Day 20 - Coconutty

February 5th, 2009

After we left the Palenque ruins, we were aiming to make it to the Atlantic coast (Gulf of Mexico) in the state of Tabasco for one last beach day with Petr before he had to get his connecting flight back to Mexico city, then onto the UK, before heading home to Czech Republic. We had no idea of what to expect from the section of coast as it is not covered in any guides, and all the towns are too small to register on any of our maps.

After some hours driving around looking for a town with a hotel & restaurant, we stumbled upon a ghost town on the coast - it seemed completely deserted. We decide to stop and have a look at the beach. The entire coastline was completely wrecked. Half demolished/built buildings lined the beach, and debris from the jungle and peoples houses was strewn across the sand. We guessed this might have been one of the areas hit by hurricane Wilma a few years back. It is also possible that it´s just a holiday/abandoned town that everyone treats like crap (unfortunately the way most Mexicans seem to treat their environment). We had no way of knowing for sure...


To amuse ourselves, we found an emptied coconut and started to create silly games. It started with catch but we needed to be competitive, so catch turned into Shot Put, we drew a line in the sand and applied the official throwing technique to see who could get the furthest. This assumed us, so we started to think of new games to play...


Next we tried creative throwing at a target with various points for hitting a mark closer to the centre we drew in the sand.


Followed more and more crazy games, including artistic catches, javelin, baseball, tightrope, and golf...

More great images of this fun game in Lukas' gallery.

When we finally ran out of games to invent, we continued on to what seemed to be the only real town in the area; Frontera (updated visual journey map). We soon discovered the locals are really not used to seeing tourists, we got questioned by local security guards at one point - that got a little scary... There was not much to do except celebrate the success of our Coconut Olympics, and the great times we'd all had in the past few weeks as a threesome, with about 10 too many beers.

The following morning we slept off the inevitable hangovers, and spent the last few hours of the day on a beach we'd discovered the day before. The sun was already low, and the sea cold, so after a little snoozing and reading in the sand, we found another old coconut shell, and this time set about trying to obtain a fresh one by hurling the old ones at tree hoping to know new one down. You wouldn't believe how long we stuck at it. After a few hundred attempts the first new coconut fell the ground. It was like the dawn of man, chimpansee moment in 2001.


We bathed in our success, and wanted more. Another hundred or more throws later, and our second fell to earth. Hoorah!


I returned from snapping some sunset shots to find the boys had been tirelessly hacking away at one of the coconuts with a pen knife. Another 5 mins and they gave up, then resorted to smashing it against tree stump. Eventually the shell split and we shared the sweet milk and fresh fruit inside. Who would have though such a simple thing could take up so much energy and provide all that entertainment? :) How did early man cope?

Following our well earned snack, we were heading back to the hotel for our final dinner together. But we were not alone, we had adopted a stand-in for Petr; the second coconut is coming with us!, and we have affectionately named him Petr 3 (Petr 1 was from the Vietnam trip, Petr 2 is from this trip). We intend to carry him with us on our journey (until it starts to smell bad) as a mascot, in place of our comrade who´s heading home.


Today we have taken Petr (2) to the airport in Tabasco, where he has flown back to Mexico city for a night, before getting his connecting flight the the UK then Czech Republic tomorrow. Is was a sad moment, and he shall be soarly missed, and I hope I've made a good new friend. We'd had a fun adventure as a threesome, and now it's time for Lukas & I to head off alone for the rest of our journey... We've already reached the next state (Campache), and are in a small town on an island connected by bridges around a lagoon, called Ciudad Del Carmen. Updated visual journey map. Not sure how long we'll be here, but we are sure once we're done we'll be heading towards the capital of this state, Campache city...