Toniná Ruins with Dr. Benny and Sam...

So I met Ben in Puerto Econdido, you can read more about our meeting in my Mexican Economic post.  And Sam you can read about in my last post...  The three of us tore off into the Chiapas backcountry jungles for some ruin raiding and tope blasting.  The air got hot, sticky and thick as we wound down the curvy road from San Cristobal de Las Casas.

When we got to Ocosingo, we popped into a chicken restaurant that lacked any interior decor.  We joked about how quickly these places could come and go, as the restauranteur cut apart our chicken with a giant scissors.  We munched away making tacos out of our broasted chicken, black beans, pickled jalepeños and salsa on fresh corn tortillas.

Instead of getting a room, we decided to rip out to the ruins first just in case there was camping available.  We lucked out.  There was a sweet little campground right outside the gate to the ruins.  When we found that we were too late to explore the ruins that day, our campground guy told us about a back road that we could rip our bikes up and find a nice overlook of the ruins.  We promptly set up camp and blasted up to check it out for sunset.

The light wasn't epic for photography but it was really a sweet perch above the countryside.  When we returned to our bikes a local guy was trying to haggle us out of some money for watching our stuff for us.  Seeing as he was the only person for miles it kind of equated to paying him for not stealing our shit.  We politely declined pretending not to understand and romped up the dirt hillside in the darkness.

In the middle of the night clouds enshrouded our camp in dampness and poor Ben had a terrible misfortune that you can read about on his blog...  www.afewmoremiles.com

We got up early and headed into the ruins.  When we got there we took a quick spin through the museum and then got out to the ruins as the fog was clearing up.  The sun came out and gave us some great light to photograph.  Turns out they are still excavating and rebuilding much of the ruins.

I'm a little torn on these aspects.  Seems a little bit like academic grave robbery and construction for tourism sake.  I mean at least the people rebuilding them are of mayan descent right?

But nonetheless it was a great display of Mayan architecture and since it is so newly discovered we only saw a couple other tourists out there.   I tried photographing the archeologists unearthing a new find and was scolded by an onlooking policeman.

I ran into another motorcyclist here in Tulum yesterday, that was in Tonina just a few days after us and he said they had found a new coffin and the press was there to photograph the findings.  Tomb raiders.  Glorified tomb raiders, I tell ya!

So since we felt so honored to be there so early on, sans hundreds of other tourists we made a little photo pact.

The three monkeys... See no Evil, Hear no Evil and Speak no Evil...

On our way out of camp as we were passing the military garrison we ran into another ADVrider, we've been crossing paths with.  Vince, aka "Crashmaster".  I've been following his ride report since September and been hot on his tail most of my trip.  Leeching information from his report and visiting some of the same places.  It was great to finally meet him on the road.  As we were standing there shooting the shit, a military officer came up to us.  We thought for sure he was coming to shoo us away from the entrance of the military outpost, but turns out he is a Honda Goldwing owner and was happy to join us for a group photo.

 A good day had by all and we peeled on down the road for Agua Azul waterfalls where we would camp for a night before pushing on to Palenque.

Stay tuned, next post gets us into Palenque, Calakmul, Bacalar, Cancun and Isla Mujeres and Playa Carmen and back to Tulum and back to Bacalar and hopefully Tuesday brings me into Belize.  Wait tomorrow is Tuesday.  Damn, I'm still in Tulum. Better get out of this restaurant and down the road.  I got 3 hours to Bacalar.

Hasta Luego y Feliz Navidad.