South America 2008

We finally made it to Panama City, the end of the road of sorts because from here we either get on a plane or a boat to Colombia. Central America has been great and I’m a bit sad to leave but South America awaits!

Wandering the streets of Panama City we ran into this motorcycle which apparently has been going around the world for 10 years

The smallest internet cafe we could find

Dirty boots in Guatemala… so I had some kids clean them… they were trying to hustle me for every penny I had

On our way out of Guatemala we made a bunch of wrong turns and found some cool landscapes and we had to do a puddle-crossing or two but it was nothing like the river crossings we later had to do in Nicaragua

We’ve done a lot of miles by now and I’ve found out that…

Traffic lights and road markings are only suggestions… I’ve run more red lights, gone against more one-way streets and ignored more ‘rules of the road’ in two weeks than in my entire life so far. The crazy thing is that is works! I guess people expect the unexpected so they don’t freak out. Cool!

You can pass a pickup truck full of police in Mexico going 110 in the 80 zone (km/h) without being pulled over… Nice!

Colorful buses in Guatemala are driven by madmen and are very dangerous… let them pass… Peligro!

Guatemala has a lot of wonderful roads with excellent pavement and tons of twisties up and down the mountains… no tunnels so far… Great fun!

Obstacles in the road so far have been a bunch of cows, some horses, two donkeys, hens and chickens, a rooster or two, a peacock, a sheep cadaver, some unidentifiable cadavers, a million street-dogs, some goats, a staggering drunk man with a half-empty bottle of booze in his hand, a staggering drunk man with a 2-foot long machete in his hand… I think that’s about it…

People are almost always nice and will return a smile with a ear-to-ear grin… probably because we look strange with all our gear… Lucila has been especially nice and we can’t thank her enough for taking care of us in Guatemala City… without her we may still be driving around looking for a hotel

We’ve been lucky with the roads, the weather, people, the gear, just about everything… I hope it will continue… and I hope I didn’t just jinx us!

This internet connection is pretty good but I forgot my USB cable… no pictures now either…. I have a ton of cool photos but… más tarde amigos…

I’m in Esquipulas right now where the main street about 7 blocks long with a median with trees and stuff… there are tons of scooters with one or two or three passengers, quads, tricycle-taxis and other vehicles… going round and round like a racetrack! It’s fun to just watch.

Getting here from Guatemala City we took mostly dirt roads and WOW! I’m exhausted but it was fun! Thanks Ramón for helping us plan the route! We didn’t take too many wrong turns… hehehe… I love GPS!

Tomorrow we head for the border to cross into Honduras and the Copán ruins, I’m looking forward to it.

Peace Out!

P.S. Jim! I hope you’re keeping my Suzuki warm while I’m gone… hit some twisties at A.C.H. or something! Hehehe…

(Note: A lot of these full size pictures got chopped. To see the full pic just click on it.)

We’re currently in Antigua, Guatemala, a picturesque colonial town with beautiful, old buildings with huge, garden like courtyards and bumpy cobblestone streets. We’ll be here for a whole day (no bike riding!) of rest and relaxation.

Here are some pictures from different parts of the trip….

Me and the luxurious accomodations aboard the ferry to Mazatlan

Five adventure motorcyclists exiting the ferry in Mazatlan

Guadalajara, Mexico (these police were on standby for a mild demonstration and a live outdoor concert in this plaza, everything was peaceful and nothing happened)

This is what it’s all about, no? Guadalarja, Mexico

This could have been taken anywhere in Mexico as Pemex is the only place to get gas. This was taken on the road from Acapulco to Puerto Escondido.

We stayed at the Le Petit Hotel in Puerto Escondido. It is owned and operated by a French expat and the place is extremely charming and a neat place to stay. I highly recommend it.

View from our front entrance. We had the deluxe suite for 60 bucks a night. We had a front veranda with a table for six and this view.

The view from my room. Yes, I did jump from the balcony into the pool. No, I was not drunk when I did it.

Los Pyramides de Teotihuacan (northeast of Mexico City)

San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. For some reason the pesky vendors would always home in on Roar and not me. I wonder why. This little girl hounded Roar for good while and I couldn’t stop laughing while taking this picture.

Lago Atitlan, Guatemala

Normally, I say no gracias to the bothersome sellers of knickknacks but this one got me with her friendly, funny sales pitch and a wide smile. Plus, Roar and I were looking for some stuff to put on our bikes anyhow, so it was perfect timing as well….

I’m going to change my focus so that we can all stay in real time. I’ll write a quick overview of what we did since Mazatlan and then, when I have time, I’ll write some detailed stories of interesting parts of the trip. I might have to post pictures in separate posts, too….

We spent the day and one night partying in Mazatlan. It was a dead Sunday and I never had a good impression of Mazatlan.

The following day, Roar and I said goodbye to David and rode out to Guadalajara, which I’ve heard a lot of great things about. It was a beautiful, modern city with a lot that reminded me of the good parts of Mexico City. The people seemed modern, cultured, and were very polite. We spent a second day in Guadalajara to rest up after the blistering pace of our Baja trip.

The next day we rode a huge stretch out to San Juan de Teotituacan. The toll roads were boring so we took a side road to Mexico City. It took longer but was more fun and interesting. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the northern suburbs of Mexico City right smack in the middle of rush hour traffic. After stopping to ask directions about twenty times and enduring stop and go traffic for about 20 miles straight (Mexico City is HUGE) we ended up in San Juan.

Early the next morning (7 am), we toured the Pyramids of Teotituacan. It was my second time seeing them but they were still just as amazing and awesome as before. After a couple of hours we left for Acapulco. Another long, exhausting day of riding but we arrived in time to stay in the same hotel that Steve and I stayed in a year and a half before. The place was packed at night and we stayed out until 4 in the morning.

The next day we didn’t get up so early. We started out for Puerto Escondido at about 1 pm and it was a fun, frustrating, and frightening and beautiful ride, all at different times. We arrived at Puerto Escondido at 9 pm. Yeah, it was dark and the last couple of hours of night riding fried my last nerve.

We stayed the whole day in Puerto Escondido. Well, actually, we took a short ride to a nearby beach for some fish, great stories, and chilling out for a couple of hours. By the end of the day I wondered what happened to our rest day since we ran ourselves ragged again. Sometimes it’s hard to slow down once you’re at that level.

The next day we rode south along the coast without any real idea where we would end up. We slowed down our pace considerably which allowed us to ride a healthy distance without being totally exhausted and stressed out. Our trip to South America is like running a marathon. This first part we sprinted, stopped, rested, sprinted some more. I won’t be able to sprint 100 meters at a time for a total of 26 miles without taking even more time. Now, we’re jogging.

It was one of our funnest and enjoyable rides of the trip. We stayed in a scummy town called Juchitan on the Mexican Pacific coast.

The following day we headed out to San Cristobal de las Casas. Amazing riding to start out with, we ended up getting there by 12:30 pm. We had the whole afternoon to sightsee! It was great. I didn’t enjoy the dirty hippies or the pretentious, super culturally aware American and European tourists but I did enjoy this picturesque, European type town and its inhabitants.

Today (can you believe it?), we started out at 8 am, rode a few hours to a chaotic, but small border crossing in Guatemala. Fortunately, the paperwork wasn’t too bad and we made it through in an hour. The riding here is much more intense and makes the stuff in Mexico seem like a Sunday drive. The truck and bus drivers are a lot more impatient and riding the roads is a lot scarier as vehicles are constantly passing each other around blind curves leaving you just a few feet to avoid them. It was a long, scary and exhilirating day of riding. In Central America, we will need to get used to it.

Tonight we are at Panajechal on the shore of Lake Atitlan. We’ll enjoy the scenery for a morning and will head for Antigua tomorrow. We need to buy new rear tires (they’re pretty flat in the middle). That way we can kill two birds with one stone. Antigua is another one on the list of 1000 Places (along with San Cristobal and Lake Atitlan) and we can check it out while we get new tires…..

We left Puerto Escondido yesterday around noon because I was out partying the night before until about 4 in the morning. I wandered the streets of Puerto Escondido and found that most places were almost empty but one spot was pretty happening. After being looked up-and-down by the bouncer and given the OK by the other bouncer as well they let me in.

After a beer or two I figured out I was the only tourist in there… everyone else was local and I got to practice my spanish quite a bit. Probably not the most intelligent conversation but hey… hehe…

After a few more Alexandra’s (a type of Mexican beer) in there I wandered up the street and ended up in a Karaoke place with all locals again singing all kinds of cool Mexican tunes I’ve never heard before. I was hanging out at the bar telling people in my very best spanish how I got to Puerto Escondido by motorcycle and that I was going to Peru or Bolivia always to a rolling-of-the-eyes motion

Anyway, the ride from Puerto to the next town (which I can’t remember what was called) was brilliant. Again, almost 200 miles of twisties with just brilliant pavement. Unbelievable!

We spent the night in what was probably the best hotel in town with secure parking for our super-cool bikes and left at 07:30 the next morning. More great roads and fantastic views going across a couple of mountains and we made it to San Cristóbal at around 14:00, walked around for a bit, got some Zapatista doll that we attached to our bikes and we’re ready to go to the Guatemalean border in the morning.

Pictures to follow, this PC is weird…

By the way, at the top of each post it’ll say who posted it… like ‘posted by andy’ or ‘posted by roar’.

Now I need a beer…

Thanks for the comments everyone, it’s nice to get words of encouragement, offers to send parts, etc.

We’re in Puerto Escondido right now, we rolled in late last night and checked into this really nice hotel… Le Petit or something. We didn’t have the strength to look for the hotel Ken and Gary recommended, we were almost dead from partying in Acapulco the night before and riding for about 9 hours.

The ride from Acapulco was really nice with lots of sweeping turns for our motorcyling pleasure. We rode through tons of little town which all start and end with these wicked speed bumps with very little warning. After hitting a bazillion of those somewhere my backpack fell off and I didn’t notice until some people in a van were waving at me. I rode back to the previous village, no backpack!

I pictured myself riding around the Mexican countryside looking for the damn backpack for hours!

A man waved me over to tell me a white car had the backpack going south
so I turned around again and hit the throttle hard. After about 10 minutes I
cought up with the car at the side of the road and finally got my backpack back. Thank you Mr. Driver of white car!

The view from our room

Since Andy is working on his “War and Peace” we’re a little behind on the blogging. I’ll try to give a little update as to where we are in the world without giving away the plot.

We’re currently outside Mexico City at the Teotihuacán pyramids.

We’re going to check them out tomorrow before we head south-west to Acapulco where we think we’ll hang out for a day and  then head south along the pacific coast to Guatemala.

It has been a great ride so far but we’ve spent a lot of time on the road so we’re tired. We spent a day and a half in Guadalajara which we needed to recharge, we even had time to play some caps.

The ride through Baja California was very beautiful and the roads there are perfect for a motorcycle trip, I’ve never ridden so many miles of twisties in one go… simply awesome!

The ride from Mazatlán to Guadalajara was beautiful as well but it was m,ostly boring because we stayed on the toll-roads which are, in a word, straight. There were some sweepers coming off some mountains.

Today we rode from Guadalajara to Mexico City half on toll-roads and the rest on back-roads. The back-roads were awesome with tons of switchbacks with huge potholes, very exciting! After almost 11 hours in the saddle we’re beat and going to get some dinner.

Early tomorrow morning we’re checking out the pyramids and then we head for the coast for some margaritas and shrimp!