by Jerry Colley
appeared in FW Aug. '03

For three years now, I have been involved in conducting and promoting the Riviera Maya Bicycle Adventure Ride in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. This ride begins south of Cancun in Playa del Carman. It visits several of the Mayan archaeological sites in the Yucatan, including Tulum, Cobá, and Chichen Itza. Hotel accommodations are in luxury and beachfront resort hotels along the way. The local ride director in Mexico, Kenneth Johnson, has been telling me for three years that we need to start a bicycle ride in Chiapas. He says it is a very beautiful area. Chiapas is the southernmost state in Mexico. It borders the Pacific Ocean and Guatemala. For three years I have been telling Kenneth that the only thing I know about Chiapas is that it has Zapatista rebels. He has assured me that this is no longer a problem. He says that the only problem in Chiapas is that the hotels are not as high a quality as the ones in the Yucatan, but that the beauty of the state offsets that inconvenience.

Last November, Kenneth and I carved out a week and drove throughout Chiapas scouting out bicycle routes and letting me see firsthand the political situation there, and to check out the quality of hotels we would use on a bike ride. I landed in Cancun and we drove the first day to Chicanná EcoVillage Resort along the way. Chicanná rivals any of the resort hotels in the Riviera Maya region. I was impressed.

The next day we went near the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutierrez, to visit the Sunidero Canyon. We took a boat ride along the river with the breathtaking canyon walls on either side of us. We saw several crocodiles along the banks of the river.

We next visited the waterfalls at Agua Azul, which means Blue Water in Spanish. This is a series of about six or seven waterfalls that are very beautiful. At the waterfalls, we met some young girls with pans of bananas balanced on their heads. They were selling these bananas to the tourists. Along the way we met a couple of self-contained bicycle tourists from Switzerland, Frank and Monika. They were traveling all the way across Mexico by bicycle. We later exchanged emails, and I am happy to report they are now safely home in Switzerland.

We next went to the town of San Cristóbal. We happened to be there on Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Honoring the dead on November 1st and 2nd is a big deal in Mexico. Our hotel happened to be near a cemetery, so I took a walk to see the beautiful altars and flowers they arrange at the gravesites of their relatives. Some of the graves were adorned with the deceased relative's favorite cigarettes and beer. (I guess if the deceased don't come to claim them, the living do.)

Our next stop was at the Mayan archaeological site of Chinqultic. The archaeological sites in Chiapas are quite different from those in the Yucatan. This is a mountainous region, and so most of the archaeological sites are on mountaintops. The sites in the Yucatan are on flat lands. Next we traveled to Tziscao. One of my primary reasons for scouting out this ride was to check on the quality of the hotel accommodations. Tziscao has one very basic hotel. We will have to tell our riders to bring their own sheets, towels, pillow, and soap. The good news is that the rooms are only $5 per night. That's $5 per room, not per person.

While in Tziscao, a local guide offered to take us by boat across the river to Guatemala for $5 each. After we readily accepted his offer, we discovered his boat was actually a raft of six logs tied together. He handed each of us a paddle, and off we went, rafting to Guatemala. We jokingly referred to these rafts as genuine Mayan kayaks.

In Tziscao, we met three medical students from North Carolina who have taken off a year from school to work in Guatemala. They had come to Tziscao for a short break from working at their Guatemalan clinics. They are learning Spanish and becoming familiar with the health issues of Central Americans so they can better deal with health problems in our country among the Hispanic population. We were very impressed with these young men.

After leaving Tziscao, we took another boat ride, this one in a modern motorboat, to Ixcan, a station for bio-diversity conservation. The bike riders will spend the night at Ixcan in the jungle. The cabins are quite comfortable, but again riders will have to bring their own sheets and pillowcases. A can of insect repellant will also be necessary.

We next took another boat ride and visited the Mayan archeological site of Yaxchilán. This is a beautifully preserved archeological site with several preserved Mayan writings on the stella. Again it is quite hilly. Here at Yaxchilán, we saw howler monkeys, spider monkeys, and toucan birds. We spent that night at Escudo Jaguar (Shield of the Jaguar) cabañas. These rooms were very nice and comparable to anything in the Yucatan.

We traveled a long road along the border between Mexico and Guatemala. Along the way we had to stop at five or six military checkpoints where the Mexican Army searched our car, presumably for guns, drugs, and illegal aliens. Apparently, Mexico has as big a problem with Guatemalans and other Central and South Americans immigrating illegally into their country as we have with foreigners sneaking into our country.

We ran out of time, so we passed by the archeological site of Bonampak. The bike ride will be sure to visit this archeological site next time. Our next stop was in Palenque. Palenque is a modern, fairly large town. It has a major Mayan archeological site nearby. The local ride director, Kenneth Johnson, says Palenque is his favorite of all of the archeological sites in Mexico. It looks like a 1,500-year-old hillside village. It is quite impressive.

We didn't see any Zapatistas on our tour of Chiapas. In talking with several of the locals, we came to the conclusion that any fighting that is done now is a war of words in the newspapers. It's kind of like our Democrats and Republicans. We will have the federal highway police with us all week, just in case. We will also have the Angeles Verdes (Green Angels), the Mexican equivalent of Georgia's Hero units.

Chiapas is a beautiful area of Mexico. It is mountainous to hilly. The roads are paved so road bikes are preferred since they are generally lighter than mountain bikes. The people are friendly. Because this is a poor, rural area, most of them do not speak any English. However, the guides we will use on the Bicycle Chiapas ride will be fluently bilingual in English and Spanish. This ride is for the truly adventurous. Most of the accommodations are very nice.

However, the night in Tziscao will be in a rustic, rural hotel. The night in Ixcan will be in somewhat better accommodations, but deep in the mountainous jungle.
The next Bicycle Chiapas Ride will be January 30 - February 9, 2004. For more information, and to register, visit the website at: www.ecotravelmexico.com/bici.html#ruta2 Or contact Jerry Colley at bragHQ@aol.com. The trip cost is $1,500, including hotels and most meals, plus airfare.

Jerry Colley is the Ride Director of the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia. He may be contacted at bragHQ@aol.com. Bob Lambert, of the Bicycle Adventure Club, and Kenneth Johnson or EcoColors helped in the preparation of this article.