August 4
‘Rest and research’ time is apparently like house guests… after three days you want it to end. We were mentally and physically ready to go yesterday (Thursday, after arriving Monday). I love rest and research, but by Wednesday we were researching in circles, reading the same information twice and different information on the same websites… We have finally made a decision to cross at the southernmost point, Ciudad Hidalgo, and we will do so tomorrow morning. We are very excited to get on with the next part of our journey in Central America and we are most certainly done with Tapachula, Mexico. We have been to Walmart every day for five days. On several days we even went twice.
As suspected, the iguanas proved to be entertaining. There are three resident males and one female that live in the 20m stretch in between the Holiday Inn and the mall. We have a favorite, befriended him, and fed him cucumbers and carrots most days. He wasn’t the largest male, but he was the most handsome. I know you aren’t supposed to feed the wildlife… I know I know. I justified it because neither Ernie nor I have ever fed pigeons or squirrels, and iguanas fit the same urban ecological niche (to LD and CLW, please debunk my niche logic privately).
The FedEx package arrived Thursday afternoon - woo hoo! A final shout out to SuperHero Tonya Butts! It had been opened and poorly taped back together (grr), but both our titles were in the envelope and undamaged, so whatever. After it arrived we immediately walked to the copy shop and made our final, requisite photocopies (we need 1-3 copies of 3-6 documents at each of the next 5-6 border crossings. True parenthetical. Yep, the governments of Central America are actually keeping 1-2 hard copies of every person and vehicle that crosses their border. The natural reserves here that are inaccessible to humans are actually secret government stashes of file cabinets).
I remember Ernie and I talking a few weeks ago about how often the procedures change for border crossings down here, as there is no official website one can go to and get current guidelines for these countries. Most of the information we can gather is from blogs and postings of other US or European travelers. Postings from 2005 were different from 2010 which were different from 2015. We are trying to follow either the most detailed, the most well-written, or the most recent, but without peer-review we have to just pick a plan. For example, as of two years ago the only place to cancel your vehicle permit in this part of Mexico (and thus get back your $800USD deposit) is 60km away from the Guatemalan border. It is completely unmarked, and requires a U-turn on the highway to access if you are actually headed south to Guatemala. This is actually what we tackled today, and it turns out things have changed. We rode the 60km back up into Mexico and ended up visiting the migration and inspection station for travelers headed north, from Guatemala, and put ourselves through an inspection we didn’t have to. It was fine and easy (as we didn’t have our luggage or a stamp in our passport saying we had been to Guatemala) and the employee was incredibly helpful and kind and had a good giggle that “no, in fact there was no reason for us to be here” (in spanish). Ha ha ha! She did corroborate that two years ago one did have to come to this unmarked location to get your vehicle deposit back, so that made us feel better. Ultimately we were both happy to make the trip as 1) we got back on our bikes and 2) it was our conversation with her that made our final decision about where to cross tomorrow (as she told us some good up-to-date details that we actually believe about our two border crossing options).
OH. And we drove through the fake police checkpoint again on our way south. But this time there was a single man in his police car hanging off the right hand side of the road (almost exactly where we were previously pulled over by the scammers). It is likely the policeman was doing nothing other than social media on his cell phone in the comfort of his AC’ed auto. As we slowly cruised over the speed bumps I made sure to completely scan the entire scene again - doing a full comparison in my head. I saw two of the same women that were selling empanadas. The three sleezy men that molested us Monday were likely part of a pack of a dozen hanging off to the left of the road - in the shade doing nothing. I wouldn’t have even noticed them today if not for our experience Monday. Ernie and I talked about it later, and we have nothing but positive things to say about the Mexican police and immigration officers. They have been kind, helpful, and patient, and after having driven a stretch of road twice today - and having two VERY different experiences - we have no doubt their presence contributed to our safety for these past few thousand miles. Gracias por todo officers! (especially the todo we didn’t even know about...)
We bought our first souvenir: a reusable shopping bag from the Walmart in Tapachula, Mexico. Many layers of irony and humor there… When we bought it on Tuesday, and it was to carry away four items: a 12 pack of beer, two 2L bottles of water, and a salad (ok ok, not a salad… it was a small bag of gummi bears). When they rung up the reusable bag, Ernie asked me, “I wonder if they will put it in a plastic bag?”. I laughed hard and loud (eliciting even more stares and glares). They did not end up putting it in a plastic bag, but they did put the water and beer in the reusable bag and then placed the gummi bears in a small plastic bag all by itself. You know… on the side. I guess the bagger decided that there just wasn’t enough room in the 2 foot wide cotton bag for a 4 inch bag of gummi bears. And there is no correcting them or asking for no bag or requesting they put more things in a single bag. Seriously, bagging is serious business down here. In fact, there are often two baggers at the end of each checkout line, and they are often older men and women (abuelos and abuelitas). To tell them you don’t need their services seems akin to insulting their grandchildren. And they are machines. They communicate very little verbally, but they have plans and often a conveyor belt style of operation. Anyway, come Wednesday, we go back to Walmart for more water (and ok ok, more beer and gummi bears), and we bring our reusable bag. The woman behind the counter wants a receipt to prove that we already purchased the reusable bag... She didn’t make us buy it twice, but it got close to that. Ernie and I had a grand chuckle over the immense disconnect between the idea of using a reusable bag in Mexico and the reality of using a reusable bag in Mexico. Next time you hand your reusable bag to the checker at New Seasons, imagine the conversation if you needed to show proof of purchase of the bag itself - it is right out of Candid Camera. Ernie is laughing as we remember the scene ourselves…. He says, “The bags were all so prominently displayed. And they were so well stocked. Is everyone afraid to buy one in case they lose their receipt and it gets repossessed?”
August 5
Hola Guatemala! Your roads are terrible! I think Ernie said it best when he said “I don’t think we are going to ‘do’ Guatemala, I think we are just going to ‘get through’ Guatemala”. True dat. We have read some incredibly wonderful things about this country, its people and places, its history, etc. But since the planning stages of this trip, and at least once a week still, we talk a lot about the type of infrastructure that we “need” for a route. I put need in quotes because while we could probably make it (as in survive) through most of the major roads on our map, we want a reasonable level of safety so that we are still having a fun and nice time. And unfortunately the infrastructure of Guatemala doesn’t make the cut. There are two paved highways that cross Guatemala, the northern one is CA1 or the PanAmerican Hwy and that is the one that crosses through all the amazing sights. However, that road is even worse shape than the one we are on, which is southern CA2 or the Coastal Hwy. According to the locals, all the semi trucks take CA2, but all the local buses (i.e., the chicken buses, or the ones infamous for driving crazy) take CA1. And also according to/what we learned from the locals, we didn’t feel confident that we could navigate the streets of Antigua or Guatemala City. So we choose CA2, and given the potholes and chaos on CA2 so far, I am certainly very happy with our choice. The handsome Guatemalan we talked to at the border this morning would also be happy with our choice. “The roads are shit!” he exclaimed in his perfectly pressed Manuel Noriega shirt (he spoke very good english). “Be very very careful”. He was very sincere and very excited for our journey.
So, the border crossing… It was all very calm and non-threatening. We didn’t feel the crazy energy that was described by so many of the blogs (likely dependent on day of the week and the time of day). We were very happy we crossed at Ciudad Hidalgo. In fact, I think our best descriptor of the ordeal is ‘ridiculous’. With our ATM stop, it took us four hours, and we did not do four hours of productive things. The copies… why all the copies? There were no signs… no indicators of where anything is. We had to ask several policia how to find the crossing. We didn’t expect it, but there was no rushing on anyone’s part…. We saw several employees texting or facebooking while they worked on our papers. One woman in Guatemala did our whole bike inspection with her earbuds in. In Mexico there was a good 15 minutes of a woman trying to take pictures of the VIN numbers on our bikes… she was so terrible at taking pictures. It was as if she never used the camera before, and this was a major requirement of her job. It was documentation for the hell of documentation. It was all calm, which was a relief, as yelling and chaos can really jack up the tension. Mostly it was really hot and useless. Which, for someone like me who really thrives on efficiency, it was just ridiculous. In total we made 13 stops:
1 - bank window for Mexican vehicle permit closure and to deposit our refund (or at least get paperwork proving our refund would be deposited “soon”)
2 - passport exit stamp out of Mexico (which was in a hot dog stand-hut-thing, no sign, around the back of the migration building, with a 1960’s turnstyle to get in)
3- drive across river to Guatemala and get waved into “an area” - all the guys in were in matching blue polo shirts
4 - get “fumigated”, which just means spraying chemicals that are illegal in the USA on our tires. Pay some money and get a small piece of paper as a receipt.
5 - drive 20 m ahead and park. Go to immigration booth. Fill out form. Drip sweat on form (as remember, its 98 degrees and 98% humidity, and we are in moto boots, moto pants, and moto jackets). Get stamp in passport that is good for the next four countries.
6 - photocopies. Store #1 had a “don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain” scene and Ernie and I didn’t want to go behind the curtain… what dirty room lay behind? “Hay un otra tienda?” We ask.
7 - copy store #2. Get copies of Mexi exit stamp and Guate entry stamp.
8 - Vehicle import building (by far the largest building, it even had a TV!). Fill out many forms.
9 - back to copy store #2 for copies of vehicle forms
10 - back to vehicle window and write stuff on the copies
11 - go to bank window across the hall, pay money, get receipt.
12 - take receipt back to vehicle window, get sticker and put sticker on moto
13 - go through a gate where a man checked our paperwork. This is worth mentioning because this gate is in the middle of the whole fucking thing. This man sees every single person walk back and forth across his gate for hours and hours taking care of their paperwork. And then come gate time, he inspects as if he has seen us for the first time and we just did all that and got fake papers. Good job Gate Dude.
We arrived at the Mexican border at 11 am, and were through the gate in Guatemala by 3 pm. We ended up with a helper, and ultimately he was very professional. In fact he wasn’t as expected (i.e., sleezy-scammer). He was very polite and well dressed (he had way nicer shoes than us, and by that I mean he has nicer shoes than Ernie and I have back in Portland). He cost about $10 USD (so about $3.25 an hour), and everyone has to make a living, right? Ultimately we would have been fine without him - he probably saved us an hour of time. The highlight (to me) of our interactions with our helper was during one of the waiting periods, when Ernie gave him some shit… Ernie made it clear we appreciated his help, but he asked Mr. Helper straight up why he did not represent himself as a professional that offered a worthwhile service, as opposed to someone that takes advantage of a situation to guilt a tip. Why did he not make his intentions known?
Moto stickers and sweat accumulated, we cruised out of there and headed inland. It is ~250 km across Guatemala and it will be slow going. And Crazy. CA2 is a two lane road with a bit of a shoulder sometimes, and at one point today, when there was no oncoming traffic, our eastbound lane turned into three: one car or truck lane, one car or truck or moto lane, and one strictly moto lane (from left to right). And it all seemed totally normal. We averaged 40 km/h during our first leg.
We are at a nice hotel (Hotel Tourista y Jardin in Coatepeque). Pretty swanky for local standards I imagine, and the grounds are beautiful. It is nicer than we need, but I’m happy to be on that end of the spectrum, as the other hotel I had in my notes had a sign out front advertising the price for three hours… Here we have safe motos and clean rooms and no hourly guests. The wifi is crap (it took 20 min to post one pic on our website), so I’m thankful we did some hotel research in Tapachula. Our tentative plan is 150 km tomorrow (Sun), 150 km Monday, then cross into El Salvador Tuesday.
We met two other gringos at the border crossing today. Ben and Grant from Colorado. We had a nice little visit and exchanged a few stories. They are in a Sprinter van, likely filled with very comfortable things, so we are having a slightly different experience.. They have allotted a whole year (if not more). We exchanged blog sites and I’m looking forward to hearing about their adventures. Safe travels Ben and Grant!
After we unpacked the bike we went in search of food (no snack break today, so we were running on empty). We found some in a tin roof covered ___ where there were two other men and a happy looking woman who did the cooking were welcoming enough (it wasn’t a restaurant, but it wasn’t street food either). After a bumbling conversation, she had sopa (soup) and only sopa. Sopa it is! And it was delicious. Served with a side of rice, tortillas, onions, cilantro, and limes (total of 30Q, or $4 USD). After we made a quick stop at the cervezeria (where you buy by the individual can or bottle, “packs” mean nothing here), and then back to the hotel before dark (always before dark in Central America). On our walk we saw some great new plants and critters. Bird #1 had a great crest - must research. Bird #2 was a LBB/nothing great to look at but wow what a song - must research. And then a big weevil! Who immediately played dead when I picked it up ha ha ha!! (this is really funny if you know about weevils, like me, and never actually picked up a large tropical weevil, like me). The plants might be officially out of league now - I am at a loss for even getting them to Family. Everything is so different. It looks different, it smells different, its proportions are different. Bueno.
Ernie’s Black Mountain Rag is sounding really good.
August 6
I rescind my earlier statements that described this route as a highway. It does not deserve the descriptor of “highway”. It is definitely the worst paved road conditions either one of us has ever experienced. We dubbed some of the potholes as albercas (swimming pools). I’d love a picture of me standing in one of the alberca potholes… but that would be entirely too dangerous without the assistance of at least two dozen policemen. I am amazed we did not see any bad things happen today (albeit it we tackled it on a Sunday, and we started our journey at church time). We successfully made it through our 150 km stretch today, and I’d say one third of it was really terrible (riding ~5 mph), about a third of it was ok (averaging ~25 mph) and about a third of it was easy (40-50 mph). And we experienced our first chicken buses! Those who wrote about them on the internet were not kidding. They may be painted with bright colors and happy cheerful things, but they are road bullies. At our snack stop at a gas station today I wandered around, eventually towards a young woman standing in the shade by CA2. We chatted. I was being a gringo and keeping a decent distance from her. Out of nowhere she flags me to come in close to her, and if it weren’t for the look of desperation on her face I wouldn’t have moved. Seconds later a chicken bus pulled into the station at top speed - made my heart skip a beat!
There is no transition that makes this next tidbit better, so… the hotels do in fact get worse than ‘by the hour’. We saw a hotel place today that advertised the price by the minute. Let our imaginations soar.
Entonces(?), this moment is a totally different scene. We are at Hotel de Pacifico, west of Escuintla, and it is the only gated scene for about 50 km. It is $40 USD per night, which we were not happy about, but as the afternoon progressed it has paid for itself. We arrived about 3 pm, pretty beat up from the ride of potholes and heat and madness. The rain begins about 4 (see videos), but the wifi is still working so Ernie and I research potential places to stay through El Salvador. Bueno. We take a bit of a walk around the place looking for bugs and there is a pool! Bueno… muy bueno… And funny. The pool is finished, but the 32 rooms being built around the pool are not even close to finished. With the clouds they look post-apocalyptic.
We also had a feel-good moment start to the day when we freed three baby geckos from our bathroom light fixture at the hotel in Coatepeque. We watched them walk around the globe for a few minutes to ensure they were actually stuck… the poor buddies would walk up the globe, get past the equator, and then once they actually hit a point of inversion they would tumble down the bottom of the light fixture. Oh no! We must save them! The geckos went in the light globe to eat the bugs that died in them but now the geckos can’t get out! Ernie crawled up, took down the globe, and we set them free outside. I hope they didn’t become bird food. As the birds start singing and hollering at 5 and stop at 8, and this was right at about 8 am. After the concert the chachalacas gave us, they must have been hungry.
It is likely one of Tara’s top stories of the trip occurred today. When we arrived at the hotel and were unloading the bikes, there was a kid (10?) who was all wet, but not really in swim clothes. I said Hola and he stared dumbly. Then I asked “Hay una alberca?” (Is there a pool?). He said “No”, smiled, and ran off. A few hours later when Ernie and I were in the alberca, I see the kid. He is staring, but not so dumbly this time. I looked at him and said, without question and quite a bit of old woman sass, “Hay Una Alberca…”. He grew a shit-eating grin from ear to ear and quickly went underwater. The look on his face… unforgettable. I believe both “gracias” “pequena mierda” are the phrases I am looking for.
‘Rest and research’ time is apparently like house guests… after three days you want it to end. We were mentally and physically ready to go yesterday (Thursday, after arriving Monday). I love rest and research, but by Wednesday we were researching in circles, reading the same information twice and different information on the same websites… We have finally made a decision to cross at the southernmost point, Ciudad Hidalgo, and we will do so tomorrow morning. We are very excited to get on with the next part of our journey in Central America and we are most certainly done with Tapachula, Mexico. We have been to Walmart every day for five days. On several days we even went twice.
As suspected, the iguanas proved to be entertaining. There are three resident males and one female that live in the 20m stretch in between the Holiday Inn and the mall. We have a favorite, befriended him, and fed him cucumbers and carrots most days. He wasn’t the largest male, but he was the most handsome. I know you aren’t supposed to feed the wildlife… I know I know. I justified it because neither Ernie nor I have ever fed pigeons or squirrels, and iguanas fit the same urban ecological niche (to LD and CLW, please debunk my niche logic privately).
The FedEx package arrived Thursday afternoon - woo hoo! A final shout out to SuperHero Tonya Butts! It had been opened and poorly taped back together (grr), but both our titles were in the envelope and undamaged, so whatever. After it arrived we immediately walked to the copy shop and made our final, requisite photocopies (we need 1-3 copies of 3-6 documents at each of the next 5-6 border crossings. True parenthetical. Yep, the governments of Central America are actually keeping 1-2 hard copies of every person and vehicle that crosses their border. The natural reserves here that are inaccessible to humans are actually secret government stashes of file cabinets).
I remember Ernie and I talking a few weeks ago about how often the procedures change for border crossings down here, as there is no official website one can go to and get current guidelines for these countries. Most of the information we can gather is from blogs and postings of other US or European travelers. Postings from 2005 were different from 2010 which were different from 2015. We are trying to follow either the most detailed, the most well-written, or the most recent, but without peer-review we have to just pick a plan. For example, as of two years ago the only place to cancel your vehicle permit in this part of Mexico (and thus get back your $800USD deposit) is 60km away from the Guatemalan border. It is completely unmarked, and requires a U-turn on the highway to access if you are actually headed south to Guatemala. This is actually what we tackled today, and it turns out things have changed. We rode the 60km back up into Mexico and ended up visiting the migration and inspection station for travelers headed north, from Guatemala, and put ourselves through an inspection we didn’t have to. It was fine and easy (as we didn’t have our luggage or a stamp in our passport saying we had been to Guatemala) and the employee was incredibly helpful and kind and had a good giggle that “no, in fact there was no reason for us to be here” (in spanish). Ha ha ha! She did corroborate that two years ago one did have to come to this unmarked location to get your vehicle deposit back, so that made us feel better. Ultimately we were both happy to make the trip as 1) we got back on our bikes and 2) it was our conversation with her that made our final decision about where to cross tomorrow (as she told us some good up-to-date details that we actually believe about our two border crossing options).
OH. And we drove through the fake police checkpoint again on our way south. But this time there was a single man in his police car hanging off the right hand side of the road (almost exactly where we were previously pulled over by the scammers). It is likely the policeman was doing nothing other than social media on his cell phone in the comfort of his AC’ed auto. As we slowly cruised over the speed bumps I made sure to completely scan the entire scene again - doing a full comparison in my head. I saw two of the same women that were selling empanadas. The three sleezy men that molested us Monday were likely part of a pack of a dozen hanging off to the left of the road - in the shade doing nothing. I wouldn’t have even noticed them today if not for our experience Monday. Ernie and I talked about it later, and we have nothing but positive things to say about the Mexican police and immigration officers. They have been kind, helpful, and patient, and after having driven a stretch of road twice today - and having two VERY different experiences - we have no doubt their presence contributed to our safety for these past few thousand miles. Gracias por todo officers! (especially the todo we didn’t even know about...)
We bought our first souvenir: a reusable shopping bag from the Walmart in Tapachula, Mexico. Many layers of irony and humor there… When we bought it on Tuesday, and it was to carry away four items: a 12 pack of beer, two 2L bottles of water, and a salad (ok ok, not a salad… it was a small bag of gummi bears). When they rung up the reusable bag, Ernie asked me, “I wonder if they will put it in a plastic bag?”. I laughed hard and loud (eliciting even more stares and glares). They did not end up putting it in a plastic bag, but they did put the water and beer in the reusable bag and then placed the gummi bears in a small plastic bag all by itself. You know… on the side. I guess the bagger decided that there just wasn’t enough room in the 2 foot wide cotton bag for a 4 inch bag of gummi bears. And there is no correcting them or asking for no bag or requesting they put more things in a single bag. Seriously, bagging is serious business down here. In fact, there are often two baggers at the end of each checkout line, and they are often older men and women (abuelos and abuelitas). To tell them you don’t need their services seems akin to insulting their grandchildren. And they are machines. They communicate very little verbally, but they have plans and often a conveyor belt style of operation. Anyway, come Wednesday, we go back to Walmart for more water (and ok ok, more beer and gummi bears), and we bring our reusable bag. The woman behind the counter wants a receipt to prove that we already purchased the reusable bag... She didn’t make us buy it twice, but it got close to that. Ernie and I had a grand chuckle over the immense disconnect between the idea of using a reusable bag in Mexico and the reality of using a reusable bag in Mexico. Next time you hand your reusable bag to the checker at New Seasons, imagine the conversation if you needed to show proof of purchase of the bag itself - it is right out of Candid Camera. Ernie is laughing as we remember the scene ourselves…. He says, “The bags were all so prominently displayed. And they were so well stocked. Is everyone afraid to buy one in case they lose their receipt and it gets repossessed?”
August 5
Hola Guatemala! Your roads are terrible! I think Ernie said it best when he said “I don’t think we are going to ‘do’ Guatemala, I think we are just going to ‘get through’ Guatemala”. True dat. We have read some incredibly wonderful things about this country, its people and places, its history, etc. But since the planning stages of this trip, and at least once a week still, we talk a lot about the type of infrastructure that we “need” for a route. I put need in quotes because while we could probably make it (as in survive) through most of the major roads on our map, we want a reasonable level of safety so that we are still having a fun and nice time. And unfortunately the infrastructure of Guatemala doesn’t make the cut. There are two paved highways that cross Guatemala, the northern one is CA1 or the PanAmerican Hwy and that is the one that crosses through all the amazing sights. However, that road is even worse shape than the one we are on, which is southern CA2 or the Coastal Hwy. According to the locals, all the semi trucks take CA2, but all the local buses (i.e., the chicken buses, or the ones infamous for driving crazy) take CA1. And also according to/what we learned from the locals, we didn’t feel confident that we could navigate the streets of Antigua or Guatemala City. So we choose CA2, and given the potholes and chaos on CA2 so far, I am certainly very happy with our choice. The handsome Guatemalan we talked to at the border this morning would also be happy with our choice. “The roads are shit!” he exclaimed in his perfectly pressed Manuel Noriega shirt (he spoke very good english). “Be very very careful”. He was very sincere and very excited for our journey.
So, the border crossing… It was all very calm and non-threatening. We didn’t feel the crazy energy that was described by so many of the blogs (likely dependent on day of the week and the time of day). We were very happy we crossed at Ciudad Hidalgo. In fact, I think our best descriptor of the ordeal is ‘ridiculous’. With our ATM stop, it took us four hours, and we did not do four hours of productive things. The copies… why all the copies? There were no signs… no indicators of where anything is. We had to ask several policia how to find the crossing. We didn’t expect it, but there was no rushing on anyone’s part…. We saw several employees texting or facebooking while they worked on our papers. One woman in Guatemala did our whole bike inspection with her earbuds in. In Mexico there was a good 15 minutes of a woman trying to take pictures of the VIN numbers on our bikes… she was so terrible at taking pictures. It was as if she never used the camera before, and this was a major requirement of her job. It was documentation for the hell of documentation. It was all calm, which was a relief, as yelling and chaos can really jack up the tension. Mostly it was really hot and useless. Which, for someone like me who really thrives on efficiency, it was just ridiculous. In total we made 13 stops:
1 - bank window for Mexican vehicle permit closure and to deposit our refund (or at least get paperwork proving our refund would be deposited “soon”)
2 - passport exit stamp out of Mexico (which was in a hot dog stand-hut-thing, no sign, around the back of the migration building, with a 1960’s turnstyle to get in)
3- drive across river to Guatemala and get waved into “an area” - all the guys in were in matching blue polo shirts
4 - get “fumigated”, which just means spraying chemicals that are illegal in the USA on our tires. Pay some money and get a small piece of paper as a receipt.
5 - drive 20 m ahead and park. Go to immigration booth. Fill out form. Drip sweat on form (as remember, its 98 degrees and 98% humidity, and we are in moto boots, moto pants, and moto jackets). Get stamp in passport that is good for the next four countries.
6 - photocopies. Store #1 had a “don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain” scene and Ernie and I didn’t want to go behind the curtain… what dirty room lay behind? “Hay un otra tienda?” We ask.
7 - copy store #2. Get copies of Mexi exit stamp and Guate entry stamp.
8 - Vehicle import building (by far the largest building, it even had a TV!). Fill out many forms.
9 - back to copy store #2 for copies of vehicle forms
10 - back to vehicle window and write stuff on the copies
11 - go to bank window across the hall, pay money, get receipt.
12 - take receipt back to vehicle window, get sticker and put sticker on moto
13 - go through a gate where a man checked our paperwork. This is worth mentioning because this gate is in the middle of the whole fucking thing. This man sees every single person walk back and forth across his gate for hours and hours taking care of their paperwork. And then come gate time, he inspects as if he has seen us for the first time and we just did all that and got fake papers. Good job Gate Dude.
We arrived at the Mexican border at 11 am, and were through the gate in Guatemala by 3 pm. We ended up with a helper, and ultimately he was very professional. In fact he wasn’t as expected (i.e., sleezy-scammer). He was very polite and well dressed (he had way nicer shoes than us, and by that I mean he has nicer shoes than Ernie and I have back in Portland). He cost about $10 USD (so about $3.25 an hour), and everyone has to make a living, right? Ultimately we would have been fine without him - he probably saved us an hour of time. The highlight (to me) of our interactions with our helper was during one of the waiting periods, when Ernie gave him some shit… Ernie made it clear we appreciated his help, but he asked Mr. Helper straight up why he did not represent himself as a professional that offered a worthwhile service, as opposed to someone that takes advantage of a situation to guilt a tip. Why did he not make his intentions known?
Moto stickers and sweat accumulated, we cruised out of there and headed inland. It is ~250 km across Guatemala and it will be slow going. And Crazy. CA2 is a two lane road with a bit of a shoulder sometimes, and at one point today, when there was no oncoming traffic, our eastbound lane turned into three: one car or truck lane, one car or truck or moto lane, and one strictly moto lane (from left to right). And it all seemed totally normal. We averaged 40 km/h during our first leg.
We are at a nice hotel (Hotel Tourista y Jardin in Coatepeque). Pretty swanky for local standards I imagine, and the grounds are beautiful. It is nicer than we need, but I’m happy to be on that end of the spectrum, as the other hotel I had in my notes had a sign out front advertising the price for three hours… Here we have safe motos and clean rooms and no hourly guests. The wifi is crap (it took 20 min to post one pic on our website), so I’m thankful we did some hotel research in Tapachula. Our tentative plan is 150 km tomorrow (Sun), 150 km Monday, then cross into El Salvador Tuesday.
We met two other gringos at the border crossing today. Ben and Grant from Colorado. We had a nice little visit and exchanged a few stories. They are in a Sprinter van, likely filled with very comfortable things, so we are having a slightly different experience.. They have allotted a whole year (if not more). We exchanged blog sites and I’m looking forward to hearing about their adventures. Safe travels Ben and Grant!
After we unpacked the bike we went in search of food (no snack break today, so we were running on empty). We found some in a tin roof covered ___ where there were two other men and a happy looking woman who did the cooking were welcoming enough (it wasn’t a restaurant, but it wasn’t street food either). After a bumbling conversation, she had sopa (soup) and only sopa. Sopa it is! And it was delicious. Served with a side of rice, tortillas, onions, cilantro, and limes (total of 30Q, or $4 USD). After we made a quick stop at the cervezeria (where you buy by the individual can or bottle, “packs” mean nothing here), and then back to the hotel before dark (always before dark in Central America). On our walk we saw some great new plants and critters. Bird #1 had a great crest - must research. Bird #2 was a LBB/nothing great to look at but wow what a song - must research. And then a big weevil! Who immediately played dead when I picked it up ha ha ha!! (this is really funny if you know about weevils, like me, and never actually picked up a large tropical weevil, like me). The plants might be officially out of league now - I am at a loss for even getting them to Family. Everything is so different. It looks different, it smells different, its proportions are different. Bueno.
Ernie’s Black Mountain Rag is sounding really good.
August 6
I rescind my earlier statements that described this route as a highway. It does not deserve the descriptor of “highway”. It is definitely the worst paved road conditions either one of us has ever experienced. We dubbed some of the potholes as albercas (swimming pools). I’d love a picture of me standing in one of the alberca potholes… but that would be entirely too dangerous without the assistance of at least two dozen policemen. I am amazed we did not see any bad things happen today (albeit it we tackled it on a Sunday, and we started our journey at church time). We successfully made it through our 150 km stretch today, and I’d say one third of it was really terrible (riding ~5 mph), about a third of it was ok (averaging ~25 mph) and about a third of it was easy (40-50 mph). And we experienced our first chicken buses! Those who wrote about them on the internet were not kidding. They may be painted with bright colors and happy cheerful things, but they are road bullies. At our snack stop at a gas station today I wandered around, eventually towards a young woman standing in the shade by CA2. We chatted. I was being a gringo and keeping a decent distance from her. Out of nowhere she flags me to come in close to her, and if it weren’t for the look of desperation on her face I wouldn’t have moved. Seconds later a chicken bus pulled into the station at top speed - made my heart skip a beat!
There is no transition that makes this next tidbit better, so… the hotels do in fact get worse than ‘by the hour’. We saw a hotel place today that advertised the price by the minute. Let our imaginations soar.
Entonces(?), this moment is a totally different scene. We are at Hotel de Pacifico, west of Escuintla, and it is the only gated scene for about 50 km. It is $40 USD per night, which we were not happy about, but as the afternoon progressed it has paid for itself. We arrived about 3 pm, pretty beat up from the ride of potholes and heat and madness. The rain begins about 4 (see videos), but the wifi is still working so Ernie and I research potential places to stay through El Salvador. Bueno. We take a bit of a walk around the place looking for bugs and there is a pool! Bueno… muy bueno… And funny. The pool is finished, but the 32 rooms being built around the pool are not even close to finished. With the clouds they look post-apocalyptic.
We also had a feel-good moment start to the day when we freed three baby geckos from our bathroom light fixture at the hotel in Coatepeque. We watched them walk around the globe for a few minutes to ensure they were actually stuck… the poor buddies would walk up the globe, get past the equator, and then once they actually hit a point of inversion they would tumble down the bottom of the light fixture. Oh no! We must save them! The geckos went in the light globe to eat the bugs that died in them but now the geckos can’t get out! Ernie crawled up, took down the globe, and we set them free outside. I hope they didn’t become bird food. As the birds start singing and hollering at 5 and stop at 8, and this was right at about 8 am. After the concert the chachalacas gave us, they must have been hungry.
It is likely one of Tara’s top stories of the trip occurred today. When we arrived at the hotel and were unloading the bikes, there was a kid (10?) who was all wet, but not really in swim clothes. I said Hola and he stared dumbly. Then I asked “Hay una alberca?” (Is there a pool?). He said “No”, smiled, and ran off. A few hours later when Ernie and I were in the alberca, I see the kid. He is staring, but not so dumbly this time. I looked at him and said, without question and quite a bit of old woman sass, “Hay Una Alberca…”. He grew a shit-eating grin from ear to ear and quickly went underwater. The look on his face… unforgettable. I believe both “gracias” “pequena mierda” are the phrases I am looking for.