Nicaragua Bound!

Sometimes stumbling upon adventure is just as wonderful as planning it. After a couple days of relaxation at Lake Atitlan, we were ready to get moving again. Our morning couldn't have been much better, complete with a thick stack of pancakes and reading an email from a Luther student who has become inspired enough from our trip to study abroad in Costa Rica. Probably could have chosen better people to follow, but right on buddy.

Hello from Guatemala!

Hello from Guatemala!

The morning we left Mexico, we were all pretty intimidated by the looks of the mountains. We'd biked over long hills before, but the steep and rigid peaks of Guatemala looked like a whole different monster. Ready to tackle the day, we sucked it up and started to ride. Luckily, we weren't too focused on the road in front of us because we barely noticed the building to turn in our Mexican travelers visa and get the departing stamp in our passport. No signs on the road. It felt weird to be riding past Mexico but not officially in Guatemala either. Just one calm man hanging out on a lazy Sunday morning watching the third Harry Potter.

One Month In

Sometimes your body tells you when you need a break. Knees start to hurt or there's just an overwhelming lack of general energy. This time, however, we took a rest day I didn't realize we needed. We'd been building our miles up steadily and feeling strong but riding that much takes a physical toll, especially when we're still pretty new to the whole process.

Fighting Fires and Finding the "Garden of Eden"

One of the many great things about bikes is they allow your body to become slowly acclimatized to your surroundings. You can only travel so quickly and so far at once meaning, as the air gets warmer or there's less oxygen while going up mountains, the change is gradual and essentially pleasant. Unless of course you bypass the biking for a bit and take a bus.

Pyramids, Birthday Tequila, and Mexican Wrestling

My how days fly by the further you go south! After our kind breakfast in San Juan with the mountain biking friend, the three of us decided to try out a new part of our adventure with the bus station. You might be like us and think "busses? How hard can that be? People use buses everyday!" However, what we needed to focus more on was taking a bus with bikes. We were able to buy three tickets, but the storage underneath was far too small so we ended up waiting another 4 hours for a larger one to Pachuca. Since it was already late, we quickly settled for a little restaurant called "buen comida" since it had to be good food! Lucky for us, they didn't lie and we were so hungry we ordered an extra round of quesadillas.