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 Travel & Outdoors | January 2007 
Hoofing It In Deep Mexico
 Ben Brazil - The Star
“Go! Go like a bullet!” the man yelled as I stepped out of the taxi and into the heavy Mexican air.
This insistently gesticulating stranger had approached as we pulled into a tiny bus stop. I had just asked him about the next bus south, and he’d started yelling and jabbing his finger down the dusty road.
It took a moment to understand: The last bus had just left! Our taxi could still catch it! It was cheaper than a hotel!
I dived back into the cab and told the driver to hit it.
For nearly a week my new wife, Laura, and I had been traveling Mexico’s Carretera Fronteriza del Sur — the Southern Border Highway — a 262-mile route that hugs the border between Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state. We had climbed the Maya pyramids at Palenque, studied the ancient frescoes at Bonampak and taken a sunrise boat to the riverside ruins of Yaxchilán, where howler monkeys roared from the treetops.
Between ruins, we visited a shaman, forded a jungle river and accepted a ride with a cool 43-year-old Mexican hippie and his hot 24-year-old Swedish girlfriend.
Everything had been serendipitous and surprising. But now we were facing a night in Benemérito de las Américas, where stray dogs sniffed at heaps of tires and the smell of burning garbage hung in the air. The cool mountain lakes at Lagos de Montebello National Park — our final destination — were only a bus ride away.
But to get there that night, our driver needed to speed. He needed to ignore the maddeningly frequent speed bumps. He needed to recklessly disregard the norms of highway safety. In short, he needed to act like a Mexican cabdriver.
But we had found the nation’s most cautious cabbie for our first car chase as a married couple. When we crested a small rise outside town, we saw only heat shimmering on the asphalt.
“It’s gone,” the cabbie said dully.
Things get a little weird
For pretty much its entire length, the Southern Border Highway is two lanes of blacktop, constructed mainly in the 1990s. An upgrade from earlier dirt tracks, it provides easy access to several compelling sights, as well to vast swaths of ugly, deforested jungle and tiny, nowhere villages.
You can see the highlights on package tours. But we opted to travel on public transportation, eschewing reservations and planning in general.
I loved the adventure of the do-it-yourself approach, but it’s not fast, efficient or even marginally luxurious. Almost all long-distance travel here relies on combis — often overcrowded vans and microbuses — and most major attractions sit on side roads, not on the highway. When taxis weren’t available to cover the extra miles, we begged rides with people we befriended along the way. Or we walked.
While Chiapas is an increasingly popular destination, some cautions are in order. The U.S. State Department notes that Chiapas’ law enforcement is weak and that violent criminal gangs operate along the border, though they prey mainly on illegal immigrants passing through Mexico on their way north. Remote areas of Chiapas are also home to the Zapatista rebel group, which staged an armed uprising in 1994.
Although “rebels” and “drug smugglers” are not words most people associate with “vacation,” these groups almost never affect travelers. In recent memory, the U.S. Embassy has recorded a single violent incident against a tourist on the border — a woman who parked her car in Mexico, went into Guatemala and was assaulted upon returning, alone and at night.
While reasonable precautions might have prevented the assault, Vice Consul Dan McManus emphasized that areas of the Southern Border Highway are very isolated.
What he didn’t say is that this isolation breeds a sort of borderland alternate reality and that it can get a little weird.
And then it gets weirder
The Southern Border Highway begins at the ruins of Palenque, an archaeological cover girl. Green, jungle-covered hills frame perfectly proportioned, gray-and-white limestone pyramids. Paths lead from splendid temples to lower, simpler ruins covered by dripping rain forest. There’s even a waterfall.
Along with most of the great Maya cities, Palenque collapsed in the ninth century. Our ponytailed, English-speaking guide, Raúl Morelos, offered several possible reasons why: overpopulation, civil strife and the possibility that Palenque’s rulers “opened a door to a new dimension and walked right through it.”
If the “new dimension” hypothesis seemed ridiculous, it was only because I hadn’t yet gotten to Lacanjá Chansayab, a village of the ancient Mayas’ descendants.
We came to this Lacandón Maya settlement after an 80-mile combi ride south and a morning at Bonampak, a small set of ruins accessible via the same highway turnoff.
Bonampak’s frescoes, among the best examples of Maya painting anywhere, show wild celebrations, royal heirs and victorious kings (the latter looming over captives who drip blood from yanked-out fingernails).
Lacanjá Chansayab, by contrast, was downright ugly. Tin- and thatch-roofed buildings — as well as a glut of rustic tourist cabins — were strung along a weedy main road surrounded by clear-cut fields. Otherwise humble houses sprouted satellite dishes.
Then we met Chambor Lastra, a free spirit from the neighboring state of Tabasco, and the cosmic landscape started to shift.
Wiry and ponytailed, Chambor was traveling with Anna, his blond, 24-year-old Swedish girlfriend. They had met in Guatemala, where Chambor made a living selling handicrafts and occasionally working as a DJ. I could not help but think that he had done pretty well for himself.
The couple was traveling in Chambor’s pickup, an ancient Ford F-150 with what amounted to a one-room house built onto the back. Built of mahogany planks, the “house” had a peaked tin roof covering a small bedroom, complete with a bookshelf. Che Guevara stared from a poster on the back.
Chambor immediately invited us to tag along on a visit to his friend, the shaman Kayum Yuk Maash. We accepted, walked up a gravel track and entered what felt like a movie dream sequence. Some surreal elements: Kayum with his thick glasses and off-kilter face, suggestive of a stroke survivor’s … a dirt-floored lean-to with a dark TV stuck in a corner … the shaman explaining that he was also an evangelical Christian who didn’t go to church because the people were close-minded.
My brain felt stuck in a gooey spider web well into the next day, when we took a guided hike to a clear, spring-fed waterfall deep in the Lacandón jungle.
Such treks are the main reason to visit Lacanjá Chansayab, and our hike took us into a sylvan world shockingly different from the desolate village beside it. We walked beneath the blessed cool of the jungle canopy, stopping to stare at jaguar tracks that crossed the trail.
But nothing surpassed our crossing of the Río Cedro. There was no bridge over the river, only a slick log that ended 10 feet short of the far bank. We waded off its end and into the swift, tannin-colored water, walking on submerged tree trunks and balancing on the long sticks that our guide jammed into the riverbed.
It was a thrill, but I was equally excited to ride out of Lacanjá Chansayab in Chambor’s fabulous gypsy truck.
Of course, the pickup took us only as far as the highway. Chambor and Anna were going to Palenque. We were headed south.
Emerging from the Labyrinth
By 6:45 the next morning, we were riding a long, narrow launch down the Usumacinta River, the Mexico/Guatemala border. We’d left from Frontera Corozal, a town down the highway from the Lancanjá Chansayab turnoff. While the sky was still pink, we docked at the riverside ruins of Yaxchilán.
I expected to be bored by our third Mayan ruin in five days. But we stepped off the boat, strapped on our headlamps and passed through the short halls of “the Labyrinth,” where dozens of bats squealed from the vaulted ceiling. We emerged in a grassy plaza lined with low stone buildings.
Below was the river. Above, howler monkeys crashed though canopy trees, loosing murderous shrieks. We climbed a wide stone staircase to a hillside temple, where the decapitated statue of a king looked toward the river.
Nope, I wasn’t bored.
Still, it was time to move on — to Benemérito de las Américas, the gritty town where we’d soon embark on our failed taxi chase.
Serenity of the lakes
“Gringo! What are you doing here?” asked a resident of Benemérito, in English. He was urinating on the tire of a truck carrying a load of pineapples.
It was a good question. South of Frontera Corozal, the Border Highway’s only major attraction is Lagos de Montebello National Park — and even it doesn’t come until the end of the road, 171 miles distant.
It’s a desolate stretch marked by badly deforested land, tin-roofed shacks and army checkpoints manned by baby-faced men in camouflage. Washouts occasionally eat half the road.
It’s not a place tourists linger, so I was glad when a Benemérito combi driver announced an unscheduled run south. Our combi rattled from the steamy lowlands into the cool mountains, chugging past ramshackle homes with hand-painted signs reading “gas sold here.”
After spending the night at a cluster of roadside cabins, we woke up near the entrance of Lagos de Montebello National Park. It looked slightly like the Rockies, but with banana trees.
The park comprises 59 sun-flecked lakes strung across piney mountains, about a quarter of the lakes accessible by gravel side roads. These access routes branch off the main highway, then forge deeper into the mountains.
Seeing it without a car would be tough, but by now we knew the game. First, we would hop highway combis between side roads. Then we’d walk, stare at the lakes and make friends with people with cars.
The highlight was shimmering La Cañada Lake, where we paid $20 for an hour’s ride on a raft made of logs, roped together Huck Finn-style. Perch swam beneath us; orchids hugged the limestone cliffs overhead.
As we left the lake, we met a Mexican man who wanted to practice his English. He and his wife gave us a ride to the next set of lakes. When we started walking back in the evening, another Mexican family picked us up. We hadn’t even stuck out our thumbs.
Call it luck or karma or grace: The laws of our new dimension were mysterious. We were just glad to roll with them.
Getting there - The Southern Border Highway is not a loop, so you’ll end far from where you started. Instead of backtracking, consider incorporating the road into a larger swing through Mexico and/or Central America. But if time’s tight, start in Palenque. The closest airport is at Villahermosa, Tabasco, about 2 1/2 hours away by bus. Round-trip, restricted airfare between Kansas City and Villahermosa recently ran from about $600. A bus from Villahermosa to Palenque costs about $8. Check fares and schedules at Mexico’s bus clearinghouse, Ticket Bus ( www.ticketbus.com.mx).
Staying safe - The U.S. State Department recommends caution in traveling to Chiapas. The department’s Web site (travel.state.gov) notes that Chiapas often lacks effective law enforcement and that violent criminal gangs operate along the border. Still, in recent memory, the U.S. Embassy has logged a single assault against a U.S. citizen along the border — a woman who parked her car in Mexico, crossed to Guatemala and was assaulted upon returning, alone and at night.
What to see - The ruins at Palenque, Bonampak and Yaxchilán don’t have addresses, but everyone knows how to find them. At Palenque, admission is about $4, at Bonampak, $3. In addition to the boat ride, admission to Yaxchilán is about $3.50. Admission is free on Sundays. Jungle hikes from Lacanjá Chansayab to waterfalls, lakes and ruins cost about $9 to $18 a person. Your lodging facility can arrange a guide.
Where to stay - Accommodations and campgrounds dot the five-mile road between Palenque and the ancient Palenque ruins. Phone numbers in Chiapas tend to be unreliable; if there’s not a Web site, your best bet is to just show up and plan to be flexible. I stayed in the bohemian complex of El Panchán ( www.palenquemx.com/elpanchan), where several businesses offer rooms, cabins and/or campsites. At Rakshita, I paid about $2.75 per person to camp on an elevated, roofed platform called “The Temple.” Rooms with a fan and hot water cost about $17. For a nicer option, try the spotless rooms at Margarita and Ed Cabins; doubles start at about $15. Modern Palenque also has options, including Hotel Maya Palenque (800-528-1234, www.bestwestern.com). Rates at the hotel, which has a pool, start about $54.At Lacanjá Chansayab, most lodging is strung along the main road. (Look for the signs.) The nicest options are past “downtown,” a wide spot in the road where the pavement turns to gravel.
Campamento Vicente Paniagua, with Palenque package tours, is decent; for about $6.50 a person, you get a concrete floor and beds separated by wooden dividers. Nicer, larger rooms with a fan and private bath cost about $14 per person. In Frontera Corozal, try Tsol K’in/Nueva Alianza (on Periférico Norte; Spanish Web site at www.ecoturlacandona.com). It’s on a side road near a museum. Doubles with shared bath and a fan start about $9.25 per person. Most of the lodging around Lagos de Montebello National Park is along the main road. I stayed at Cabañas Bosque Azul (Km. 34 of Lagos de Montebello Highway), which has rustic but lovely wooden cabins for about $10 per person.
Where to eat - The Mexico/Guatemala border is not known for its food, and few restaurants merit a recommendation. In more rural areas, you’ll eat in tiny comedores (roughly, diners). Staples include refried beans, eggs, tough pieces of beef, chicken and sometimes fried fish. Expect to pay about $3 to $6 for a basic meal. Palenque and Frontera Corozal have better options. In the El Panchán complex (see Where to Stay), Café Restaurante Don Muchos is probably the most popular restaurant. The menu mixes Mexican and Italian basics; entrees start about $3.70. The town of Palenque also has some decent options, including Restaurante Las Tinajas (corner of 20 de Noviembre and Abasolo). It features Mexican standards plus seafood and beef in a variety of styles; entrees from about $3.70.
In Frontera Corozal, the best restaurants are in the best lodging options, Escudo Jaguar and Tsol K’in/Nueva Alianza (see Where to Stay). Escudo Jaguar’s large, open-air restaurant has sandwiches, salads and chicken dishes from $2.30. Tsol K’in’s restaurant has beef, chicken and fish from $3.70.
Finding a guide - Don’t want to do it all yourself? Scads of Palenque travel agencies offer packages that include Bonampak, Yaxchilán and/or a jungle hike from Lacanjá Chansayab. Viajes Misol-Ha (148 Juárez Ave., 011-52-916-345-2271, www.palenquemx.com/viajesmisolha), for example, charges about $51 for a one-day trip to Bonampak and Yaxchilán, and $93 to $102 for a two-day journey that includes those two ruins, plus lodging in Lacanjá Chansayab and a jungle trek. To learn more •Mexico Tourism Board, (800) 44-MEXICO, www.visitmexico.com. •Other helpful sites: www.mostlymaya.com (a great site by a Maya region enthusiast) and www.turismochiapas.gob.mx (Chiapas Tourist Ministry).
Ben Brazil is a freelance writer in Atlanta. |
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