Wherever we go in this Yucatan peninsula, they say, “Here it rains only for one or two days a year, and you are caught in the middle of it.”

Yet, it’s been raining for the last ten days.

Wherever we go, we bring the rain. We had already lost a large part of our rakı stock to our Mayan brothers and sisters in Chiapas. And now the raining weather forces us to drink continuously and it’s no good. (More …)

The road from Cancun to Merida is the best, due to touristic reasons. Hail to the best road of Mexico. Because, I have been terribly irritated by the roads until here. I love to drive, but the 3,000 kilometres I have driven in all made me tired like I have driven 20,000 kilometres. And the parts Nur and Fikret can use in a car are the ones which don’t have a steering wheel. Thanks to them…

It’s hard to trust the signs on these roads. You should remember the distance marks I mentioned before. And the roads are erroneous in terms of construction, too. The slopes are erroneous in many curves, and a speed bump can pop up anytime and anywhere. It’s not wise to drive at nights. And the drivers have an attitude resembling the ones in the US a little. But since the roads are not like the ones in there, this attitude sometimes leads to catastrophic situations. And the drivers’ sense of pride has so much in common with the drivers in İstanbul. You see the ones who get angry when they are overtaken, or who refuse to yield. There was one time that I was overtaking a convoy, and a driver tried to block me while I was getting in between cars – what he deserved was to be beaten with a lever.

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We left San Cristobal with ceaseless tears in our eyes. Chiapas is one the most extraordinary places – not only in Mexico, but in the world. With its wonderful nature, culture, Zapatistas, history, and, of course, people, it deserves a “ten.”

I can only describe its people’s gentleness by giving an example:

The cute owner of our hotel is named Carolina. For safety reasons, she made us park our car a few metres away inside the garden of one of her relative’s garden. One morning when we got there, we saw another car was parked in front of the garage door. Carolina apologized to us a thousand times like it was her fault. I mean, she made sounds I interpreted as apologizing. I tried to give her consolation and tell her it was meaningless for her to be sorry, by making similar sounds and assisting those sounds with gestures. She went around asking the shopkeepers if anyone knew the owner of that car. She didn’t get any answers. Then came two swarthy Mexican boys, and they realized we had been looking for them and seemed embarrassed. They apologized. And they repeatedly thanked Caroline for her kindness. (More …)

I personally solved this 2012 mystery.

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Our next stop was a Mayan village called Bochojbo Bajo, in Sina Cantan region.

Don’t think that all Mayan villages have the same standard look, or found in the same ways. These have quite big differences. Even the languages are different, sharing similarities only at the basic level. You learn saying “cheers” in one village, and then it becomes something entirely different in another. We already know that languages which don’t take place in the mass media, the newspapers and the TV have local micro differences, anyway. Even in the Black Sea region in Turkey, two Laz villages next to each other lingual differences. (More …)

The last three-four days felt like months. And now it is so hard to fit this journal into this page.

Last time I wrote, we were in Juhitan, famous for its gays. We left there with feelings of love as we always had before. After then I think I had the longest drive of my life. Chiapas is a wonderful state. While we were driving on the winding roads, we passed through villages, gardens, like we were travelling in a Fakir Baykurt novel – a happier version though. If we take no account of the military check points with obnoxious guns and the speed bumps spilled around carelessly, everything was so beautiful.

It was pretty obvious that the military check points were showpieces because they were not mobile. I don’t think any bandit would fall for a fixed check point which never changes places for years. No, I don’t think so. (More …)

Friends, we accept that we’ve been awfully ignorant about our blog recently.

But in the last three days we have been so badly in a rush that it feels like three weeks. Maya villages… They are awesome. They are so genuine, so interesting, so open and in the same time so closed that anyone would be amazed. We are…

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Hi, this is Fikret. I’ve been keeping away from the writing stuff since I have been taking the photos – in other words, I have avoided the work – but this time I want to scrabble a few words.

In the previous entry we reported from “pleasantville” Zipolite on the coast of Pacific. Zipolite, with its backpacker tourists and ambience resembling the southern coastal towns of Turkey, was so not Mexico that we wanted to flee the scene as fast as we could – even   if it meant turning down the chance to put on lotions and sunbathe far away from the winter time of our “lonely and beautiful country.”

We didn’t hurry, though. We stayed for a day, and stepped on the gas of our car, Cucaracha. Our destination was San Cristobal. It drew our attention mainly for the Mayan ruins surrounding the area and the villages with population consisting of Mayan descendants who still use the ancient language instead of Spanish. Yet, the road was long. So after we drove half the way, we had to spend last night in Juchitan de Zaragoza. (More …)

Dear bon vivant,

If you’ll excuse me, I would like to say we are now drinking piña colada and comparing our suntanned skins while sitting on the coast of Pacific. Fikret argues piña colada with cinnamon is no different than watered down boza, while Metin argues that the superior race Laz people are sun proof. The so-called Swiss hippies sitting behind us play bad mandolin and get to our nerves.

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Finally we got out of the movie set. Everywhere looks so real now. Mexico City was nice as well, but when I look back, what I remember most is the fact that it was “huge.” Puebla was magnificent. Yet it seemed too gridded, too hygienic. I don’t know how to put it, but it can be said visiting the city and watching it from Google Earth doesn’t make much difference.

Now we are in Oaxaca, pronounced O-a-haka. Here looks magnificent, too. I don’t know what adjective I will use for our next stop.

We got out of Puebla drawing small circles, thanks to our imbecile GPS Juan Carlos. And thanks to the Mexican government that pretend these crooked two way roads are major highways,  we poured our money to tollgates. But apart from this, the journey was magnificent. We travelled winding through the cactus forests and arrived in Oaxaca. (More …)