PowerCycle

06/25 Had a little rain to start the day. Lasted about an hour and then it mostly just drizzled. Luck was on my side because an hour after I arrived in town a nasty thunderstorm rolled through. I was safe and sound in my US $4.99 motel room so it didn’t matter. The place is called the Plaza Hotel. The room isn’t bad–2 beds, cable TV, a fan, space for my bike and it’s pretty clean. The shower/bathroom are shared but I can live with that for five bucks.

I’m running into a few places where the people don’t speak Spanish or English so it takes a little more non-verbal communication to be understood. There are something like 22 spoken languages in Guatemala so it was just a matter of time. Even the word for water (agua) is different. I had to show a lady the little bit left in my bottle so she’d know what I wanted. Food is so cheap here too. Lunch was a big plate of rice, beans and chicken tortillas plus 2 Cokes for US $3.

I forgot to mention the parrots at the hotel in La Reforma. They spoke to everyone sitting near them at the restaurant in Spanish. “Hola! Hola!” over and over again. They also made a barking noise when they got hungry.

GPX Track

Worst rest days ever. I don’t know what I have or who I got it from but I think I’ve almost kicked this thing. What started out as a headache has worked its way down my poor body in a rather systematic manner: headache, runny nose, sore throat, coughing and then stomach problems (won’t go into details). I tried walking around today to get some fresh air and didn’t do too bad. There’s a church at the top of a huge hill that I wanted to see but I gave up half way. Didn’t have the energy for it.

Lot’s of people out enjoying the nice weather. The market was crazy. Not a good place for tall people though. Glad I was wearing my bike helmet. Just kidding.

There are a lot of people struggling to survive here which is sobering when you’re strolling around with a nice camera and a full stomach. There was a guy sitting in one of the aisles at the market with his leg extended out. He had a really bad case of elephantiasis on it and I doubt he could even walk. The indigenous people, mostly of Mayan descent, have tonnes of sidewalk booths set up where they sell everything from blankets to jewelry. There are just so many you have to wonder if entire days go by where they don’t sell anything.

The hippy/dreadlocks people here are a bit wacko. I can’t tell where they’re from but I don’t think it’s the States. One pair was playing a set of drums outside a church while a hippy girl spun around some rope or something. Really? It seems a bit tacky to me to travel to a developing country and try to hit people up for loose change so you can keep traveling the world. Maybe its just me though. Besides the hippies the other foreigners here, of which there are quite a few, seem to stay pretty low key.

Tourism has definitely left its mark on the people that live in the main historical area of the city though. For the first time someone made a snide comment when I couldn’t explain in Spanish what I wanted. It was a guy in a bike shop and after spending all of 15 seconds trying to tell him I wanted a bike tube he walked over to get it and muttered “Spanish” under his breath. Fair enough–not speaking the language very well sucks but give me a break. It’s not like I was being demanding about it and it was kind of obvious I’d traveled a long way so there shouldn’t be an expectation that I know every word in the language. If I encountered a foreigner traveler in the States or Canada and they couldn’t speak English it wouldn’t even cross my mind to be anything but helpful. If I was living here totally different story. Of course you never really know what experiences he’s had with people before me so I’m sure that played into it. Pete had a similar experience with some seemingly anti-gringo sentiment and that guy speaks Spanish better then anyone I know. On a positive note, one good thing about this place is that almost no one stares at me (except the ladies). I kind of miss the small towns now.

I also haven’t seen anyone since I got here. I had to bail on seeing Roland/Belinda and Karin/Marten this morning and Pete left this morning and I didn’t get to see him either. If I got any of them sick I’d feel horrible.

03/05 Tequila! The manager of the motel hooked me up with a (substantial) shot which I couldn’t say no to because its rude. He and his buddies hanging out in the lobby had a great time ribbing me about staying in the motel (it’s a sex motel but it was only US $9). They thought for sure I had a woman stowed away in my panniers and kept telling the manager to charge me by the hour.

It’s confirmed. There’s definitely something up with teenage girls here. I rode into town and wanted to find a bank so I asked this girl walking on the sidewalk where one was. My ability to ask this question in Spanish has proven successful in the past. She completely ignored me and kept walking. I suspected there was a cultural thing going on at this point so I tried an experiment. I found another girl by a bunch of taxi cabs and asked her where the bank was (even though I could see it a few blocks further down). This one was a little younger and even though she ignored me too she cracked a little smile like she wanted to say something but couldn’t. To complete the experiment I asked an older woman (40′s) where a motel was. She stopped and helped me out without batting an eye. The couple guys I asked when I was trying to find a laundrymat helped out too. I ended up finding it but it was closed which sucks because the heat is causing some ripeness in my clothes.

This town is messing with my pretty good sense of direction because there are two big dried up river beds that people actually use for roads. Even when I was given directions to the laundrymat the guy said follow the river up and turn left. It was a little weird.

Great ride today. I actually rode on reasonably flat land for a while. It was so nice. Hit a military checkpoint and rode through without a problem. Had a great Hawaiian hamburger for lunch which worked out well because of the climbing after that.

And the coolest thing of the day happened after I’d left the town of Xochihuehuetlan (try saying that 3x fast). A guy on a motorcycle rode past me and motioned for me to stop. He handed over a cold bottle of Gatoraide and wished me luck on my trip. How nice was that?

I noticed a couple days ago that the Tekkon external battery I use to charge my laptop/batteries is on its last legs. It won’t hold a charge at all but luckily I can still use it when it’s plugged into an AC outlet to charge my laptop. This sucks because its what my solar panel charged so now that’s useless too. I’ll hang onto it until I can find an AC adapter that my laptop can use and then send my solar panel to my Dad (head’s up Dad ).

GPX Track

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.

GPX Track