach, more and more and more were emerging out of the sand around us. It was such a joy to witness so many cute little faces pushing and shoving each other out the way, heaving themselves out of the sand nests. The sad bit was that at least half of the hatchlings seemed to have used all their energy just to reach the surface. They struggled into the light, flopped onto the sand and never moved an inch. We helped as many as we could, but even when introduced to the ocean, the little weaklings simply didn’t have the energy to battle with the water.
Just like our extraordinary monster leather-back turtle experience back in French Guiana, this arribada turtle beach another amazing and unforgettable turtle time for us. It was at the same time both uplifting and devastating – a spectacular show of the joy and the cruelty of nature (click here for turtle video).
Reaching the Holy Grail
Tucks Truck and Gone Tripn
The coast of Oaxaca State has many fine beaches and is worthy of lingering a while, but we’re impatient now to sort out this *#$%ing windscreen! It’s not critical, but we’ve been on the hunt for over two months now. We have to sort it sometime. If we can’t sort it in Mexico, our only option will be to return over 1,500 km all the way to Costa Rica to the nearest Iveco dealer. The further we drive into Mexico, the further we’ll have to drive back if it can’t be sorted. Yes, Juchitan was a disappointment but we’re British… chipper-up, stiff upper-lip and all that, we proceed optimistically towards Oaxaca 😊.
On the way, we have another overlander meet-up planned, this time with Brit/Canadians Stewart and Catherine (Gone Tripn). It’s always great to swap stories of our shared lifestyle over a few beers and we had a lovely time with them in Crucecita, even if our overnight park-up spot wasn’t the most peaceful in the world. The local party-kids were out in force all night! A peaceful sleep is always a bit of a gamble when your home is where you park it 😊.
Finally, after a long climb back into the central highlands (and a stop in trout farm to pick a fish from the pond for supper) we cruise into Oaxaca city. And guess what??? The Fiat dealer is there… standing… with cars on the forecourt and a sign for a spare-parts department 😊 😊. Can they help us get a windscreen for Cuthbert? Curse us whilst we leave you on a cliff-hanger until next time!
Turtles and Timing: Chiapas to Oaxaca Video and Photos
