Days 45, 46 - 27th & 28th August Guatemala

Welcome to Guatemala

Started out early from San Cristobel de La Cases so I could get to the Guatemala
border nice and early but the 140km went through every little town and my watch had the wrong time, it was out 1 hour out, so much for an early start.

About 50km out of the border town La Masilla I caught up to a fellow traveler, so I decided to hang behind until we hit the next town so we could have a chat. Rob is Canada riding on a R1100 road bike and is doing the similar trip as me, albeit with a lot more time to complete it. We decided to cross the border together so we could watch out for each other's bike while tackling the paperwork trail. Rob was had a different travel plan but decided to hang with me through Central America as traveling in pairs should be a bit safer, we hope.

The border crossing went extremely smooth contrary to a lot of reports and we were on the road to our first destination, Panahachel located next to Lake Atilan. The ride was
a good introduction to Central America roads and traffic. Chicken buses as they are referred are old US school buses that once they reach their use buy date are sent south. These buses are everywhere bellowing out plooms of smoke, and generally being a pain in the ass.

Panahachel turned out to be very nice lake side town and the local bars were well stocked. The towns in Guatemala are getting more difficult to navigate as streets are one way and extremely narrow.

The goal for day 2 in Guatemala was a 200km ride to Coban in the central highlands. The day started out badly as we took a wrong turn and were heading towards Guatemala City, by the time we relised and were about to turn around Rob noticed he had a flat tyre, b*****. Guatemala is not a place to be hanging around on the side of the road. The tyre is tubeless and Rob had a plug kit that should have had it fixed quick but it took about an 45 minutes to work out how to use it.

We were back on the road and back on track, little did we know what was ahead. The towns were cobble stoned hilly and very narrow and no by passes, we had to go through the middle of every town. some had taken about and 30 minutes to cross. Rob dropped his bike in one town, little did I know as I was ahead of him and around the corner. The day was getting late and we had about 50km to go, should be have
plenty of time. Uforntunally the last 30km was mud and dirt which wasn't too bad except a large land slide that was about 1 km wide. A temporary road was built down the hill and back up the other side. Rob was doing a great job handling the muddy roads on a road bike but finally went down in the mud. I gave him a hand riding the bike down a short section, we had about 400 meters of uphill slop to go. Half way up there were vans and trucks stranded and were going nowhere. In the end we had to squeeze between two trucks bogged side by side, rob dropped the bike again and then it was my turn to go down. The first gear on my bike is way too tall and with all the weight on my bike I had to ride the clutch way too much, think I have worn the clutch down a fare way just in that short section.

We finally reached Coban just on dark and managed to find accommodation after about an hour. What a day, guess this is what the adventure is all about. Rob was probably wondering who the hell am I riding with. Next day was a big one again as we had to reach the Honduras border early enough to cross it.

Guatemala seemed a lot poorer than Mexico but the people didn't show it. Again another country that defied all the negative reports.


Cheers
Greg