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.
 

Our scenery was incredible enough we weren't even that disturbed by a giant pile of trash. I guess when you aren't really in a country, it's a prime opportunity for a dump. Luckily, the stamp from our first nonchalant man was all we needed to continue the journey and after an insanely quick and simple process of filling out a piece of paper followed by another stamp, we were in a new country. The whole process at the immigration building maybe took five minutes, and we spent more time chatting with the man outside since he was super curious about our bikes. Crossing the border was not nearly as drastic of a change as the US to Mexico, but still a noticeable difference. Immediately everything was a bit less developed, and we spent our first day never really knowing when we were in or out of a town. The houses and huts simply continued on the side of the road, and lots of pickups acted like taxis, filling the beds with people and dropping a few off on occasion.

We wove through the steep mountains near the river, which luckily helped level out the road some. Where Mexico was more inclined to put a road where they wanted it, Guatemala seems more restricted by the landscape, having to cater to the craziness it has been given. Pausing under a tree for a peanut butter and jelly lunch, we found some bugs in our bread and munched while recovering. Before long, a 14 year old boy living in the house behind us came out with his arms literally full of bananas. When we gratefully accepted and devoured our gift, he came back with oranges and sat with us on the hillside to chat. As we finally started to get up, his mom came to the fence with 3 loaves of homemade cornbread. All for free, all no questions asked. We didn't have much to give in return, but we pulled out the hacky sack and played with the kid and his older brother. They'd never seen a hacky sack before, but as lifetime soccer players (and our lack of skill) they instantly fit right in.

Finally saying thank you not nearly enough times for their generosity and kindness, we kept riding through the mountains. I know the trip is young, but I don't know if I will ever feel like as much of a celebrity as I did that day. While people in Mexico might have tolerated our existence or been decently interested, the people here have more of a fascination and excitement. Everyone we passed seemed to smile, wave, yell encouragingly, give a thumbs up, or some sort of combination. Even the little kids would perk up when they saw us, usually yelling out "gringos!" as we rolled past. So much attention and positive energy made for a great day of riding and made me feel far more popular than I truly am.

Since it was Sunday, hardly anything was open when we finally stopped. With limited options, we grabbed fried chicken and brought it to the roof of our hotel. Say what you want about Southern fried chicken but I promise you, Guatemala has got something figured out. While we were going over our first month for what went well and what we want to try and change, we noticed some Mormons below us. Hungry for a conversation in English, we chatted with them for quite a while and they gave us some locations to think about visiting. They also shared some of their experiences like how nearly everyone in the town we were in had either been to, tried, or was in the states illegally (we were wondering why we primarily saw women and children), warned us that although our Spanish is bad, some of the locals still use the Mayan dialects so lack of understanding isn't totally our fault, and they gave us a feel for some of the social dynamics here. The next morning, they were even so incredibly kind that that gifted us colorful ties. Awesome, friendly guys doing great things.

The rest of the day was, in a word, long. We had gotten up early, knew we wanted to rest at a lake in a couple days, but there were some serious miles between us and there. Oh, and something new: mountains. One thing we are learning to avoid saying is "it can't be that much more up." It can. And it will. Steadily climbing all day with extraordinarily brief stretches of downhill, we inched our way onward. Eventually the route reminded me of hiking trails in Colorado, where you never really gain a lot of elevation because you climb around a bend, lose it all when you weave back towards a mountain, and repeat it about 20 times as you try to move past the crazy landscape. Pushing on for by far the longest ride (in terms of time on the saddle) we finally found a town with a hotel. Naturally, already dark and using our bike lights to avoid pot holes, we asked for the hotel and it rested at the top of a hill so long and steep we couldn't have ridden it if we were fresh for the day, let alone after 8 hours of riding up mountains. Food was closed so we filled up on hotdogs from a stand and a bag of black beans we were carrying.

From the experience, I think we learned a few things. Biking that long is doable but too long. Riding in the dark is cooler, but terrifying with traffic and it's almost impossible to read the road with headlights in your eyes. But most of all, and by far the most important, NO MORE BEANS. I don't know what exactly happened, but the entire next day all three of us passed more gas than the first month combined and our intestines were constantly churning. Out of the can seemed to be okay, but they take too long to cook and our bodies said no. No more beans.

Definitely tired from the day before and because it was our 5th straight day of intense riding, the pace slowed down a bit as we continued the steady climb yet again. Using our resources, we realized we were at nearly 9,500 feet and the lake we wanted was at about 5,200 feet so there had to be a downhill. But on we climbed and wove up and down all morning. When we were only about 10 miles from the lake, we finally found it. And was it ever a downhill. The first switch backs were a thrill. The road was great and with our loaded bikes, the steepness of the grade would have made us go 0 to 60 in about 5 seconds. With both brakes almost entirely pulled, I remember seeing 22 mph on a turn. The scenery on the left was a dense jungle, far too steep to be uninhabitable so everything about the ride screamed adventure.

After it leveled for a bit, the next switch backs were a bit scarier. Actually a lot scarier. Only half of the road was paved, and it happened to be the left side of the road. It was great for riding, but you never knew if a car would fly around the corner while we were on the wrong side of the road. The alternative was choppy gravel and rocks (since they cut it out for paving) and a minimum of a two inch lip separated the lanes. We only had one close encounter with a vehicle and had to ditch the lane for the rough gravel in an instant. Leveling again, we hit the last stretch of sincerely insane switch backs. The redeeming part of these was we could see Lake Atitlan the whole way down, but the road was terrible and we were weaving pot holes the entire time. By this point, all of our brakes were thoroughly squealing. At the bottom, I sprayed a little water on my disc and it immediately steamed off. We were putting off some serious heat but I gotta admit, the trolls controlled the terrain yet again.

Happy to have thick tires, we made our way along the lake, surrounded by tuk tuks, on a mixture of road, gravel, and dirt. Finding a hotel with a kitchen, we decided to go treat ourselves. Selecting a place on the water, we watched the sun set over the volcanoes that surround the lake, and destroyed a hamburger so quickly that we decided to order a pizza on top of it. Washed down with some "Cuba libres" or rum and cokes, we had an amazing evening. One weird thing about Guatemala is although we moved east, we changed to the mountain time zone. That means it gets dark here around 6. It also means that night we were passed out around 7:30.

I woke up the next morning early and watched the sun rise from the roof of our hotel. All of us were in the mindset of being super lazy, so we wandered a bit to explore town, but spent time reading and taking in the view of the lake. We went out to lunch at another restaurant over the water, and had a very authentic and clearly made from scratch soup, salad, and empanada, adding a side of fixed up guacamole and homemade chips. Still bumming around, our neighbors at the hotel were some Israeli girls out traveling. Somehow they had gotten permission to bartend at a place and were offering a night of free salsa lessons. After a dinner and bottle of wine together back on our rooftop (we've realized roofs are some of our favorite places since they are usually quiet and have a great view) accompanied by a great bottle of wine, Jon and I found the bar and "danced." Jon may feel like he had a better grip on it with his ballroom experience, but anything outside the basic steps were pretty tough for me. I thought I was doing alright until I saw the instructor truly dance with someone. The salsa is an amazing fluid dance, full of the most complex twists, turns, and dips I will probably never come close to mastering. But it was still a blast and amazing to watch!

Looking at our time schedule and the travel warnings for both Honduras and El Salvador, we sat around a while today and debated future options. We found a bus that will bring us all the way to Nicaragua in one day, but it leaves from Guatemala City meaning we will miss the southern part of the country. For safety and time, however, I think that will be our next plan and hopefully we can knock out a longer stretch through Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Just to make sure we're getting a full feel of Guatemala before we go, I think we'll spend one more day at Lake Atitlan and probably search out a cooking class. If the legs are up for it, we might even climb one of the volcanoes this afternoon. Worst case scenario, I think I'll be just fine staring out at the water :) Thanks for following and can't wait for the next adventures!
-Ben