After spending a full day doing nothing but trying to get OUT of Guatemala City, I’ve decided that street signs are the main cause for Latin American urbanization. Obviously no one WANTS to live in a big Latin American city. They’re dirty, dangerous, and horribly frustrating. But they’re nearly impossible to escape. So when some poor soul HAS to go visit the capital (whether to see relatives, conduct business, or just simply sightseeing in the capital) well, they just get stuck. There are seriously NO signs telling you how to get out. And there are only a few limited roads leading out anyway. It’s pretty close to impossible to find your way out. So eventually, you just need to find a job to pay for a hotel bill, and there you go. You’re urbanized.
I really can’t think of anything I hate worse than driving in Central American capitals … and so far I’ve only been to one. It’s seriously no fun. I’ll try to explain why.
I left Antigua at about 10 AM or so today (late, lazy start, but I wasn’t planning to go that far, maybe 100 miles or so.) I drove into Guatemala city … about a 15-20 min drive, and guess what. I’m still here. At 4 pm, completely frustrated, and with no chance of making my destination by dark, I found the only hotel I could see … an expensive business hotel. I’m pampering myself.
You’d think that when you enter a city on a road titled CA1, and you know that there’s a road leaving the same city called CA1 that you’re best plan is to just stay on that road, right? You’d think so, right? But you’d be wrong. Unfortunately, there isn’t a road that goes from one end of the city to the other. I’m not talking about not FINDING the right road that leads you out … there ISN’T one. I’m not kidding. You can’t follow the Interamerican highway through GC because it doesn’t exist inside the city. It enters the city as a highway, and then just disappears into plain old surface streets … the kind that end after 5 blocks or so. So, my plan didn’t work. My plan B didn’t work either. I kept heading south and east whenever I could because the road I was looking for leaves on the south-east side of the city. And eventually I did find a road that left the city. I drove it for about 15 miles before I hit a small village where the road turned to dirt. There were no turn offs on the entire 15 mile stretch (not paved ones anyway).
It’s frustrating. So. In the morning I’ll try plan C. Plan C is to leave from a completely different road (the one I came in on when I was heading to Antigua last week) and take the long way. I think I can actually get out of the city that way. Wish me luck!
I met a Guatemalan girl about 17 years ago who told me about this great spot in her home country called Antigua - a colonial city surrounded by volcanos. I made up my mind then that I was going to visit. It’s taken some time to get here. But this is what it looks like.
Believe it or not, that’s only about half the churches here. I highly recommend a visit.
There is an active volcano called Pacaya between Antigua and Guatemala city. There are daily tours out to climb the sucker. So I put on my hiking shoes, and headed up. There is a pretty easy, well marked path up to the timber line. And then this is what you see.
Guess which way you go.
From this point on, you’re climbing in volcanic ash, sand, and sharp volcanic rocks. Here’s the view.
And after 45 min or so of climbing up, up, up, you get to the volcano. A real live volcano. Seriously.
Amazing stuff!
I made it to Antigua today. I’ve had this place HIGH on my list of places I need to see for about 17 years or so. So far it hasn’t disappointed (although hotel rooms here are REALLY expensive … relative to the rest of Guatemala.) There’s something about cobblestone streets that I love … it’s inexplicable. Cobblestones really get to you on a bike though.
It’s been raining on me every day for a week. Mostly, it’s very brief and very light (see, it IS a superpower. Tabasco got flooded after I left,) but yesterday got ugly. The rain started coming down hard for the first time while I’ve been driving. It was high in the Guatemalan mountains 20 miles outside Coban, and it was COLD. I happened to pass a roadside hotel right after the heavy rain started, and since I wasn’t entirely sure that I was on the road I wanted to be on to get to the town I wanted to get to, I decided to stop for the night. The hotel was behind a high yellow cement wall with a separate entrance and exit.
Parking was behind the building, out of view of the road, but there weren’t any marked parking spots, so I just pulled over next to the building, (as far out of the rain as I could get) and headed up to the sign that said ‘Reception’. There was a barred window there with closed shutters and a doorbell. So I rang the bell. I heard someone moving around, and the shutters opened. I asked the guy if there was a room, and how much. He told me the info (cheapest hotel that I’ve stayed at so far) and I asked if I could see the room. He said sure, and disappeared. He reappeared a few minutes later by opening one of the large wooden doors lining the back of the building. They looked like storage units, but turns out, they’re garages. Each room had a private garage. The room itself was upstairs over the parking space.
So I followed him upstairs, and he led me to a simple room with a bed, a nicely tiled bathroom, and a TV. He opened up the balcony door and showed me the balcony. All in all, it was better than any other hotel I’ve stayed at, so I agreed on the spot. Although when I asked if they had a restaurant, he told me that the closest was probably back in the town I had just passed about 3 km behind. But he showed me a room service menu with stuff like hot chocolate, popotonos (I never did figure out what those were) and of course beer and wine, but no food. I decided to stay anyway because I was cold and wet, and ready for a break.
I took a nap, watched some TV (I’m completely out of reading material aside from a Central America Lonely Planet), and at about 4 PM, the rain let up a bit, so I got dressed and was going to head into town to use the internet and buy some bread. I got dressed, started the bike, opened the garage door, and pouted because it had started raining again. So I turned the bike off and headed back upstairs.
Later that night, I pushed the intercom button, and asked for a hot chocolate and a soda. They said they’d bring it right over, so I hung out waiting for the guy. He knocked on the door, and I opened it. He was setting my hot chocolate on a tray that folds down right outside the door, and I saw that there was a door directly opposite the room door. It opened into a hallway, but when I checked it later, it was locked. There wasn’t even a handle on the side facing the room. That’s about the time that I clued in.
Parking wasn’t visible from the street. Private, enclosed parking spaces. Private units. No reception. Staff access behind locked doors. A tray outside the door for room service. I hope someone out there is laughing their head off right now. Because when I checked the rack rate sheet, yeah. There it was. The price for 4 hours at a time. It’s a love shack. Totally a place for guys to discreetly meet up with their mistresses without anyone ever knowing who was actually visiting. Awesome, huh?
It was still both the cheapest AND the best place I’ve stayed so far. Here’s the view from the balcony.
The view was STUNNING!
The road from Flores to Sayaxche is a nice, comfortable, well maintained (or at least fairly new) road. Then all of a sudden, you hit the river at Sayaxche. Everything you want (including the road) is across the river. And there is no bridge. Here’s how you get across.
I rode over with another bike, 2 pickups and 3 cattle trucks. They little thing can take a pretty heavy load.
Here are a few photos of Tikal. Nothing really prepares you for this experience. You must go.
I left Tenosique on Monday, November 2nd – the day of the dead. (It’s a Mexican holiday.) Bad omen, huh? To make matters worse, just outside the town, I saw a dog stagger to its feet in the middle of the road, take two steps toward the shoulder and collapse. Pretty sure it had just been hit by a car.
Aside from the collapse of a dead dog, I made it to the border at El Ceibo without incident … to find that the customs office that I had to visit to terminate the permit for my motorcycle was closed… because it was a Monday. One guy asked if I could hang around for a bit, and he’d call the only employee of that particular office to see if he could come down to take care of me. And I waited for about 40 minutes. A crowd gathered around the bike, and I went over to talk to them for a bit. Then I went back to the customs office, and sat some more. A nice Guatemalan man (a Chapin … the nickname for Guatemalans) came over and started talking about how much he loves bikes. It turns out that it’s true … Guatemalans are MUCH friendlier than Mexicans … if you can imagine such a thing.
Eventually the customs guys came back and said that because it was a holiday, and the guy lived all the way in Tenosique, that he wasn’t going to make it down to the border. So I talked to the immigration guys, and they said I could head into Guatemala, stay at El Naranjo, and come back the next day. So I crossed the border without pulling out my passport (the border is a chain link fence by the way,) and stopped at the little hut on the other side to talk to Guatemalan immigration. I explained to the officer that I was just going to El Naranjo and that I had to come back the next day to talk to customs. He said that there was no problem, but I needed to get my passport out to be processed into Guatemala. Sure, no sweat. I dug my passport out, and got stamped, and then headed back outside. The officer followed me, and started chatting away about motorcycles with me and the 5 or so guys that had surrounded my bike. (Seriously, the thing draws a crowd everywhere I go.) He had one piece of advice for me … he said that if I was stopped by police, that I should tell them he let me in, even though there isn’t a Guatemalan customs office to get a permit for the bike. Somehow, that’s not entirely comforting.
There. That’s part one of crossing the border. If you made it through that long hard slog, then here’s where the story gets interesting. In El Naranjo, I found 1 bank, 2 cyber cafes, and about 5 hotels … none of which were appealing. The bank didn’t have an ATM and wouldn’t change pesos, so I went across the street to the Western Union/cyber cafe and they did change money for me. (Convenient for me since I kept forgetting to check the exchange rate in Tenosique … but they did actually offer me a decent exchange rate.) I stopped at the hotel that was closest to the entrance to town (which turned out to be the nicest anyway) and got a room. Then I walked into town looking for something to eat … that wouldn’t upset my stomach which was still somewhat delicate after a little bout of Montezuma’s revenge the day before. (The reason I was crossing the border on Monday instead of Sunday when the office WAS actually open.)
I made it almost all the way through town when this guy stopped me. He said, ‘You were the guy who drove the motorcycle up and down the street a little while ago, aren’t you?’ I told him I was, and he said that he had tried to flag me down to stay in his hotel. I told him that I didn’t see him, but that I was actually looking for a bank at the time instead of a hotel. He said that there were money changers right there, and I told him that I had already changed some money. He asked what exchange rate I got, and I told him, and he said that I got a good price. At that point a couple of girls walked by, and he commented about how pretty they were. Then he told me he was from El Salvador, and that he was a rebel for a couple of years before leaving the country. He wandered through the USA and Canada for a while, decided it was too cold, and came back south. Then he said, ‘If you need anything, weed, girls, ANYTHING, I can get it for you.’ I said thanks, and he repeated ‘ANYTHING.’ So I told him I was looking for potato chips. All of the stores I passed had little bags, but I couldn’t find a big bag of potato chips. He took me across the street, to the store I would have checked next anyway, and we struck out. (Again.) And he gave up and went back to his hotel. I’m not sure that I’d trust my drug purchase to a guy that gets stymied by potato chips.
Anyway. After lights out at 8 PM, (not joking, the electricity went off at 8,) and sleeping through the night, I got up and headed back to the border. I took care of Mexican customs, and immigration, and came back to Guatemala. Funny thing. The Guatemalans didn’t check my passport either direction. So I crossed from Mexico into Guatemala without a passport check on EITHER side of the border, and went BACK into Mexico without a passport check. That has to be the most relaxed border ANYWHERE!
I’m trying to remember who told me to (as mentioned in the title of the post) find a girl who likes to ride motorcycles. I’m drawing a blank, but it was just a few days ago. It reminded me though of how I learned to ride motorcycles.
The first person who taught me anything about bikes was named Christine. She was the roommate and high school chum of a girl I met in college (and had a huge crush on. The unnamed friend eventually broke my heart. Sigh.) Christine was about 5′9¨ with long blond curly hair. She was skinny and curvy and had blue eyes and freckles on her nose. She was a babe. Totally beautiful. She was also a TOUGH chick. She formed an all-female ROTC team to enter some kind of physical competition and WON. Yeah. Against guys.
Well, the school we attended was Brigham Young University, which has this peculiar honor code. Along with the normal don’t cheat or plagiarise or get arrested, they’ve got things like no alcohol, smoking or premarital sex. (They encourage MARRIED people to have sex though.) Strange thing for a college, right? But there’s more. Oh yes. There’s more. The honor code goes on to talk about dress and grooming standards. No shorts or skirts above the knee. Men’s hair has to be cut above the collar. Men have to shave every day. And wear socks. (No. I’m NOT joking. That last one was changed shortly before I finished, but it seriously was part of the honor code when I started.) The honor code was ‘enforced’ by the honor code office. Seriously, there was a University division whose purpose was to look into honor code violations. Usually it only focused on the alcohol and sex violations. The dress and grooming standards were usually left to professors and the ‘testing center’. You couldn’t go take your finals unless you were wearing socks and clean-shaven. Sigh.
So. My hair generally pushed the limits of the honor code. It was usually long in front, and just above the collar in the back. I’d let it grow somewhere between 4-6 months, chop it all off, and let it grow again. While I was in the longer end of the cycle, Christine bought a bike. A Yamaha 650 cruiser. She loved that thing. And she used to call me all the time to see if I wanted to go for rides. We’d head out up the canyon or through town, me chewing on her long hair, with my own long hair streaming out the back.
One day, she called, and we hopped on her bike, and she pulled into the stadium parking lot. She gave me a run down on shifting and braking, and general bike knowledge. Then she let me drive. We drove through the parking lot for a bit, then I drove her back.
That was my last ride on Christine’s bike. Shortly after that, I cut my hair off. She never called again. (I think I moved away shortly after too.) I bumped into her a few months later and said, ¨Hey. You haven’t called me in a while. You used to call me to go riding all the time.¨ Her reply was ¨You used to be good for my image.¨
