Floribama Riders

[Written 6 October 2008
Lanquin, Guatemala]

(The last few paragraphs contain a story about a dead dog found in the road. Some readers may prefer to skip that part.)

Sometimes you need to sit by yourself at the end of a table, eating a desayuno tipico of eggs, black beans and tortillas in a room full of people and know that you are happy. In front of my breakfast, a map spreads out on a rough wood table in the outdoors restaurant of El Retiro, a backpackers' resort in Lanquin, Guatemala.

I slept in a hammock under a thatched roof last night, with my motorcycle baggage strewn about underneath. I slept fitfully under a blanket, never quite getting comfortable with my back in a U shape. Tonight, I'll be more comfortable on the straw mat.

I woke with the dawn in the five o'clock hour and attempted to take some arty photos of the hammock looking out on the beautiful grounds of El Retiro. In retrospect, a photo of your feet in a hammock with a pretty background is pretty cliche, but these photos feature *my* hairy feet.

That was a special moment, and I enjoyed the solitude until I noticed the security guy walked from his seat underneath the loft to see what what up with the camera flash. Then I drifted in and out of sleep until I heard a loud, assertive voice saying, "I need a room!" With the thick Israeli accent, it almost sounded like "whoom."

The poor security guard didn't understand English, and he said the office, which was located underneath my hammock loft, would open at 7. "At 7?" asked the Israeli guy. "Si, si, las siepte." "Very important, 7 exactly," Israeli said.

I drifted in and out, as the Israeli would periodically return to stress the importance of opening the office exactly on time. "What's your name? I need to be first on the wait list for a whoom." These invocations were loud enough to penetrate the earplugs I have taken to wearing. I found in the U.S. that if I really need to sleep deeply, a set of earplugs will do the trick--it's as effective as NyQuil. Those of you who know me well are probably laughing because it's not as if I have trouble getting rest.

Eventually I removed the earplugs and realized they had been blocking out the sounds of the birds and the river rapids a hundred yards away from my hammock. When I climbed the ladder downstairs, I gave the Israeli guy a piece of my mind. He said, "I need a room! I've been sleeping outside, and the bugs, they've been cutting my legs." I said, "Yes, I've been sleeping in a hammock all night, not sleeping well either, and then some obnoxious guy woke me up at 6 AM by arguing with the security guard."

"But I wasn't arguing!" he said. Aaargh. It's funny. As I wrote this in the restaurant, the fellow came over and sat down with a passel of beautiful Israeli women. He said he was sorry for waking me up and asked if everything was ok. His name is Ran (pronounced Ron), and we just took some photos together, one of which has me strangling him as a joke.

Just last night I was telling a French Canadian how I have been pleased to  meet many Israelis on this trip who break the stereotypes. For those who do not travel in backpacker hostels, the stereotype of Israeli travelers can be summed up as such.

They are demanding.

They are frugal.

They  travel in large groups and rarely interact outside their circle.

My experience with Vered and Adi in Antigua, as well as the group that invited me to their hot tub pot session in San Pedro, led me to realize that these stereotypes did not always apply. But Ran's deep yet piercing voice at 6 AM irritated me in an immediate sense and depressed me on a deeper level because I don't like seeing stereotypes confirmed.

Seersucker pants
The fact that Ran had his legs eaten all night by mosquitos reminds me that I should write an ode to seersucker pants. Mine are a tan pair of Perry Ellis pants that I bought 12 years ago. They are the perfect traveling pant. They are lightweight, they never wrinkle and they dress up or down very easily. Last night, I went to dinner in them, slept in them, and I will probably wear them on the plane home.

Domingo rides
Domingo is the Spanish word for Sunday, and it's also the name of the first hitchhiker I picked up on this trip. I saw him on a street corner in Cunen. A native Guatemalan, he stood maybe five-foot-two with a bowl hair cut and a missing front tooth. He wore a black-and-white checked shirt and green pants tucked into a good-but-dirty pair of work boots. I pulled over to quickly ask if I was headed the right direction to Coban (I was), and he asked if he could ride with me.

I've been carrying a spare helmet with me because Adi had said she liked motorcycles and wanted to ride together in San Pedro, but we never met up. I undid the bungee net holding the helmet behind my back and handed the helmet to Domingo. It seemed a little unfamiliar to him, although I could later tell he had ridden a motorcycle before. I motioned for him to wear the helmet because there was nowhere else to put it.

I took off at a sporting pace to give him a little show on the 650 CC motorcycle. Most Latin American drivers seem to admire quick riding, and besides, with a beautiful day and no rain, I would have ridden rapidly anyway.

For my motorcyclist friends, riding "quickly" in Central America involves traveling at 6/10ths of my ability. I never approach 7 or 8/10ths on purpose because you can turn a corner and suddenly your lane disappears under a rock pile, and you're instantly at 10/10ths, braking hard to avoid hitting the rock pile and the large chicken bus that's headed your way in the opposite lane.

Maybe a mile into the journey, I noticed Domingo was shifting his legs every time we leaned into a corner. I looked down and realized his boots were just hanging in the air, and he had to lift them to avoid dragging his soles in the corners. I pulled over and grabbed his boots to place them on the passenger pegs, and he said gracias.

Domingo motioned to be let off about a half hour down the road, next to a footpath into the fields, somewhere between Cunen and La Hacienda. He was commuting to work from the city to work in the fields.

After dropping off my passenger, I put the hammer down so I could make Lanquin before it started raining or got dark. The friendly owner of hotel Gran Sueno in San Pedro had said I should ride through Guatemala City, and the trip would take 12 hours, but I wanted to take the "fun" and short route with smaller roads, but I had no idea how long it would take. I rode quickly and stopped only for gas, drinking water and eating a handful of granola for lunch.

As a result, I didn't stop for rest or photos or anything. This was definitely my best day of riding, the first "real" ride of the trip, an honest ride with tremendous scenery and thankfully not much rain.

I found myself considering one advantage of traveling with organized tours. At least you have a good estimate of how long it will take you to get to the destination, so you have some freedom to stop for photos and rest, as long as you're on schedule.

I rode from San Pedro de la Laguna, following switchbacks up the steep grade and marvelling at the view of Laguna de Atitlan, a blue lake ringed by mountains and volcanos. On the Carretera Interamericana, I traveled the road that had given me such problems in the dark and the rain two days before, passing one of the construction sites and the hotel where I had stayed. It was so easy in the dry morning light. I made the left turn toward Chichicastenango and Santa Cruz del Quiche before encountering Domingo in Cunen.

Sunday was a good day to ride in Guatemala because the roads were lightly traveled, but everyone was out and about in the towns, attending church and street festivals. In eight hours of riding, I passed six soccer games, with venues ranging from rock-strewn dry fields to a mud bath to a professional-looking stadium in either Coban or San Pedro Carcha. I wished I knew how much time I had to travel before dark because I would have loved to sit and watch some soccer with the locals.

The road outside Uspantan contained the only construction delay of the day. A man was clearing a mudslide, driving a backhoe and efficiently filling two large dump trucks with dirt. His wife sat inside the cab of the backhoe with their daughter on her lap, both dressed in nice clothes. In a remote area, this may have been the entertainment for the day, or perhaps the father wanted to show off his skills.

The backhoe moved the largest fallen tree aside, and one of the construction workers hacked at it with a stick, revealing some good wood inside with which he seemed happy.

To the east of San Cristobal Verapaz, I encountered a few potholes, but a construction worker stood in the road with a small, vibrating pothole filler, about the size and shape of a large floor waxing machine. I rounded the next corner to see the pavement drop away completely into white dirt as far as the eye could see. The guy had filled about 10 potholes already, and I wondered why he would work so hard on a small section of broken pavement just before a seemingly endless stretch of dirt track. Had he even peeked around the corner?

From there to Coban, the road varied between a dusty track and occasional mud holes. This was the toughest long stretch of the entire trip thus far, but I enjoyed it, adjusting my posture on the bike beween the proper, stand-up, off-road stance and a relaxed butt-on-the-seat posture. Since my previous trip to Central America, I had practiced riding off-road a lot more, and I knew I could go faster by standing up with my weight low on the footpegs and thighs holding the gas tank. In this posture, the suspension did not have to work as hard because my knees bent slightly to absorb shocks, but my thighs ached after two hours of constant work. This riding position also has the undesirable effect of making me look like even more of a weirdo to the locals. Not only am I riding a huge bike and wearing alien-looking clothes, but I ride into town standing eight feet tall. I tried to sit down and slow down when entering towns, but I bet 20 people thought about me today, "What a weirdo." I wonder how that translates to Spanish.

After a great day of riding, I rolled into El Retiro, the best hostel in Lanquin. They did not have any rooms or dormitory beds available, but they did have a spare hammock in a loft over the registration area. I deal pretty well with bugs bites. Either I don't get them, or I don't notice them much, so I walked my gear up the ladder and headed down to the restaurant for some food.

A skinny, long-haired guy named Eric greeted me with the phrase, "You look like you need a beer." I was still wearing my boots and riding gear, and I was glistening with sweat. I was thinking more food than beer, but it sounded like a good idea. "That will be 15 Quetzales," he said. I was a little surprised because I thought he was rewarding me with free beer for being such a brave motorcyclist and riding rough roads all day, but ah well.

The only food they had at the moment was a slice of carrot cake, which I gratefully bought, and a bowl of sliced fruit on the bar which strangely had no flies on it. Eric said the fruit was soaked in vodka for the wait staff and offered me some.

A French Canadian woman named Chloe sat to my left and said she had traveled through Thailand on a motorcycle. I asked whether she was driving or riding on the back, and she said she was the passenger. "So what happened to that relationship?" I asked with a playful smile. She said she used to be a social worker, and that was the kind of question she used to ask her clients. I said, "Yeah, I get that a lot." Chloe said they had been together for five years and split up last year.

She worked at the bar and sat next to me later during the group dinner. I joked that I felt guilty that the baked chicken was so tasty because I had probably passed this one earlier on the road today. Chloe said that was strange because she had had an intense experience where she passed a dead dog on the road the previous day. I asked what the big deal was because it's Central America, and I pass a dead dog on the road every time I take a significant day-long ride. Today's dead dog was right in the center of the road inside small mountain town, and the strange thing was somebody had taken the trouble to cover the body with a large, leafy branch. In Central America, branches take the place of orange traffic cones and flashing signs. If you're riding down the road and see a branch on the side, watch out! In this case, it seemed strange that someone would bother to warn us not to run over the dog, yet they would not take the time to remove the dog from the road. Placing the branch seemed careless, or cold, or maybe a half-hearted tenderness.

Chloe's dead dog was a mother-to-be, with its unborn puppies outside the body in a sack. One of the babies was still moving. Neither one of us had stopped to do anything with our respective dogs, but these small tragedies are common in Central America.