Another day, another head spin inducing coffee. I’m going through a very self indulgent pitying process of thought since having started reading Che’s adventures. It makes me wonder whether I’ll ever do something so cool. People do these riding across America bike trips all the time, but I take my hat off to those people going all the way down to Patagonia. That’s the shit. That’s the stuff with balls. It makes my trip feel miniscule.

One of my favourite passages from the book:

“At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.”

– Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto Che Guevara

Another day wasted productively.

And another successful boarding of a bus with the bike. I’m kind of eager, in a screwed up sort of way, to be back on the bike. In Oaxaca I saw a lot more tourists than I’d seen in Puebla or Mexico D.F. and often it felt as though we were invading each others idea of a personal holiday in Mexico. Eye contact was often avoided; it was as if tourists were trying to pretend that they were the only foreign visitor in the town. It felt weird and almost a little hostile.

Arrived in Tuxtla Gutierrez on the overnight bus early this morning. Tuxtla is not like any of the other cities I’ve been through, it doesn’t have any sort of charming buildings, or really stunning cathedrals or the like. At least I found a good hotel, otherwise it would suck.

I took a short bus ride to the next town, Chiapa de Corzo, and then got straight onto an already full and ready to go speedboat. We powered through the Cañon del Sumidero, with sheer walls of rock, some 1200 metres, towering over us. We passed alligators, birds, monkeys and floating rubbish. I got to chat with a fellow Aussie and his Mexican fiancée who were soon heading back to Melbourne to live. It was fun, my first non-city venture since the Piramides over a week ago.

If I had any plans of camping while in Mexico, they’re gone now. It may change my big animal paranoia and bad dreams to that of a creepy crawly nature; hairy spiders as big as my hand and centipedes as thick as two of my fingers.