Test: Inline Images after site upgrade: Becan, Grand Pryramid

Test:

 I can upload new pictures successfully, yet the images in all previous posts fail to print.

This means that although all new posts on this site are capable of displaying uploaded images, every earlier post has lost its uploaded pictures, and I can't find them anywhere. such are the trials of backpacking the digital trail.

This project was suspended until this problem was fixed today, April 10 2011. Yeah!!

We're back on the Digital Trail. But first, here's the story about the pyramid above.

Becan, grand pyramid. About 70 miles West of Chetumal, the Northern extent of the Beliz-Mexico border on the Caribbean. This is one of three awesome sites outside of Chetumal. Very remote locations, very beautiful.

Visitors are very light, compared with Planque and Chichan-Itza, which were also on my route. But my route through the Yucatan was determined by the location of Mayan sites, so I drove deep off the beaten track into jungle many times in the Yucatan. What an amazing place.

At this point, at Becan, I was just North of the Southern extent of my trip, headed Northwest towards Planque, and the trip over the Chiapias Mountains to Oaxaca.

This was at about the halfway point of my 8500 mile, 37 day drive around the complete circumference of the country of Mexico.

I was in a litte 1987 beater pickup truck  that hit the 200,000 mile mark in Campeche. In the back of the truck I had my Gear: full backpack camping setup, ice chest, two folding chairs, and my water, food, and extra fuel supplies. I also carried chain, a shovel, and a come-along to prevent getting stuck.

I car camped four out of every five days on the road, spending every fifth day in a hotel to shower, shave, and enjoy city life. My perimiter route steered me away from most of the vast population centers of Mexico, and kept me in the country.

I visited a couple of ancient Olmec sites South of Coatacoalcos, and about 20 Mayan sites on my loop through the Campeche Pennisula, over the Chiapas Mountains to the Pacific Coast at Selina Cruz. From there I drove up the Pacific Coast until I cut straight North above Guymas to enter the US through Nogales.

I would not do this trip today. In 2005 when I made this trip there was incredible racism and hostility against white Americans all along the border. This hostiltiy continued until you got about 200 miles from the border, where the nasty influences that plague the border region had diminished.

The border region is a very ugly, violent place, and today (2011) I would highly suggest NOT travelling in Mexico at all: that country has fallen apart.

That's too bad, as once you got past all the poverty, corruption, violence, desperation and pollution, Mexico was an incredibly beautiful place, full of amazing people.

You couldn't tell that from what is going on up here in the US, as our country's middle-class wealth, our education system, and social services are rapidly plunging down to the level of Mexico's complete dysfunctionalism, but it is true.