So, now I’ve been on the road for a few days and riding with Marie is turning out to be quite good fun.
We first left lake Attitlan and headed for big bad Guatemala city... The newspapers here seem to be three quarters full of accidents and shootings in this city – There were over 380 murders in the last year! (the other quarter of the paper is of course focused on sports). When we got there we were trying to find the local motorbike shops so that Marie could get a new helmet and I could look for a new rear tire. We had just got into the thick of the traffic and were trying to spot some key navigation points when another guy on a big (well, big by local standards) KLR bike rode up along side and said hi. We said brief hellos in amongst the traffic and went on our way but about 10 minutes later he showed up again with another rider and this time we stopped and had a real discussion. He was a very generous guy and turned out to be “collecting” wayward foreign riders and helping them out. We were not too proud to accept his help and he ended up showing us around to about four different places where we looked at helmets and tires. Marie didn’t find a helmet that she liked but I found a road tire that would do for highway riding. So I lashed the new tire on the back of my bike and our guide pointed us in the direction we wanted to go and we were off again – fighting with the hectic “no-holes-barred” traffic.
After the city we headed North into a highland jungle area. The first night we had not managed to reach our intended destination (due to running around in the city) so we stopped in a largish town that we selected at random and got rooms at one of the local hotels. It turned out that there was a celebration that day for the Virgin of Guadalupe (Shes really popular here in central America!), so there were even more fireworks than usual and all the people were out in the town square early in the evening with all the little children and a good time was being had by all. We ate the local food and strolled around and enjoyed the atmosphere before retiring for the evening.
The next day we rode North again and at the far end of the asphalt road we reached our destination in the jungle – Lanquin.
Day three was spent on a day trip to Semuc Champey which is a natural bridge formation deep in the limestone mountains that has a raging river running under it and is covered with blue green pools of water on the top. It is of course situated in the midst of lush tropical jungle with all the usual vines and epiphytes and steep mountain sides that are quintessentially “Central America” – very nice!
