Sadly, I think Antigua, Guatemala might lose the top spot on my list of most beautiful cities. Cartagena has everything: cobblestone streets, buildings dating back to the 17th century, Spanish forts, tree-lined plazas and lot’s of interesting things to see on the streets. Last night we went walking around and ended up at a small plaza where some kids were playing soccer (on one end 2 statues were used as goal posts). Lot’s of people just hanging out enjoying the cooler temperatures. A TV news crew even made a visit, presumably just to catch the local happenings around town.

The city is very safe and a strong police presence, especially in the touristy areas, helps keep it that way. Almost every other corner has a police officer on it. Several other corners also have some “ladies of the night” who do a cute little dance if they see you. I think it’s a good sign that the police aren’t packing huge machine guns like they do in… well, everywhere else. All the ones I saw just had a night stick and a handgun. The gringo presence here is still very small for such a large city (pop. 1.1 million). Hopefully it picks up because it really is an amazing place.

Karin and Marten leave for their home in the Netherlands tomorrow and won’t be back for a few weeks. I’ll miss them and it’s going to be strange not seeing them all the time but I’m happy they are able to make it home for a family visit. I still have to plan a route through Colombia so that’ll keep me busy tomorrow. Not too sure which roads I want to take south but I’ll stick to main roads due to repeated warnings about FARC activity further south and into the jungle areas on the other side of the mountains. I’ll look to head out Tuesday morning.

09/20 Survived another day on the Costa Rican death roads. Riding has just been miserable and the homicidal drivers don’t help. There was rarely a shoulder to ride on so 95% of the time I’m stuck in the lane with a million 18 wheelers. A couple people didn’t bother to move over even though the other lane was clear which didn’t surprise me given how unfriendly people seem to be.

When a pedestrian gets killed they paint a heart with a halo over it onto the road. Saw quite a few today. As you can see from the picture of the family walking down the road its not surprising that people get run over a lot. It’s either walk on the road or walk in the tall grass with the poisonous snakes. I also saw a lot of ambulances on the road today too. It’s probably easier for them to just drive around knowing an accident is bound to happen sooner or later. Or the same one just followed me all day figuring I’m a sure thing.

Met a couple touring riders from the Netherlands this morning. That was a bit of a surprise. They are just riding around Costa Rica (for some crazy reason). The first thing they said was how bad the roads were.

I did meet one of the 8 nice people in the country today He runs a fruit stand in town. I loaded up on some delicious tangerine fruit juice and he gave me about a dozen bananas to take along. I’m glad I found the place because I needed something to even out all the rtards I encountered today.

It was very hot again today but I beat the rain by an hour. I can’t seem to drink enough fluid though and I’m downing a lot. Didn’t go to the bathroom all day which is pretty bad.

I posted the fact that I’m here illegally (no entry stamp) on the Thorn Tree forum to see how bad it’s going to be when I try to leave. It sounds like just playing the no habla Spanish card might work. We’ll see.

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09/16 Had a great little mini-break in Liberia with Karin and Marten. Sadly the chances of us meeting again are kind of slim. They need to be in Columbia for a flight back home to the Netherlands so they’re riding straight through. I wanted to head to the mountains so today we rode together for 30 miles before I had to take another road. They are both amazing people and I’ll miss our evening chats. They are also extremely generous which Marten proved once again this morning when I ran into a little bike problem.

The new rims held up today but the mechanic didn’t see notice that the magnet for my bike computer was attached to my old spokes so at 7am when we were leaving I was rather dismayed to see it was gone. The shop probably didn’t open until 10am so I would have been stuck sitting outside waiting for 3 hours. Marten happened to have some spare magnets so he gave me his and used one of the spares on his bike. That guy is like my guardian angel. First he gets my bike rack for me and now this.

After turning off the PanAm toward the mountains, things went from flat to almost solid climbing for the next 20 miles. The scenery was decent but I think tomorrow is going to be much better when I ride around this huge lake before getting to the volcano.

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08/27 Decided not to stay in Gracias even though I’m going to miss that shower at Hotel Guancascos. I met the owner when I was leaving (the motel; not the shower). I forget her name but she was from the Netherlands and was really nice. Lonely Planet kind of ripped the service at the restaurant and the management a little but I didn’t see anything wrong with either.

After an uneventful ride yesterday I spent the night in the village of San Juan. The motel was recommended by Karen and Martin who are a few days ahead of me riding the same route I’ll be taking. Each night Karen emails a summary of the days ride so I know what to expect. I never would have found the place in San Juan without the email. It’s called La Posada de Rosario. There’s no sign and nothing in front to indicate it’s a motel. It’s about 300m south of the Texaco to the left of a white building with the word “agroveterinatio” or something like that.

This rain is driving me nuts. Every day at 1pm it starts and usually doesn’t stop completely until well after I’m in bed for the night. It’s nice in the morning though. Usually the sun is out and it’s nice and hot. I grossed out some guy when I wrung out my sweat-soaked shirt at a rest stop. That was at the top of a hill that I’d been riding up for about half an hour.

I’m going to start a rating system for stares. Level 3 is when someone stares at me so hard I have to look down to make sure I remembered to wear my bike shorts. I’ve been getting quite a bit of that and it’s making me paranoid.

Staying at newer place in La Esperanza called the Hotel Margarita (or close to it). It’s not too bad but there’s no mirror in the bathroom. Kind of weird. At 5600 feet, this is the highest town in Honduras. The climb to get here was kind of brutal just because it was basically riding up a mountain for 20 miles. There were no steep sections which was nice because the last 10 miles was on dirt. Lots of muddy spots. In one place I was riding really slow down a hill to avoid a mud-filled pothole when my bike started sliding sideways. That was kind of exciting.

Walked around town for a while checking out the sites. Up on the side of a hill is an old cave called La Gruta which has been turned into a chapel. There is a noticeable lack of stray dogs here which has me wondering if some sort of “program” is in place.

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02/24 Back in my tent for the first time in a long time. I missed it. Had it not been for the (Spanish speaking) bicycle tourists I met here at the ruins I’d be in a motel. After a pretty decent climb to the site here at Xochicalo I pulled up the place where you buy tickets and saw 2 fully loaded touring bikes leaning against the wall. Mazatlan was the last time I saw another touring rider so I was kind of excited. I paid the $51 pesos to get in and went to check out the ruins and see if I could find the bike riders.

I spotted them after a couple minutes. They are Marten and Karin from the Netherlands. They are on their way from Alaska to Bolivia. I knew they’d been in Alaska because they have a big old thing of bear spray attached to one of their bikes. They had already gotten an OK to camp up here right next to the museum so I went off to explore the ruins since they’d be here for the night.

What an amazing place. Basically the entire top of the (huge) hill was leveled and a city built on top of it. The area where the ruins are is much larger than I thought it would be. I grabbed some pics and then headed back to the museum.

I didn’t want to impose so I was going to head back downhill to a motel but Marten/Karin were cool with me camping up here too so I stayed. The people that run the site let us pitch our tents in the parking lot on a grassy section so that’s where we are–camped next to some old Mayan ruins.

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