May 20th, 2016
There was a very big dam close to the end of our day that we didn’t know about. It was interesting to see it being guarded by the navy rather than the army.
Cycling Stats
Start Point: Wild Camp near Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas, Mexico
Destination: Wild Camp MOFN, Chiapas, Mexico
67.4 km trip, 5:06 time, 47.5 km/h maximum speed, 13.2 km/h average speed
Route Description:
On this day it is again single lane in either direction with no shoulder. Traffic was courteous. The road includes undulating hills and you do end up gaining about 250 meters in elevation. You drop down about 200 meters again when you near a river dam protected by the navy. There were a couple of options of small stores to buy food along the way. We wild camped 5 kilometers before a town.
Accommodations:
We didn’t see any hotels along the way until 5 kilometers after where we wild camped the next day. The wild camping was good but there are a few hotels in the next town if you prefer this to camping.
What happened…
Andrew writes: There was a certain tiredness that came with waking up this morning after the excitement of last nights’ fire. I felt as though our campsite was very exposed and so we hurried to pack up, eat, and leave. Perhaps that is why the rest of the day seemed to pass in a haze. A lowlight from today included trying in vain to find fresh fruit and/or vegetables in the town of Acala. We rode around for what seemed like an hour, and it wasn’t that big of a town, even the large supermarket had absolutely zero fruit of veg. I ended up finding some crappy looking bananas at a small vendor setup in front of their house and we included that in our lunch.
After lunch came the highlight of the day as we passed through Belisario Dominguez, which is a large hydroelectric dam. The canals leading up to the dam looked super cool, and then on the other end, far, far below us the water came out of the spillway and down the lazy river…and it was HUGE! Well, maybe in the grand scheme of things it was small, but I haven’t been across to many dams in my travels. Strangely enough, the dam was being guarded by marines. I say this is strange because I thought that in Mexico, the marines guard everything within 5km of the coast and the army the rest. Apparently Marines guard more than that, at least according to the marine guard that I talked to.
Finding a camping spot was a bit of a challenge, we were both quite tired, and everything was fenced off for miles. After what felt like an hour of searching I found a good spot, except when I turned around Amanda was nowhere to be seen. I waited for a few minutes and she didn’t show up, so I turned around and rode back. I found Amanda about 1km down the road standing beside her spot, that she had found. There were horses, and cows, and mud, and bugs, but it was really rather pretty all in all. There was a good thunderstorm just before bedtime that we enjoyed from the comforts of the tent. Mmmmm, g’nite.