Asia-Europe 2012

Palenque is a 6 months fresh airport so no piston engine fuel is available yet, only jet. Our plane is certified to use automotive fuel but security won’t let us bring flammable substances through the terminal so I had to take off with 10 gallons and fly over marsh land and swamps to the nearest airport with fuel – Ciudad del Carmen. 45 mins flight would need 6-7 gallons (considering 8-9 gallons per hour burn rate) so I had just 30 minutes of reserve – not too much room for navigation errors. Fortunately VORs and GPS worked well and we landed in MMCE still under power :-). From there a low flight under tropical showers and finally arrived at a tiny airport in Playa del Carmen, completing the first segment of our trip without incident!

Found more Maya ruins in Palenque. So far the best archaeological site in Mexico, followed closely by Teotihuacan – that we visited in 2010.

We rented this 2012 VW Jetta for ground transportation while in Oaxaca. Was so surprised to see it equipped with NO AIRBAGS and without ABS and with an engine reminding me about Golf MK2s (factory equipped Mexican market)!!!!!! While in US they have mandatory 4 SRS and ABS and add ESP in standard and auto leveling headlights for the European market. Such a huge gap! Not a surprise though, considering they built the original Beetle (Typ1) until 2003 in Mexico!!! see also this 2010 article.

Some Maya ruins can be found not to far away from Oaxaca. Rainy day, but we found cover under a centuries old arch.

Oaxaca city center was “occupied” by protesters requesting some politicians sent to jail for fraud. Other than that a very nice city center, classic colonial style, well preserved!