with Frank Butler
Entering Guatemala I got a three months visa for me and Beem...fairly straight forward, just a few photocopies and away you go. Dave from Houston had recomended that I stay in El Ramate if I wanted to visit Tikal, so that's what I did. I stayed at Casa Ernesto on Dave's recommendation also. (click here
for a video about Frank by Scott Walker)
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I thought that while in Guatemala, I ought to take a look at Tikal, which according to Wikipedia was one of the major centres of the Maya civilization.
Though the monumental architecture at the site dates to the 4th century BC, Tikal was at its height between 200 and 900 AD, during which time the site dominated the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica, such as the central Mexican center of Teotihuacan.
After 900 AD no new major monuments were built at Tikal and there is evidence that the great palaces were burned.
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The best time to visit Tikal is when it opens at 6:00am it's cooler and there is more animal activity...the important thing is it's cooler, when the sun gets higher the heat and the humidity really do take their toll. It's an impressive place and well worth the effort to visit if only for the howler monkeys and toucans...oh the ruins are quite impressive also.
One night at Ernesto's I met Edith, a French Canadian travelling on her own and suffering a little from feeling insecure, no not in herself, in Guatemala. She had been hearing stories of all kinds of violence particularly aimed at women, and a girl that she had met was attacked in the street and narowly escaped abduction by grabbing the bars of a window and screaming for help...the four guys only stole her purse...she was lucky. So I took Edith out on Beem for a few days touring...you can always trust Beem
From El Rumate I headed south again and stopped at The Finca Xobela, which is a little farm that has become a travellers meca...at the moment it is over run with Israelis, they are fun to watch...very unselfconcious people.
At Finca Xobela I ran into a couple of young Australians who had decided to buy a couple of small bike and ride through central America, they were great, made me feel very proud...don't know why...It was something about giving it a go...
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Julio Hartmann seemed to be at the centre of my Guatemala trip, if he didn't arrange something for me then he arranged for someone else to arrange it....he is like a one man tourist board.
Dave from Houston, Texas, contacted Julio and said that I would be coming to Guatemala and suggested that it might be nice if we were to meet up, Julio agreed and we sent a few e-mails back and forth. I mentioned in these emails that I was running low on 'Petrol Money' and would like to get some work to ‘top up the funds‘. He asked me what I could do and I modestly replied 'pretty much anything', which wasn't particularly helpful I suppose. Anyway the upshot of this was that Julio introduced me to Richard Skaggs.
Richard is an enigma - he looks like Santa Clause and acts like Ebenezer Scrooge; he is at once one of the meanest and most generous of men I have met on this trip. He would do anything for you and he is a riot to hang out with. It transpired that ‘Santa Clause needed some work done on his sledge‘, which was masquerading as a early seventies Jeep. Richard had been an unstoppable force that had hit an immovable object in the form of a stonewall and had total written off the Jeep, but with the help of his many friends it was being put back together from the carcases and bones of every Jeep model ever previously made. I was offered free room and board to assist in this novel task for two hours a day, an offer I gladly accepted.
A couple, or four hours, a day playing around putting an old Jeep back together seemed like money for old rope - but that was the problem Money...Richard didn't want to spend any money, so we had many frank and lively discussions on points as varied as ‘can you use electrical wire staples to hold brake lines in place’ and the advantages of leaving mechanical fuel pumps in place as a possible emergency spare; many points were offered and combated ,always with good humour, and mostly the right conclusions were reached. It was at once hugely entertaining and terribly frustrating...like I said before, Richard is an enigma.
With my living arrangements in place it left me some time to pursue my other request to Julio...To learn Spanish. When I left PNG at the start of this trip one of my goals was to learn a new language...I have had the exposure to many and varied tongues on this mega trip but for some reason Urdu, Farsi, Mandarin of Thai just never seemed to stick after the first few words. So I have settled on Spanish...mostly because I seem to like Spanish speakers and they are not as pedantic as the French about a foreigner inflicting horrible pronunciation and grammar ’faux pas’ on their native tongue. So I went and enrolled at IGA, which is short for something really long.
After being absent from school for
thirty something years I was back....it was fantastic. I had a structure to my day. I got up at seven, had breakfast with Richard and Guisela went to the bus stop and caught the 101 to Oblisque, Reforma and all stops thereafter. The bus cost pennies and was a great way to gauge how my Spanish was coming along, mostly by eavesdropping and seeing how much I could understand Also, by looking out the window and each day being able to read and understand more of the signs and notices, the bus trip became my Spanish yard-stick. My class was made up of two Taiwanese, one Korean, and two Austrians, we were a happy bunch and very helpful to each other.
When not fixing a Jeep or going to school I was often out riding with Julio and the gang, we did breakfast runs to places of interest or natural beauty most weekends and longer trips when time permitted.
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Julio is something of an amateur Archaeologist and we would visit Mayan ruins any chance we could.
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Unfortunately he also had a passion for Volcanoes which in the end involved walking up them....so the man wasn't a complete Saint.
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I was lucky enough to see a good deal of this culturally diverse and scenically stunning country, mostly on motorcycle but sometime in 4x4's. After all I was a Jeep mechanic.
Richard took me on a Guatemala 4x4 Club outing to Sierra Los Mines (mountains of the mines) where fourteen cars followed each other up a hill, thereby creating their own traffic jam. It was at times highly amusing, but mostly all you saw was the car in front....recreational four wheel driving is not for me, but I did enjoy the camaraderie.
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Another time Richard was a Judge/ Time keeper at a Enduro Rally and we were stationed out in the bush making sure that the 270 racers followed the right track and in an orderly fashion.
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That was a good weekend , we stayed in a hotel nicknamed ‘Narco Nice’ because it was rumoured that drug money paid for its construction.
I had a wonderful time in Guatemala and if I have one regret, it is that I never spent enough time with the Maya, I found them to be distant but fascinating, but never had the opportunity to be directly involved with them, which was a shame...maybe next time.
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Into El Salvador
My plan had been to ride straight through El Salvador and get to Nicaragua as quickly as possible, after all El Salvador is small and there is really nothing in it. or at least that is what I had been hearing in Guatemala.
But Julio sort of insisted that this was a bad plan and to make sure that I didn't commit the crime of dismissing a country without having ever been there. He arranged to see me across the border and introduce me to Mario Lecha.
Mario was out riding so Julio left a message that I would call back later, and I was advised to spend that night at Lake Coatepeque, a volcanic lake west of San Salvador. It was like a spring break in Fort Lauderdale, the place was full of pretty young couples enjoying each others company. It made me feel old. I shopped around for a hotel which as the laws of supply and demand dictate, go through the roof when there is the least bit of interest. It wasn't that the hotel rooms were expensive, it was just that they were crap and thirty dollar crap at that, and if there is one thing I hate it is expensive crap. So I haggled a thirty-nine dollar room down to twenty-six dollars and still felt as if I was paying too much...humbug ... bahhh.
That same afternoon I got through to Mario and arranged to meet him at the Shell Garage on the way into San Salvador. The following morning. Mario, bless his heart, arrived on the dot of nine o'clock on his little 250cc Yamaha. We went to his office and left Beem there all loaded up and I got on the little Yammy and Mario got out the 990 KTM and off we went to see some Maya village that had been covered by a Volcano, Pompeii-style.
It was something of a disappointment. I was asked to pay four times more than a local, which at four dollars is not a princely sum, but any country that charges on race or country of origin always loses a few points in my book. Try that in London, Paris or New York and see how well it goes down.
"I know that the price he just paid for his ticket was ten dollars, but you are from Costa Rica so you will have to pay forty dollars, I'm sure that you understand". I do understand that it should not be out of a local citizens price range to go and see his own countries heritege, some-how if it was free for locals I would feel less victimised...does that make sense ?
After all that the place was a waste of time it just screamed waste of taxpayers/ aid money...it showed nothing of Maya culture, all that was evident was that someone made a lot of money to do the development, I went back to Mario's office and looked up the Spanish word for 'misappropriation'...it's Malverscion, in case you are interested. I mentioned this to Mario's dad and he put it down to living in a democracy...I was begining to like El Salvador, the people have a sense of humour.
Mario took me out to lunch and then to his coffee plantaion (called a Finca...meanig small farm) and showed me where I was staying for the next few days, It was remote and Isolated and up a steep rugged road that was impassable in the wet...it was fantastic. I had the place to myself and a stunning view of down town San Salvador. That night Mario came back with a few biker friends and we burned some steak, drank some beers, and swapped a few tall tales...bloke heaven.Next day it was out to lunch with more friends and that is pretty much how I passed my days in El Salvadoe, going out for rides on Beem or Mario's Yammy and meeting people for meals...very civilised and great fun, El Salvadorians are Gentlemen of the first order.
It came time to leave. Mario escorted me out of town and sent me safely on my way...like I said, Gentlemen.
Honduras, October 2009
If there is one thing I hate it's stories about border crossings, so I won't go on and on about what a pain in the arse getting into and out of Hondurus was. "Institutionalised robbery" are the two words that spring immediately to mind, just imagine dealing with the claims department of a massive insurance company that keeps moving you from one desk to the next and making you fill in forms that you know and they know are worthless....just for the sake of making themselves seem important...see what they have done, they made me break my own rule about whinging and moaning about borders, the bastards.
Anyway I was in and out of Honduras and stopped long enough to buy a bottle of water and get out before they closed the border, because the President had sneaked back in and was hiding at the Brazilian embassy....it starts from the top down I always say.
Nicaragua `
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In Costa Rica
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In early October I hung out with Kathy and Roger at their place in Costa Rica. We had a great time until it was time for me and Beem to take off across Darien for South America. |
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Colombia, November 3rd
I am in Cartagena, an old historic Spanish-style town in Colombia in the north of South America on the Caribbean coast.The reason I mention this is because it is about ten degrees north of the equator and as such it has a whole lot of weather. At the moment it is raining as it only can in the tropics. I was out on the bike in town and got caught coming back, even the insides of my ears were wet. Soon the rain will stop and the humidity will go up to about ninety percent, which is only a few degrees less than you would find in a sauna.
I am making plans to meet the Dakar Rally in northern Chile in the New Year and will probably do some diving work here as I need a lot of pounds to do an engine rebuild on the bike...That pretty much covers all my news...
November 6th I am here in Medellin Colombia, enjoying some of my own weather. It is pissing down...tropical style. Just got back from the workshop before the downpour.
But Beem doesn't know himself, new tyres, bearing, bulbs, cables.... going like a trooper now, that should see him through to the end of the trip, I hope...
November 9th
We will be moving south for the next few days, so will be maintaining radio silence. Apparently there are still places where it is better to pass through early in the day as the danger increases as the light decreases. They don't tell you about that in the brochures...
