DAY 20: A World Class Drive!

From: PALENQUE

To: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS

“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948

Here’s the deal: ALL of the mountains in Mexico, from the top all the way to the bottom, from the deserts to the jungles and all the volcanoes in between, they are ALL nominally considered the Sierra Madre, which is really just a sub-set of one of the world’s greatest mountain ranges: the American Cordillera, the longitudinal hump in the landscape that runs from Alaska all the way to Southern Chile. Once you cross the border into Mexico, the great range becomes the “Mother Mountains” and there are four distinct sections:

The Sierra Madre Occidental, which runs parallel to Mexico’s West Coast, from the border as far as Puerto Vallarta.

The Sierra Madre Oriental, which parallels the Gulf Coast from the Rio Grande south as far as Puebla.

The Sierra Madre del Sur, which begins where the Sierra Madre Occidental leaves off, also parallel to the West Coast, extending from southern Michoacan to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The Sierra Madre de Chiapas, really just an extension of the Sierra Madre del Sur, which parallels the coast from Oaxaca into Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. (See map).

There are actually two parts to the Sierra Madre de Chiapas: a coastal range, and, to the north, a mountainous plateau known as the Chiapas Highlands. MX 199, the route we planned to take, crosses the whole of the highlands from north to south. The distance from Palenque to San Cristobal de las Casas was only 132 miles, but it’s 132 miles of curvy mountain roads with switchbacks, steep grades, slow trucks, and villages chock-a-block with topes and bloqueos, unofficial road blocks. Google rated the drive at just over five hours, and it was likely to require at least that. Everything I read, and everything I heard, rated the drive as  alternatively spectacular, dangerous, and fascinating, in seemingly equal measure.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where the distance from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean is just 137 miles. Map shows the relative location of MX 199 and the Chiapas Highlands.

We already had a bit of first-hand experience with the road. We’d driven it from Palenque to the Misol-Ha waterfall, and from there we kept going south, most of the way to Ocosingo, where we ran into a Zapatista road block that completely shut down the highway. They wouldn’t let us through, so we were forced to turn around, all the way back to Palenque, and save the rest of the drive for another day. The first week of our Road Trip, we encountered no less than four of those road blocks, known as bloqueos, all of them affecting that same road, MX 199. (See my earlier post: Mexican Road Trip: Zapatista Road Blocks in Chiapas). At that time, back in 2015, they were strictly a form of political protest. By disrupting commerce, the Zapatista political movement hoped to focus government attention on their grievances, some social in nature, others economic, and the rest environmental, things like putting a stop to illegal mining and logging, banning the cultivation and consumption of drugs, and prohibiting any intrusion by the national government into local affairs. The movement had a relatively sophisticated platform that did a great job of stopping traffic, but it didn’t seem to be helping all that much, when it came to improving the lives of the ordinary people in the region.

In the years that have passed since my own visit to Chiapas, the bloqueos have persisted, but according to reports from recent travelers, their function has changed. Rather than stopping traffic to attract attention, today’s road blocks are more like toll booths, collecting a fee ranging from 50 to 100 Pesos from each vehicle using the highway. This has become a significant source of revenue for these rural communities, and the authorities, reluctant to start another Zapatista uprising, simply look the other way, tacitly allowing it to continue. There are so many of these unofficial toll booths that drivers are understandably frustrated, and things have gotten ugly. In one widely reported incident back in 2022, a  Russian tourist was dragged from his vehicle and attacked by an angry, stick-wielding mob when he refused to pay the “cuota,” (the toll). Since then, and even before then, most of the tourists travelling between Palenque and San Cristobal de Las Casas choose to take a lengthy detour through Villahermosa and Tuxtla Guttierez. That route adds almost 150 miles and and several extra hours to the journey, but it has the advantage of avoiding all those roadblocks. Personally, I’m not opposed to the notion of an informal “tax” on travelers that benefits the local community. Groups of townspeople politely collecting tolls is hardly cause for alarm, but when the crowds hanging around the roadblocks turn into mobs and the mood gets angry? That’s another thing altogether, and in the case of MX 199, that really is a shame. On Day 20, when Mike and I made our drive to San Cristobal, there was none of that going on, and we were able to savor one of the coolest stretches of highway on our whole amazing Mexican Road Trip.

Read on, and I’ll tell you all about the day we spent

CROSSING THE CHIAPAS HIGHLANDS

on MX 199

The Sierra Madre de Chiapas, and the Chiapas Highlands, showing MX 199, from Palenque to San Cristobal de las Casas

Note that most of the images in this post are screen grabs harvested from Michael Fritz’s GoPro videos, shot through the windows as we drove along.

Isolated homes along the highway south of Palenque, near the Rio Tulia

This first half of the route, between Palenque and Ocosingo, was already familiar to us, after our aborted attempt to make this same drive two weeks earlier. We’d actually driven it twice, there and back again, and I remembered the road very well, one switchback after another, following one overloaded truck after another as they struggled up (and down) the steep grades. A closeup view of the map reveals just how many narrow curves have to be negotiated along the way. It’s a bit like trailing a long strand of spaghetti that was caught in a tornado, and flash-frozen!

Driving mountain roads like MX 199 is my favorite kind of fun. After I finished college (half a century ago?!), I spent two years driving all over the northern Andes in a Dodge Powerwagon that I shipped to Colombia from the U.S., and those two years were some of the happiest times of my youth. The mountains of Chiapas were no match for the Colombian Andes, but with all the lush tropical vegetation, there were more than enough similarities to tickle my nostalgia bone. When the road was clear ahead of me, I sailed around those beautiful curves in a state of bliss.

Scenes along the road, MX 199 between Palenque and Ocosingo: beautiful mountain curves, my favorite kind of fun!

Slow trucks and random pedestrians are a constant concern.

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Scenes along the road in Chiapas; clusters of homes, not quite a town

The famous Pan American Highway passes through San Cristobal de Las Casas on the way to Guatemala, but there aren’t all that many travelers attempting that route these days. There’s an ongoing problem with criminal gangs in some parts of Central America, so people who might otherwise have done that trip are mostly staying away.

Approaching Ocosingo, the largest town along the route and the scene of frequent problems with the Zapatistas, we ran into the first military road block we’d seen along this road. The soldiers were polite, if curious, wanting to know where we were from, and where we were going.

OCOSINGO

There was quite a lot happening in Ocosingo, the halfway point of this day’s drive. The town was bigger than I expected, with a population of 40,000 and many businesses. Ocosingo is the access point to Tonina, an important Mayan ruin, but, sadly, we just didn’t have time for it. We passed an unusual stone building: the Hotel Hacienda La Ilusion (The House of Illusion). Not sure how nice it was, as hotels go, but I was intrigued by the name!

This young lady didn’t like us much, either, but her approach was far more pragmatic. She had a thin rope stretched across the road, with a red flag attached to insure that we’d see it. We stopped, and she demanded 20 Pesos to let us pass. I offered 10 Pesos, which she grumpily accepted.

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After Ocosingo, the terrain was a bit less rumpled, leaving more space for people. We passed through a series of small towns, including one that had a shrine emblazoned with the following: “APARECIO LA VIRGEN A LAS 8:00 DE LA MANANA EL DIA 12 DE DICIEMBRE DEL (2008).” Meaning that the Virgin Mary appeared in this very spot at 8:00 in the morning on December 12, 2008. That’s pretty darned specific! This is Zapatista territory, as evidenced by the protest signs on a rainbow colored bodega.

A grocery store/cafe, painted in rainbow colors and festooned with slogans inspired by the Zapatistas.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ELZN), has been in business for three decades, since 1994, and these towns and villages in the Chiapas Highlands are the heartland of that movement. At one time, the Zapatistas took over the local government in Ocosingo, Oxchuc, and even in San Cristobal de las Casas. They are nowhere nearly as active currently, but their influence, and their core philosophy of “Here, the People Rule, and the Government Obeys,” still predominates in this fiercely independent region.

OXCHUC

Oxchuc was another good-sized town, about halfway between Ocosingo and San Cristobal. That place was Zapatista Central, and the scene of many protests and other incidents, including the previously mentioned attack on the Russian tourist who refused to pay the toll at their roadblock. When Mike and I passed through Oxchuc, there weren’t any roadblocks (not even the little ones, with ropes and strings), so we didn’t have any negative encounters.

School children walking home in Oxchuc

Street scenes in Oxchuc, Chiapas

A pack of camionetas (small trucks) leaving Oxchuc

We did get a few surly glares. There was one dude in particular who appeared to be wearing a shoulder holster, but when he saw us driving by, he quickly crossed his arms to conceal it. Security guard? No uniform, so not likely. Mike and I speculated that he might be a cartel enforcer, supervising the loading or unloading of some sort of contraband. The downtown area in general was surprisingly congested; down every side street there were camionetas (little trucks) loading and unloading. Some carried cargo, others carried passengers, protected from the wind and rain by colorful canvas shells that formed a roof over the truck bed, and extended forward to provide additional protected cargo space above the cab. These trucks were clearly the vehicle of choice in the Chiapas Highlands, and we saw them everywhere along the road, sometimes traveling in packs.

Arco de Bienvenida, the Arch of Welcome, Oxchuc, Chiapas

Up to this point in the drive we had good weather, but these were mountains, after all, and in the mountains, the weather is always subject to change. Clouds that had been building along the western horizon moved overhead and turned dark. We were finally getting close to our destination when the first fat drops hit our windshield.

Driving in to San Cristobal de las Casas through cold, drizzling rain

SAN CRISTOBAL  DE LAS CASAS

We entered the maze of narrow, mostly one-way streets, with rain falling steadily, and no clue where we were, or where we were going. I’d reserved us a hotel room through Expedia.Mx, a place called the Hotel Hacienda Don Juan. It sounded terrific on the website, but it was NOT in the center of town with the rest of the hotels, so finding it proved quite a challenge. We programmed the address into Mike’s phone and started following the turn-by-turn instructions. If we’d used the GPS from the beginning, it would have been easy, but starting where we did, Google had us driving down narrow alleys and over tiny one-way bridges intended for horse carts and pedestrians.

Street entrance, Hotel Hacienda Don Juan

We didn’t have a lot of time in San Cristobal de las Casas. We arrived in late afternoon, and we were going to have to leave first thing the next morning. Our whole visit was compressed into a single quite wonderful evening, wandering the cobblestone streets between storefronts of buildings that were hundreds of years old. Many were restored and newly painted, mostly earth tones, rather than the muted pastels we’d so admired in Campeche. (See my earlier post: Mexican Road Trip: Edzná and Campeche, Where they Dance La Guaranducha!) The local folk were mostly indigenous Maya, with roots in this region going back countless generations, but it’s important to note that most of the people we saw on the street that night didn’t appear to be locals. They were visitors, just like us, most of them Chilangos, a disparaging term for people from the D.F. (Mexico City). There were college kids in jeans and jackets, on holiday from their studies, as well as backpacker types from Europe and Asia, all checking out the scene. Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared San Cristobal de las Casas to be “Lo mas Magico de los Pueblos Magicos!” (“The most Magical of the Magical Towns!”) That’s quite a distinctive honor, when you consder the fact that there are no less than 177 cities and towns in Mexico that have earned the designation of Pueblo Magico, an honor bestowed by the Mexican Government, for the purpose of preserving cultural heritage–and promoting tourism.

An evening spent in one of Mexico’s Colonial Cities always seems to include some sort of celebration in the main plaza. In San Cristobal de las Casas, they put on a concert, featuring a local orchestra playing both classical and contemporary instrumentals.  The conductor was–let’s just say he was enthusiastic, and his musicians, of varying skill levels, did their best to keep up with him. The night was crisp and cool, the crowd respectful, applauding in all the right places. Colored spotlights lit the stage, and photo-luminescent plastic necklaces lit the faces in the audience with a ghostly blue glow.

Like every Spanish Colonial City in Mexico, San Cristobal de las Casas has a centuries-old cathedral that fronts on the main plaza, in this case, the Cathedral of San Cristobal Martir. Construction started in 1528, making it one of the oldest churches in Mexico. There’s a simple elegance to the building’s facade, painted pale yellow (and in need of a fresh coat)!

All in all, we sincerely enjoyed our brief visit to San Cristobal de las Casas. During my years in South America (back in the early 1970’s) I spent quite a lot of time in cities and towns surrounded by tropical mountains much like these, with cool climate, predominantly Indian populations, and Spanish Colonial buildings. Walking those streets felt like deja vu, even though I knew perfectly well I’d never been there before. It was the atmosphere, and the chilly evening, and the scenery, all of it together stirring fond memories dating back many decades.

We had a long drive north from here. Tomorrow, we’d push it a bit, as far as Oaxaca, and the next day to Puebla, or possibly Queretaro. From there, it was a short drive to San Miguel de Allende for a three day fiesta focused on the Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. That was going to be the icing on the cake of our Mexican Road Trip. But first we had to get there, and it’s a long danged drive from San Cristobal de las Casas to San Miguel de Allende!

Next up: Mexican Road Trip: Heading Back North: From San Cristobal to Oaxaca, and on to Queretaro

The slide show below features additional photos taken on the road in Mexico by my inestimable shotgun rider, Michael Fritz. Click any image to expand them to full screen:

Unless otherwise noted, all other images are the original work of myself, or that of Michael Fritz. All are protected by copyright.

The photographs on this site may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.

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ON THE ROAD IN MEXICO

Mexican Road Trip: From San Cristobal to Oaxaca, and on to Queretaro

This post is a work in progress. Anticipated publication in September, 2024.

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IN THE LAND OF THE MAYA

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