December 29th to January 27th (continued)

Puerto Escondido:

On the drive to Puerto Escondido, I picked up my first hitchhiker. Initially driving passed him, I stopped and considered what my policy was on picking up strangers. I decided that if he was a backpacker (which he looked like), then it would be a good thing to do for him and good company for me for the drive. Doubling back and rolling down my window, I asked where he was from to which he said he was from Italy so I decided four hours with an Italian backpacker would be a good change from solo driving.

As it turns out, Lucan the Italian was one of the most interesting people I’ve encountered to date. His goal is broadly the same as mine – to travel between Alaska and Ushuaia – but he was going South to North. The difference was that he was hitchhiking the whole way and had been on the road already for about two years and repeatedly had bumped back his return date. Incredibly, he gave himself a daily budget of USD$6 - $7 per day, slept in a hammock many nights on whatever he could string up between and otherwise spent a lot of time in trucks and with strangers. When I left him, he still had several months to kill before it was warm enough to enter North America to hitchhike his way through the USA and Canada to Anchorage. I learned an incredible amount from him and heard many of his stories, most of which involved places I will end up going so massively useful to pick his brain for four hours.

Following the successful hitchhiker experiment, I determined to find some people in Puerto Escondido to head south with me. Finding myself in the hostel bar that same evening, it took less than 30 minutes at the bar and less than three minutes in conversation with two Americans (Vlad and Monica) to mutually decide to head south together. An hour later, a guy from Bristol (Bobby) decided he’d join us as well.

Great hostel. Pretty much every from the hostel bar went out together and we hit the nightclubs of Puerto Escondido into the early hours of the morning.

Otherwise, Puerto Escondido was just beach time, eating, drinking and relaxing. Of which I have very few pictures to show for it.

We drove for four hours together and I heard some great tails of his two years on the road through South and Central America

Puerto Escondido was a blur of drinks at the hostel bar and the clubs along Zicatela. This was one of the girls working at the hostel

San Jose del Pacifico:

It was on the suggestion of the Americans that we go to a quiet mountain town called San Jose del Pacifico. The four-hour drive was about 200km of which three hours was slowly climbing from sea level to something like 2,500m up a mountain in the mist, often with 10m visibility.

The hostel was small and cobbled together in a series of wooden buildings and stair cases (resembling the Penrose never ending stairs). The town is known by backpackers as a quiet place to relax and take magic mushrooms. The incoherent graffiti and scribblings on the dorm walls seemed pretty good evidence that was indeed the key activity here.

Probably one of the all-time best sunsets from the hostel overlooking the mountains as the clouds floated past the mountains below.

Cute Mexican girl, the owner’s daughter of a side-of-the-road restaurant we stopped at for some chicken on the way to San Jose. Never seen a kid more excited than when Bobby gave her some of his Kinder Surprise

Parked on the side of the mountain after a gruelling 2,500m of vertical in three hours of driving

Quiet spot in San Jose del Pacifico overlooking the mountains

Bobby and I on an afternoon hike above La Cumbre

A sample of the mushroom-fuelled scribblings that covered the walls of La Cumbre

Maybe a few too many mescals and cervecas this evening

Someones pet racoon at the bar. Cool pet, the owner was a bit overprotective of him though. Maybe rightfully so given everyone was getting a bit rowdy and all over him

San Cristobal de la Casas:

Another highlight of my itinerary through Mexico was San Cristobal de la Casas. Put in 12-hour driving day to get there from San Jose with my three passengers in tow.

The visit there was short and sweet but definitely great to get there. A beautiful historic town with great restaurants and relaxed vibe. Another place I’m determined to return to.

There’s not a whole lot between San Jose del Pacifico and San Cristobal de la Casas so we opted to push through the 12 hour drive in one day. One of the few stops we made over the course of the day

This kid was quite set on cleaning my shoes. Not sure how I felt having cleaned and shined Blundstones. I’m used to buying them and scuffing them up straight away so they don’t look new

Saying bye to the Americans, Vlad and Monica - my first backpackers that I picked up at a hostel. Had a good run from Puerto Escondido to San Jose and then on to San Cristobal with them before parting ways

Pelanque:

Leaving my Americans to soak up the wonders of San Cris, I swapped them for Bobby’s friends and loaded two dutch girls and his mate from Bristol in the car (Sofie, Clara and Rhys). I proved that five people plus luggage was achievable in the Discovery and we made it to the jungle of Pelanque. The accommodation was a series of cabañas nestled in the jungle and a pretty magical setting. We spent the whole next day exploring the Roberto Barrios water falls before heading back to the cabanas for some drinks.

View from the back of the collectivo on the way to Robert Barrio falls

Drinks at the cabanas later. I’m not sure what’s going on here … I don’t even remember this to be perfectly honest

Cancun:

Leaving Rhys and Bobby behind to get the Dutch girls and myself to Cancun, we drove a day to Campeche. Energy levels were low and the town was quiet so we took it quite easy and treated it as the necessary half-way point to Cancun.

At the hostel, I met some other overlanders and we immediately warmed to each other. Like many before him, he told me how crazy I was for trying to make it from Alaska to Argentina in a Land Rover. For my part, I was impressed at his journey – one year, he and his wife on a motorbike (Yamaha 750 I think), camping most of the time, with a slightly abbreviated version of what I was doing (Portland to mid-South America, shipping his bike to Anchorage to finish their journey in Portland). This was my first in-depth chat with someone in the middle of an overlanding adventure and I learned many tips and tricks from them, as well as shared thoughts and stories on our respective adventures.

I arrived in Cancun in the evening with just enough time to drop the girls at their hostel and meet my good friend Hadyn at the airport. Late last year as the plans for my adventure had formed with some degree of clarity, he bought a ticket to meet me along the way. While I had initially planned to meet him in Costa Rica and we subsequently had to make two amendments to his flights (first on timing and second on destination), it was great to finally have him arrive to share part of this journey with me. I’d been looking forward to him joining me from the beginning but even more so the further across Mexico I travelled.

We enjoyed a beer and a meal in the hotel zone of Cancun and got the hell out of there early the next day.

Double Dutch: Sofie and Clara, who were with me from San Cristobal through Pelanque, Campeche to Cancun

Patrick and Rachael: Overlanding friends from our Campeche hostel who were on a one-year tour with just them, their tent and their bike

Playa del Carmen and Tulum:

With three days to explore the Yukutan Peninsula before a quick trip to Cuba, we figured our time was best spent in the stretch two hours south of Cancun across Playa del Carmen, Akumal and Tulum.

Indeed, this is a stunning part of the world with highlights including the cenotes (natural springs of crystal clear fresh water, the best we visited being Cenotes Dos Ojos), snorkelling with the turtles in Akumal, the ruins of Tulum, a cool little craft brewery called Pescadores and the town of Tulum itself. Hilariously we couldn’t get to the beach in Tulum because the car was too tall to get through the entrance of the national park.

From here we headed back to Cancun airport for three days in Cuba – separate post to follow.

Pescadores brew pub south of Cancun. I’ve made a real habit of trying to visit as many craft breweries as possible as I travel. It’s become one of my favourite parts of travel is to check in on the state of the craft beer industry everywhere I go

Akumal beach: Here, we snorkelled with turtles right off the beach. We saw five of them and all must have weighed 60 or 80kg

I can’t tell you what this is but it was cute

Taking up this guys offer on a photo opportunity outside of Cenote Dos Ojos

Casa Cenote (I think, there were a lot of them…)

Seeing if this muffler shop is able to fix the exhaust leak that’s been following me around since San Carlos. He confirmed the problem I already knew to be the case but couldn’t do anything for me. I still enjoyed observing his technique of listenin… — Seeing if this muffler shop is able to fix the exhaust leak that’s been following me around since San Carlos. He confirmed the problem I already knew to be the case but couldn’t do anything for me. I still enjoyed observing his technique of listening for the problem through a tube

Bacalar:

Without knowing much about Bacalar other than it was a good town near the border to cross into Belize, we headed here for our final day(s) in Mexico. It turned out to be a real gem with an incredible freshwater lake. The first day we took a fairly stale guided boat trip around to some of the cenotes and points of interest which was nice. But realising we needed to sit out another day for the Banjercito to open (or at least thinking so), we took the opportunity to camp by the lake in one of the more remote spots along its banks. The photos will have to speak for how gorgeous this spot was (and where I sit as I write this), although like so many places I’ve been in the past 69 days of this adventure, the pictures only go some of the way to showing how stunning it really is. I guess the lesson I’m taking away from this is that I need to work on my photography skills so that the photos portray at least a majority of the wonder of the sights themselves.

My highlight of the time in Bacalar, apart from the natural beauty, was ending up having dinner with a bunch of ‘healers’ at the placed we stayed, which was essentially some sort of self-contained hippy commune. The healers around the table ranged from the scientific variety (psychotherapist) to fully alternative, shaman, hallucinogen types. And easily the favourite moment being when one of them locked eyes with Hadyn for a full three minutes as we held hands giving thanks to the universe before dinner. Props to Hadyn, he held the gaze the whole time.

We were basically one of two groups staying at this facility. It was a cross between campground, hotel and hippy commune

Getting into my previously under-utilised roof top tent

I had some company while reading out at the end of the dock. Turns out a six-year old is a good level of Spanish conversation for me to practice with. I have some work to do

The Journey Onwards:

At the time of writing (as distinct from time of publishing because it’s taken over a month to turn words into published blog; in part internet speeds, in part having too much fun to blog), I’d now guess I’m almost 60% of the way through my expected distance (18,000 out of 32,000km). I have a long way to go and that stat doesn’t really speak to how far I am through the trip. The further south I go, the more exciting it’s becoming and the lower the average daily driving distance. Tomorrow (hopefully) we cross into Belize and, I guess technically, begins the journey through Central America. North America took much longer and had much more in store for me than I planned and I’d be surprised if the same couldn’t be said for Central and South.

Can’t wait to see who else joins me for the adventure and the many more people I’ll meet on the way.

Postscript:

I have very little idea who, if any, people are reading this apart from direct family and a few close friends. I’m ok with that as I’ve realised that this blog is my way to keep me accountable to documenting my journey. This is the adventure of a lifetime for me - probably the best thing I’ve ever done – and I owe it to myself to capture it for the sake of looking back in the future. I can’t assume I’ll have the chance for something like this ever again.

But I suppose if there are readers, my hope is that this contributes to at least one person doing something a little crazy and outside of their comfort zone. The world is enormous, and life is short so one needs to take opportunities when they present to get out there and explore it. I couldn’t be happier I seized the opportunity to do this when it presented itself.