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Hoping to avoid crushing tropical heat – and the attention of Mexican immigration officials – members of the migrant caravan began walking against dawn on Friday as they began a punishing 100km trek to the next station on their journey.
Pijijiapan at first time on the morning of the day, Arriaga, before the heat of the day.
The group of several thousand people is still some 1,000 miles from the border crossing into the US, but their journey could not be better than Tijuana, Mexico in April.
Resting before she set out, Dyana Ávila, 24, said she was still determined to reach the US, where she hoped to find work so she can pay for epilepsy treatment for her three-year-old nephew.
"My dream is to go there, work and save money to help my family," she said. "I can hopefully have my nephew come to the United States legally, with a visa."
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The caravan has been thrown through the blockades, closed borders and the weather. Eventually, it will push up against Donald Trump, who has turned the caravan into a wedge issue in the US midterm elections.
The president has been firing up his base by branding the caravan an "invasion". He has threatened to slash US Middle Easters moving towards the middle of the country. On Wednesday, Trump's defense secretary, Jim Mattis, announced that 800 soldiers would be sent to the US border.
Goal caravan participants appear unfazed by Trump's bluster.
Many, including Avila, expressed optimism in their idealized vision of America: a country of justice and opportunity – the opposite, they said, of the oppressive and corrupt governments, whose misrule back.
"We think he'll change his way of thinking and let us through," Avila said of the US president. "What's we asking for?"
At times the journey has taken place on the face of a biblical exodus: entire families, including babies in arms and people in wheelchairs, plodding through the punishing heat and downpours through the scrubby lowlands of southern Mexico.
Just as the group reached Pijijiapan on Wednesday, Trump tweeted another threat, telling them: "Turnaround, we are not letting people into the United States illegally. Go back to your country and have a look at it.
It is not possible to "apply for citizenship" from abroad, and the US is obliged by both international and domestic laws to consider all applications for asylum.
And simply heading home is inconceivable for many in the caravan, who fled
death threats, or forced by street gangs in their home cities.
"I can not go back. They'll kill me, "said Darwin Ramos, 30, who fled the rugged Olancho region of Honduras after being forced to work for a drug cartel.
US political considerations of migrants' minds. Jimmy Peña, 17, a painter from El Salvador, gave a blank stare when told about the politics of play in the United States.
But it is a little doubt the caravan will cross the US border.
"I do not know why they'd be against us if we're not terrorists or narcos," he said. "There are babies here, pregnant women, people looking for a better life."
Rodrigo Abeja, a Mexican member of the migrant support organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras, who is accompanying the caravan, was very aware of the elections. But he confessed: "It worries me, the repercussions this [caravan] could cause. "
But, he added: "It's more important to accompany [the caravan] than worry about white voters, sitting down, watching TV, drinking beer and contemplating the election. "
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