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Published: June 24th 2015
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Distance driven today: 185 miles / 298 km
Cumulative distance driven: 6,661 miles / 10,720 km
Today’s trip: Guatemala City, Guatemala to La Entrada, Honduras
Border crossings: 1
Driving in pitch dark: 1,5 hour
Major clutch issues: yes, but a paperclip saved the day!
First thing in the morning, we went to the Guatemala importer of satellite tracking messenger devices and bought a new one ;-) We borrowed their PC, logged into my online account with the manufacturer, registered the device, and voila, it showed up on my account. We can now, by the push of a button, send a signal to a satellite with our exact coordinates, and publish a digital pin that is juxtaposed on a Google map. We feel safe again, since our family can track us with a very high degree of accuracy based that digital pin, plus we can broadcast an emergency signal, with a degree of precision down to a meter ( a few feet), should something go seriously wrong.
Turns out that the Guatemalan importer of personal satellite tracking devices was located inside the only authorized BMW motorcycle importer in the entire of Guatemala; who knew. How
convenient for us, because we only had 3-4 days left of thread on our tires, and we really needed new tires. Luckily for us, the BMW dealership had the right tires and the time to fit them. By noon, we left Guatemala City with a new satellite tracking device plus brand new tires. Even though we started riding late today, we should have enough time to get to the Honduran border, cross it, and make it to the first major city in Honduras before dark. What could possibly go wrong?
A couple of hours from the border, I started noticing that the clutch started causing issues, and very quickly, I discovered that compressing the clutch lever, did not disengage the clutch at all. The result was that I could not change gears at all (now there is a serious issue for you). We stopped on the side of the road and we started troubleshooting. After a few minutes of searching for the cause of the issue I detected the problem. A tiny clutch level adjustment screw had broken somehow in half, leaving the other half inside the grooves. The remaining half of the screw seemed to move in its
grooves during riding, essentially unscrewing itself with about 1 millimeter and thus removing the margin available in the clutch lever needed to disengage the clutch and enablable me to shift gears. This was a tiny problem (just 1mm) but with very significant consequences however. The solution was to figure out a way to permanently attach the remaining half of the screw in a fixed position, so that I could not move.
We tried duct taping it in place several times, but found out that we needed to stop every 5-10 minutes to adjust it again, since the duct tape would wear with each gear lever engagement. Finally, late in the afternoon, and way behind schedule, Zoe suggested we try to find a piece of thin wire to wrap around the screw to hold it in place. We stopped at the first village we found, and got a paperclip from a friendly soul. I straightened out the paperclip to produce a straight wire, wrapped it around the screw to hold it in place, and somehow magically it seemed to work. It’s not exactly a very elegant solution, neither is it very reliable, but it seems to do the work. I
sincerely hope that the paperclip will stay in place, until we get to Tegucigalpa tomorrow, which is the capital of Honduras, and hopefully find an authorized dealer that has a new clutch adjustment screw in stock. If not, well, it’s safe to say that we will be screwed!
By the time we got to the border with Honduras, it was 5pm, and we were significantly behind schedule. Exiting Guatemala was fast (as long as we paid a generous fee to exit the country!), and so was immigration when entering Honduras. However, going through the paperwork of getting approval to bring in a vehicle to HOnduras took significantly longer time. The advantage of picking smaller border crossing is that, there isn’t a lot of traffic, and that it hopefully goes much faster. With only us in the line, and a single customs officer, we thought that this should be done in no time. An hour and a half later, the officer had processed all the paperwork necessary for us to legally be able to drive through the country with the motorcycle. The officer was definitely in no hurry, and surely made sure that he had crossed all the t’s and
dotted all the i’s, and that he had triple copies of all our documents, before he even considered issuing us the necessary permit.
By the time we were done with the border crossing into Honduras, the sun had already set, and it was pitch dark outside. It was 7:30pm, and the border traffic had come to a complete stop, as that particular border crossing closes at 8pm. We started driving, and quickly discovered that the road was pitch black, full of holes and in pretty bad shape. But what options did we have? We broke one of the cardinal rules I have on this trip, which is to
never drive after the sun sets. It’s hard enough to detect all the potholes, topes, animals etc. during bright daylight, and complete darkness doesn’t exactly improve thigs. It is also a major security concern to drive in darkness on these roads because should anything happen, we would literally be stuck in total darkness in the middle of nowhere. On top of that, my ability to engage the clutch and shift gears, which admittedly is a very nice-to-have ability when riding (!!!), was literally hanging on a paperclip…And so we had to
break the rule of never riding in darkness, and we drove for an hour and a half through the tropical forest landscape until we reached La Entrada, which is the first city in Honduras. Tired and hungry, we took into the first hotel we found in town, grabbed something to eat from a street eatery together with some truckers, and headed straight for bed.
It has certainly been an eventful day for sure. But that is what adventure riding through the PanAmerican highway is all about.
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