Guatemala

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Saturday 20/10/12 – We got up before the sun and headed to the most well-known of the Guatemalan ruins: Tikal. As we were on the road at sunrise there was plenty of wildlife – I managed to brush a few feathers off a chicken with my bike. There was the most beautiful tarantula crossing the road luckily on a spot where we could stop. We ran back and snapped a few photos; it was so stunning that I wasn’t even scared despite being just a foot or two from it. Its long legs were super-hairy and its abdomen had the most amazing red hair, it didn’t seem concerned by us in the least. It was about the size of my outstretched hand, but surprisingly not creepy. We decided to go on a guided tour of the Tikal ruins which was a good choice as they are spread out across 4 kms with thick jungle in-between. There were a few very large pyramids that we climbed that rose above the tree canopy. It was sunny up there and you could look across the tree tops to the other pyramids. The largest pyramid was 70m high, solid and built over 40 years – an astonishing fact considering it was built in the 700s and without the wheel! The guide explained why the Mayans never used the wheel for labour – one theory is that the wheel represented the sun and they believed rolling it would offend the sungod who may then stop the sun from rising. The base of the 70m pyramid is covered in jungle (and probably too steep to climb anyway), so they have built some extremely rickety wooden stairs up the side which we used to climb to the top. As is typical for Mayan ruins, only about 20% of the site has been excavated. There were many animals amongst the ruins, howler and spider monkeys, wild turkeys, ‘jungle racoons’ and a strange creature that looked like a pig/giant rat. It was also interesting to stand in between two pyramids in Grand Plaza and clap your hands, the resulting echo (which was very loud) sounds like the cry of the native Quetzal bird. It is the national bird of Guatemala, the currency is called Quetzals in honour of this beautiful bird.



Sunday 21/10/12 – Despite our best efforts at heading out into the hills to Coban, we were stalled by rain, a required fuel stop, an air pressure check, and some twisting city roads of truly labyrinthinian proportions. Once we got really lost (I was expecting to find a Minotaur at any moment) we pulled over and asked some cops for directions. With the new knowledge in hand we got lost all over again until fortunately stumbling across the right road heading SW out of town. Being a Sunday we got caught in the chaos of the church and picnic traffic. It was mostly bikes out this morning with families of 4 piled onto single groaning motorbikes. There was also a man with two kids heading out fishing on his motorbike, instead of holding the rods like a knight holds a lance, he was holding them like a tight-rope walker whilst riding one handed.

We travelled through numerous towns with many traditional inhabitants. It was common to see woman washing clothes in the rivers and drying them on the side of the road, at one stage the road was lined both sides with sparkling clean clothes of many colours – we tried to not get to close and spray them with dirt! We also rode past a village that was drying their corn on the road in large piles; one older lady was beginning to sweep them up with a broom into bags as we rode past. We came across a very fast flowing river with a city on the other side; the road just went down to the river’s edge and stopped. It took us a little while to notice the (rickety and rusty) ferry departing from the other bank. 80 cents and some small thrills later we crossed over and continued on our way. We rode for seven hours today, with the only break being on the ferry, and covered just 330 km; however we did enter the state of Alta Verapaz. It’s always a good day when you enter a new state!

We found a suitable spot in the town centre and walked around checking out the usual sights. The town was partying both in the church and out in the central plaza.



Monday 22/10/2012 – We had planned a fantastic day of exploring caves. I had gotten all inspired after watching the documentary “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” where two French men went exploring in a cave and stumbled across ancient paintings dating back over 32000 years! I had high plans for the day which never eventuated.

There are extensive cave systems in the nearby hills which have been calling out to me for the past few weeks. Our morning start was again punctuated by a spontaneous downpour, but once it cleared we saddled up and headed for the hills. After about 40 minutes, we truly were out in the mountain villages. It was market day in one village which was packed with thousands of people (where did they all come from?). These towns only have one road so it was slow going riding through the middle of the market waiting for people to move out of the way; everyone was friendly though. Out in these towns we seem to be the highlight of the day, most people stare and point as we pass by, the kids often wave and if I am standing up on my pegs the kids get really excited and start waving, laughing, pushing each other around in excitement.

Just 11km from the cave the road sharply turned down the mountain and deteriorated into near unrideable gravel and mud that seemed to barely hug the mountain side. Just as we headed down the rain started again. Like the locals here it wasn’t a real problem, we just got of the bikes and huddled under a tree with big smiles on our faces till it passed. After dropping over 800m altitude in just 12km of horrible gravel and mud, it suddenly dawned on us that we were going to have to ride back up the road which was now freely flowing with bright yellow muddy water. We huddled under a tree again and chatted to local biker who was lived nearby, according to his estimate the caves were at least another 20 mins down the road. After Kenz and I had a little crisis meeting, we decided discretion was the better part of valour, turned around and prepared to scale the muddy mountain side. We knew it was going to be hard, but we even underestimated the difficulty. After Kenz dropped her bike in a huge pile of slippery mud she threw a wobbly and tearfully declared it the worst day of her life. After checking over the bike, we dusted (mudded) ourselves off in the pouring rain, stiffened our upper lips and carefully continued onwards and upwards. There were many moments where we almost dropped our bikes again, and a few times we needed to jump off and push the bike while the other carefully worked the throttle –but we eventually made it back up and onto the tar road covered in mud, water and storm clouds. It was a long, sombre and careful journey back through the mountains with our balding rear tyres slipping around in the slick wet. To top it off my rear brakes stopped working halfway home which meant it was a painfully slow trip.

We made it back home safely in the late afternoon and moped around feeling sorry for ourselves for the rest of the evening.



Tuesday 23/10/12 – Today the sun was shining all day, and we sweated and fried under its mocking blaze. We spent the morning doing maintenance and repairs on the bikes after the beating they took yesterday. After getting sick of hunting around for the right oil, I just bit the bullet and did a complete oil change with an oil weight that is readily available here. No matter how careful you are doing oil changes, you always end up bathing in the stuff by the time you’re finished! After cleaning up we headed to a wine bar for lunch which looks onto the central plaza. I was keen to try some Guatemalan wine and two glasses of vino tinto later I was sold on its exotic taste. After a careful study of the label I discovered that it was from California USA – it didn’t taste quite as exotic anymore…

We then went on a walking tour at a local coffee plantation where the first plants were grown over 130 years ago. It is now a large plantation which includes numerous other plants which all play a role in the success of the plantation. For example, they have huge avocado trees for shade and banana trees to distract the hungry birds – it’s a fantastic example of multi-species farming where every plant is used and nothing is thrown away. Even the husks from the dried coffee beans are used in the drying furnaces or for compost in the vegetable garden. I was so impressed by their operation that I agreed to a steaming hot cup of their coffee. After Kenz drowned it in milk and sugar, I grimaced and swallowed a mouthful which was followed by about 10 more before I realised I had finished it. It was my first successfully drunk cup of coffee, and it was pretty good!

We spent the evening people-watching in the central plaza. After the sun went down everybody congregated in the plaza to eat, talk, kick plastic bottles around, gossip, let off fireworks, sell/buy treats and kites, kiss, smoke, drink, sing, compare motorbikes, shine-shoes and a million other activities – it’s just another evening in Central America.



Wednesday 24/10/12 – A great road-trip to Guatemala City was planned for today, however as usual the weather threw a spanner in our works. Early in the morning the rain stopped for about half an hour so we quickly packed our bikes and got ready. We wore our full rain gear (complete with thick black rubber gloves and boot covers) which made us look like a specialist nuclear-spill cleanup team – the locals who ride in thongs and no helmet must think we’re crazy. After a grinding 6 hour ride with an average speed of 43km/h, we rolled into Guatemala City soaked and crabby. Fast-forward about 1.5 hours of multiple wrong turns and many equally spontaneous adventurous and unintentional detours, we found the local Kawasaki dealer where we purchased some new oil filters and a new speedometer cable for Kenz’s bike as hers snapped a few days ago. The guys at the dealership where awesome and helped us out heaps; however eyebrows were raised upon examination of our tyres, so we organised to pop in tomorrow for some replacements. We rode out to the nearby old capital city called Antigua (old) Guatemala, and went in search of a hotel. We enquired at about 8 different places that were all over 3 times the price of any Guatemalan hotel we had stayed in. Eventually we found a small place that let us park our bikes across the street at the 24-hour petrol station. Even mentioning the condition of the road in this city still brings me great pain, it must be the original cobblestone streets from the 1500s which hasn’t been touched since. The city is quiet beautiful as the buildings are colonial style and brightly coloured, plus the city is bordered by three volcanoes and one is still active!



Thursday 25/10/12 – We had a quick walk around the city this morning including a disappointing visit to the local market where you could by any Chinese manufactured Ben 10 toy that you could ever want. We headed back into Guatemala City to meet with Klaus and Otto at the Kawasaki dealership to work on the bikes. We were really well looked after and Klaus even took us around to a few other shops to purchase some items we needed whilst the mechanics changed the tyres and did a few small fix-ups. We decided to go with Pirelli MT-90 Scorpion tyres rather than the Kendas which we had chewed through quite quickly. We bought some items at the local auto shop which only had a small shop front but a huge warehouse upstairs – we told them what we wanted and they put it in a bucket tied to a rope and dropped it down through a hole in the roof. It was an effective system. Klaus had plenty of tips and advice for us about our trip through Central America. Not only does he also have a KLR, but he is a previous Guatemalan motocross champion! We left the city at sunset really pleased with our new tyres and my fixed rear brake which now works.



Friday 26/10/12 – We prepared to leave Antigua and snapped a few photos of the active volcano on our way out of town. Travelling south we hit the coast and followed it left along the shore for what seemed like an unreasonable amount of time towards our destination of Monterrico. We conquered a variety of obstacles including innumerable unmarked speed humps and a festival that was being set up in a town with just 5 streets (four of which were impassable due to Ferris Wheels, delivery trucks and markets). We tried our luck bypassing the town by riding along the beach until Kenz put the bike down in a deep patch of soft black sand. We continued mostly alone along the coast until we came across an unlikely traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. We did what anyone else on bikes would do and snuck down the inside pinched between vehicles and a splintery looking wooden fence. The cause of the traffic jam was a long bridge that stretched across a river mouth, there was a minibus at the front of the queue in the process of arguing about paying the toll to cross, its path being blocked by a boom gate. We, being only distinguished from transient bums by our bikes, quickly snuck in between the gate and the edge of the bridge and zoomed across before anyone could stop us, I never looked back in the mirrors to see if we caused any commotion. Later we pulled into the town of Monterrico, which is largely on the map due to the vast number of turtles who use the beach to lay their eggs, and the tourist operators who use their presence to attract tourists. A cheap room was found at a hostel called Johnny’s Place which was just a few properties down from the turtle sanctuary. Being on the coast the humidity was high and despite being the cheapest place we could find, it still had four pools which we gratefully used to cool down and relax the afternoon away.

At nightfall we went over to the sanctuary where they were about to release some newly born turtles. We each got given a baby to release onto the beach where they sporadically trundle down towards the heavily pounding waves. It was hard to watch as they reached their goal only to be swept up by huge waves that smashed against the beach. Most that reached the water disappeared into the black waves; however some got pounded or washed around in the foam before finally disappearing. We gave a small donation for the privilege of handling and releasing the babies, the sanctuary then uses the money to by the eggs off the locals who hunt them. Operations like this are resigned to the fact that they are powerless to stop the locals from engaging in practices such as turtle egg hunting; so they meet them on the middle ground of paying them a small amount for the eggs so that both the sanctuary and the locals profit. Hopefully less turtle eggs or baby turtles end up being eaten by the local villagers. We met an Israeli girl called Gil who was volunteering at the sanctuary and filled us in on the area and how the sanctuary operates.

As our turtle-philia was peaking we decided to go for a night walk along the beach looking for turtles that may be coming ashore to lay their eggs. We joined one of the sanctuary workers, who barely spoke a word of English, on his nightly walk. It didn’t matter though as the night was really about walking along the beach in the dark with stars overhead looking for turtles. We didn’t find any turtles, however we found incredible lightning and booming thunder which was quickly followed by a long and intense rain storm. We scurried back to the hostel in the dark absolutely drenched and jumped in the pool fully clothed. I stayed in the pool in my clothes for a while having my own little ‘tropical storm moment’, after some time the pool filled up with so much rain it started to overflow. I then moved over to the hammock and watched the pool as the wind whipped up small waves and spilled the pool over the side and set the water free to flow out and onto the beach. My revere of the situation was snapped back to reality by Kenz yelling that our room was flooding.



Saturday 27/10/12 – We arose early and stumbled through the backstreets and alleys of the village to the small dock on the nearby freshwater lagoon. We watched the locals use coffee cups and ice-cream containers to bail out their boats that were half filled from the tropical storm last night. A small red boat pulled up that was powered by a grinning man and his long bamboo pole. He took us around the lagoon and mangrove forest as the sun rose, pointing out various birds and iguanas who (startled by our silent appearance) flew off into the air, or dived and skipped across the water in between the mangrove roots and branches

We returned to the hostel and enjoyed the complimentary breakfast - pancakes, eggs and beans. We spent the day lounging around by the pool waiting for the evening when we could release some more turtles. The highlight of the day was lunch at a local kitchen that Gil knew, I had some great chicken, Kenz had some great prawns, and Gil ate the prawn heads. I think she has a thing for eating animal’s faces, she reckons the tastiest parts are always found on the animal’s head…

Being a Saturday night the crowds started rolling in near nightfall and as the sanctuary bought the babies down to the beach a huge crowd had gathered. We got given another baby each and watched them expend vast amounts of limited energy to crawl down to the water’s edge. Unfortunately many weren’t up to the task and gave out half way down the beach; it made us wonder how long ago the babies hatched. I had a suspicion that turtles which were born during the week were held onto so they had plenty of babies to satisfy the weekend crowds of tourists. Afterwards Gil took us to another small kitchen to try some papusas, a dish originating centuries ago by the people of El Salvador, which are basically a flat savoury pancake filled with cheese or meat.

We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the pool, meeting many of the locals who flock to the beach for the weekends. For most of the night there was a rotating roster of people in or around the pool, most were friendly and in varying stages of relieving their alcohol habits, drug addictions and complex relationship issues.



Sunday 28/10/12 – I awoke early to the Pussycat Dolls screaming over the radio this morning, and then partook in the ultimate of hangover cures – eating pancakes! We had packed and left town by 9 am backtracking our path through southern Guatemala. The road through the small coastal villages was often lined by rows of sea sponges drying from barbed wire fences. There also seemed to be a competition amongst the locals to see who could ridiculously overload their motorcycles with the most people or gear. The two stand outs was a guy who was riding along with his mate on the back carrying a bicycle above his head; and a family of five with the father driving, his two toddlers sandwiched on the fuel tank, with mum on the back with a baby under one arm and a huge watermelon under the other.

Todays 360 km trip gave us the pleasure of riding through Guatemala City (the home of over 4 million people) for the third and final time. It’s a huge and dirty city with massive highways which seem to dead-end into narrow two way streets before abruptly end in a one way street in some random dingy suburb. Being a Sunday we managed to navigate the crazy roads and drivers with only Google maps and a minimum of stress (our GPS has had no available maps since Mexico). About 2 villages before our destination (the city of Chiquimula) we hit another traffic jam which slowed our progress. We slowly crawled forwards until we came to the spectacle which everyone was stopping to gawk at – it was a dead body on the side of the road. The body was partly covered in branches so I couldn’t tell how he died, my guess was being hit by one of the crazy drivers. About 3 kms before Chiquimula we were stopped by an orange flag wielding man who refused to let anyone pass whilst there was roadworks going on. Not wanting to chance the risk of riding past this guy who wielded his flag like a baton, we watched roadworkers leaning on their shovels staring at the gravel road for about 30 mins. After a cacophony of car horns, and a slew of daring motorbikers riding past just out of flag-reach, his will finally gave out and he let a group through. We rode into town not long before sun down and found a hotel in the central square where the strange Guatemalan hotelier insisted that not only was Nicole Kidman a talented and attractive actress, but anything that Paul Hogan says is hysterical and nothing that he says can ever not be funny. The true boss of the hotel (at least in my opinion) was a bright green parrot who lived in the foyer. I spent a great deal of time saying ‘Hola’ and ‘Que tal?’ to him, but he just patronizingly stared at me like I was an idiot. With every passing moment I realised he was making me look like a fool and my high pitched pleading cries of ‘Buenos dias’, and ‘Como esta?’ fell on uncaring parrot ears. It’s amazing how (in my experience) babies and animals can destroy an eggshell thin ego with such indifference or nonchalance. From then on, every time I passed his cage I avoided eye contact and blushed under his condescending gaze.



Monday 29/10/12 – Banks close on weekends here and ATMs routinely run out of money by Sunday night or Monday morning. The third ATM we visited this morning coughed out some money which we needed to convert to US dollars before heading to the border. We lined up outside the bank, then inside the bank, and then I caused a minor commotion amongst the shotgun wielding security guards by pulling out my phone inside the bank. We cashed-up and reached the border between Guatemala and Honduras at the small outpost called El Florido. Either side of the border was lined by about sixty 18-wheeler trucks which immediately made us break into a sweat. Expecting huge delays we rode past them all and straight up to the gate. About 20 minutes, five dollars, and 8 photocopies later we had officially left Guatemala. We pulled into the Honduras immigration who requested another three dollars before stamping our passports. With a spring in our step we entered the Honduras customs planning to quickly fill out the paperwork and be on our way; however the bank closed for lunch just as we arrived. We sat outside customs for an hour watching the truck drivers string up hammocks beneath their vehicles to snooze the afternoon away, one such hammock had three burly men snoozing together – it reminded me of ferrets or mice sleeping all piled on top of each other. The bank opened and we began an incredibly long and tedious afternoon of paperwork, photocopies, photocopying machines running out of ink, then breaking down, and schizophrenic computers that kept freezing. But thankfully, no bribes required- Honduran officials are renowned for using the schizophrenic computers as an excuse for extracting extra money. Finally we took off in a huff and just rode past the quarantine guy who stood their staring at us with his chemical spray-gun in hand. About 10 minutes later we rode into the small border village of Copan which is an unusual town built on a small set of corrugated hills where every second road is amazingly steep whilst every other is flat on either a narrow hill top or valley floor. For entertainment we watched cows grazing in the vacant block across from the hostel and shirtless youths on dirt bikes riding up the steep streets and doing jumps at the top.

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