We left Arequipa in Peru heading for the coast. The mechanic at the Royal Enfield dealership suggested that was the way to go. The stark Atacama Desert views were beautiful and the roads winding. But once we descended towards sea level we spotted a flaw in the plan – it became cold and misty, due to the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt Current. By sea level it had cleared. The ride along the coast was dramatic and beautiful with plenty of space to stop for photos.
The route to the border near Tacna was an easy ride with paved roads but we were somewhat confused at the crossing as we had got used to the concept of one, or several buildings, at the leaving end before proceeding a kilometre or two to the entry set of buildings. Here, we ended up visiting three windows in one building and all was done. Gid was concerned that all stages weren’t completed but I pointed out the centre window stamped us into Chile and the bikes out of Peru. It seemed to work.
We only had a short distance to go to reach Arica on the Chilean coast where we intended to stop. As it was still very early, or so we thought, we decided to visit the mummies just up the road from the town stopping for lunch on the way. Out came the phones as always but it took us quite a while to notice we had lost two hours. Rather than three o’clock it was five o’clock and our destination shut at six. Tomorrow then.
Undeterred by our one day delay we set off towards the mummies taking a more direct route out of town. Spotting some disruption up ahead we proceeded with caution, right up to the tape across the road which blocked the way just before a major bridge rebuild. A truck had just turned off to the right – obviously there was a route through. Having lost sight of the truck we explored the various options on dusty tracks around the old farm buildings before we gave up and headed back. It was twenty minutes or so retracing our steps to the junction that would take us to the mummies museum with no signage indicating the road block anywhere.
It clearly wasn’t going to be our day as arriving at the museum the gates were shut. We hadn’t checked and it didn’t open on Mondays.
Enough was enough. Riding back bypassing Arica we headed south out into the Atacama Desert. We were so pissed off that we hadn’t consider the distance we would be travelling and the implications on fuel. We must have passed several fuel stations but were in no mood for further delays. It wasn’t until we passed a sign that said no fuel for 250 km that alarm bells began to ring. ‘How much fuel have you got?’ I asked Gid. He always runs low first. ‘Providing we take it easy we will probably be ok.’ Probably. Neither of us wanted to turn back and I did have three litres in my jerrycan. Gid had chastised me back in Colombia when at the first fuel stop after our flight, I’d insisted on filling one of my emergency fuel tanks.
We cruised along tucking in under fifty mph through mile upon mile of barren mountains and valleys. We’d been in the Atacama desert since south Peru first really noticing it around Arequipa and then when we’d been approaching the coast through the mountains. But now in Chile we spent the whole day riding through emptiness with nothing breaking the vast expanse.
We stopped at Huara, the first town since Arica. It offered some accommodation and we hoped fuel. Accommodation yes, fuel no. Given that the hostal owner suggested the content of the available cans could be somewhat questionable we passed on that. The nearest fuel station was still 20-30 km away we were told. Do people in this small town seriously travel 20-30 km to fill the tank. So it would appear!!
The first of our tourist attractions was ten kilometres adjacent to the town. I was keen to see the ancient Gigante de Tarapacá geoglyphs. The largest in the world it was claimed. Gid was reluctant to go on a detour. We crept out to the site stunned at how close 10km looked glancing back with nothing between us and the town.
We made it to Pozo Almonte, creeping all the way but with very little traffic it didn’t matter. With tanks and jerry cans full we sighed with relief as we set off again just over the road to the deserted mining town of Humberstone but fuel had to come first.
Humberstone was fascinating. We whiled away two to three hours peering in the deserted buildings, school house and power station.
It was another day crossing desert before we reached San Pedro de Atacama but here the views took on another dimension. Now the vast emptiness had a backdrop of snow covered mountains. The guanaco (wild llama) the only living thing we saw.
San Pedro de Atacama was a delightful if massively touristy little town surrounded by tourist attractions. We picked the dawn trip to the geysers ‘setting off soon after five and back by eleven’. Sunrise at the geysers was to be the highlight. Our driver, Sergio, had other ideas and did a full tourist trail on our return trip – vicuñas, wild fowl, rhea (Exactly one: “That one’s always there, don’t tell the other guides“, |Sergio said.), flamingos and beautiful views.
Spot the Rhea!
Our own trip to see the flamingos at Parque Los Flamencos was also delightful.
There are two mountain passes into Argentina from San Pedro but one we were told was shut with ice on the road. We’d picked an early northern crossing into Argentina in preference to spending the next several days riding down Highway 5 through the Atacama desert, or Highway 1 along the coast. Argentina had a wealth of things to see up in the north and we’d already maxed out on desert. We’d return to Chile later, planning to explore the Carretera Austral before a final push to Ushuaia.
The Paso de Jama was beautiful with snow lining the grassland, vicuñas grazing and the odd goose wading. Up here we were nearer to the snow topped mountains just off the border with Bolivia – another country we’ve seen from afar but not entered.
Losing height we dropped down through the mountains into lower land in Argentina. The first town was Susques, a small, dusty place where several river valleys met. From a vantage point up at a shrine behind the town we were amused to see four full sized, if dusty, football pitches in a town barely big enough for one – thus reflecting Argentina’s national commitment to the game. These contrasted with one petrol and one diesel pump in the town. Oh, and one ATM – charging a huge amount of fees for a very small maximum payout.
Perfectly Legal in these Parts (leaf, not refined)
Ruta 40, a notable adventure riding route in Argentina, peeled away south from the northern end of the town. We had expected some sections to be dirt road but had thought that it would be a high quality – wrong! After two hours having covered 16 miles along washboard, powdery sand sections and loose gravel, with 80 odd miles to go to reach the next junction, we turned back.
On Ruta 52 then 9, heading south we saw mobs of bikers going the other way – all it seemed were Brazilians out for a multi week cruise around. Still losing height we stopped to admire the views little knowing this would be the last time we would be at a scenic viewing spot.
The following day we left San Salvador de Jujuy, heading towards the rural weaving villages. One hour down the road we hit the frequent road works. A contraflow in place with bollards down the middle – a steady progression of traffic. Over the dirt section Gid whinged he was slithering a bit. I hadn’t and I didn’t internalise his warning that it had been sprayed to reduce the rising dust but making it slippery. Leaving the dirt section back onto the surfaced highway wet dust was distributed by the cars into positions two and four as their tyres dropped the mud. We were staggered in positions two and four. I was slightly ahead in four and on reflection, didn’t have enough space to clearly see the road ahead. I had a short lived violent fishtail losing control of the rear wheel and down I went.
After all the back-of-beyond places, dirt roads, severe poverty and lacking facilities, it had to happen here. On a main road near cities, in one of the most developed countries we’ve been in. Roadworks management were there in a flash. Traffic didn’t try and drive over us. Someone called an ambulance and the police. Gid, who’d deliberately dropped his bike on the opposite verge, was confused by a lady who knelt to help, and took Clare’s hand. Was she a nurse? No, she was praying – hard.
A bruised knee, chipped rib and broken collarbone. It could have been a lot worse but that is the end of our trip.
We gallantly considered our options for making it down to Ushuaia, our target destination. We’re in the correct – the ultimate – country just at the wrong end. My moments of positive thinking weren’t in touch with reality. Our trip had to end in late November so time was running out, we had to dispose of our bikes in a country where it’s illegal for us to sell them, no mean feat. On top of that it soon became quite clear that I needed recovery time. I wasn’t going to manage being stuffed into a car and joggled for hour upon hour along over endless speed bumps, potholes, road works and metal studs.
We stopped for the best part of two weeks in the perfectly comfortable little hotel Gid had found a block from the hospital in Perico. I was groaning with frustration at staying still and at my general feebleness. Gid was desperately trying to find a safe, bearable for Clare, and not insanely expensive, way of moving the bikes and digging us out. Short of time, he only managed to advertise them for a week or so before concluding that the only reliable option was the fabulously expensive, wasteful, and CO2-emitting route of trucking them to Buenos Aires and shipping them home, while we flew to BA, stopped a week, and then followed. A sad end to our fabulous adventure. Be nice to see the grandchildren again. Will we come back?
Peru, home of the much loved Paddington Bear, was high on my list of places for which I had high expectations. Somehow I felt I already had some affinity with the Andean country.
These expectations were not met. Certainly not initially.
We arrived at Jaen knowing that towns are often hectic with people in a hurry charging left and right. This was no exception but rather than motos pushing into every space it was tuktuks. They seemed to explode out of every imaginable place. Tim, back at Donkey Sunrise in La Union, Colombia, had said that motorbikes out numbered cars by 4-1 but in Jaen the tuktuks must have been 6-1.
Gid was frazzled. He was trying to read his navigation, look up to check road names and get in position on the road to execute his plan. What a laugh – we couldn’t move for shoving tuktuks. The Ecuadorean SIM card that was supposed to work in Peru didn’t, and it took well over an hour to buy a Peruvian one, while I sweated in a busy street astride my bike, worrying if Gid was illegally parked. Almost all ATMs charge a fiver to dispense a measly $100-worth of Soles, in a country where credit cards are often not accepted. It’s not impossible, but Peru is definitely a bit harder to cope with than Colombia and Ecuador.
We didn’t take any photos right in Jaen’s thickets of pushy tuktuks, it was too intense. Here are some in calmer places. Peru’s unique CG125 3×1 tuktuks.
Gradually we got the measure of dealing with the traffic although there does seem to be a consensus in the South America Moto WhatsApp that the drivers in Peru are more aggressive. Maybe it’s only northern Peru. In the south it’s only the long distance taxi drivers (nutters).
Because our time is now tight in terms of making it down to Ushuaia, southern Argentina, and back to home by late November we have made a must do list. Machu Picchu is at the top for Peru but might be difficult as we are arriving in the peak holiday season and the site, in order to limit traffic damage, has limited tickets available. Gid was also keen on some sort of Amazon jungle experience. It seems like to really get immersed in the rain forest some sort of multi day trip is much more worthwhile. With time now a prime commodity multi-days excursions are off.
Searching the internet and the Lonely Planet guide we picked what is fast becoming the Machu Picchu of northern Peru. Kuelap is older and higher than the southern treasure and now with a 25min cable car ride to reach it replacing the 10km hike up the mountain side it is becoming much more popular. The Incas are well known in the UK but their great empire, like Alexander the Great‘s, was very short lived, a century or so. They conquered and built on top of the 800 year older Chachapoyas people’s site.
Trying to stay off the Pan American Hwy has had us on some awesome mountain roads. The views across puna landscapes have been fabulous with livestock farming of sheep, cattle and llamas highly evident. Spotting the smaller wild relative of alpacas, vicunas, was also great to see. And countless little tiny terraced fields, many still clearly worked by hand, with all manner of arable farming, especially potatoes.
A disappointing thing has been the amount of trash along the way. Crossing the puna landscape was on a well surfaced road which had lay-bys every few hundred metres. There aren’t that many viewing spots on the central and south American roads so it should have been pleasant to see them except for the fly tipping. We’re not talking about the occasional can or wrapper thrown out of car windows, which we’ve frequently seen since Mexico, this was bags of rubbish piled high. Perhaps it is villages off the main roads where a municipal rubbish collection isn’t possible but it’s a shame to see so much rubbish along the roads. Especially, apparently in the middle of nowhere.
At times our attempts to stay off the major highways has been torturous. We’ve passed many run down villages and plenty of beautiful ones too but a recurring trend has been the lack of shops to stock up on food supplies and, at times, the distances between available accommodation. Part of the problem with the shops is that in a village, all the locals know where it is, so, it doesn’t need a sign, does it? Gid remembers from his childhood near Bristol, Mrs Luton’s shop. It was exactly the same: tiny, served about 20 households, stocked bugger-all, and you had to know it was there. It isn’t now.
Occasionally accommodation listed in the apps doesn’t exist or is closed or we find an unexpected place along the way. A difficulty is the need to get the bikes off the road into some sort of secure area. While on some of the minor roads we had the choice of stopping early as we passed somewhere or pressing on to an alleged, on this occasion, hospedaje I had found. Gid was sceptical that it would exist but on we went. When we arrived at the village I saw a sign at the end corner of the street and thought that would be it. Gid recognised the place from the picture in Google – “hospedaje” barely visible on a colourful but very busy banner. It looked doubtful but in Gid went to enquire. Bingo – it was accommodation and our bikes could go in the shop over night. Sorted. After a friendly dismissal of the registration process we were shown up to our room. Boy band posters were still on the door and whilst it had an on-suite bathroom the bed itself was barely wider than a single. Our hosts – Elisabeth, Epifanio and Jasmine were delightful and invited us down for supper where we shared conversation care of Google Translate and Gid’s limited Español.
One particularly torturous day had us riding for ten hours and we’d only covered 150mi. The first half of that grandly titled “Ruta 3S” was along a definite dirt road, narrow at times, with trucks using it too. The river at the bottom of the valley to our right was coursing along frequently visible way down below. A sheer drop. On one section that had a chalky cliff face to the left and sheer drop of one hundred metres or so to the right I had a close escape. The narrow road surface was chalky with a slight rise on the left cliff face side. I probably wasn’t happy on the slight slope and tried to cross the small central ridge. As to be expected really the back wheel shot sideways, sliding downwards, about one foot Gid tells me. Far too near to the sheer drop. As a result of that the front wheel was now facing the cliff. Some how I managed to correct this without coming off. But shortly after that I stopped and undid my Helite airbag leash that had me securely attached to the bike. If the bike was going over that edge I wanted a fighting chance of not being dragged down with it. The hospedaje in the railway terminus village of Mariscal Caceres was basic, but a great relief after such an arduous road.
Entertainment available
Leading on from this section we joined a surfaced road. Or that’s what the map recorded. Really! Gid was furious. The language coming through the intercom was blue. ‘How can this be classed as surfaced!’ he stormed down the device. After a while we spotted a small section of tarmac. Ok, so in the long distant past it was surfaced but certainly not any more. Unfortunately an ex-surfaced road tends to be bumpier and less predictable than a plain gravel road. The potholes are sharp edged causing us and four wheelers to dodge all over the place.
In amongst some nightmarish riding moments have been the most stunning views. We’ve covered two kilometres vertically on a couple of occasions as we make our way up and down the ’foothills’. Sometimes this is on immaculate tarmac that our home councils would envy. At other times, there’s potholes or gravel lurking round half the bends. Our brake pads that were going to be good for another X,000 miles are taking a hammering.
Machu Picchu is the most popular tourist destination in South America but with that comes the difficulty of getting tickets. August being the peak of the northern hemisphere tourist season means that on-line tickets were sold-out months ago. On arriving at our accommodation at the nearby town of Ollantaytambo, itself an interesting tourist destination on the edge of the sacred valley and the site of the Inca -Spaniard battle back in 1537, our hotelier was most vociferous that in August there was no way we would get tickets. Gid explained that we were going to catch the train to Machu Picchu and buy a ticket, at the Ministry of Culture, for the following day. We weren’t entirely certain this would work, as the online information about it is drowned out by all the agencies and touts trying to hard-sell the tickets they’d block-booked months earlier, and smug online travel gurus who’d also known their arrival day in advance.
Our plan worked. Swallowing our outrage at the extortionate cost of the rail ticket we arrived at Machu Picchu mid morning still in time for some choice in visiting times tomorrow. An aged fellow traveller didn’t like the buy a ticket for tomorrow system but wasn’t getting anywhere with his same day arguments. Midday was our time. It couldn’t have been better. We had all morning to clamber up the very steep path from town to ruins, as Gid was too mean to pay $12 each for the bus. Too late to catch the early morning softer light for our photographs but not quite peak of the day heat either. As it happened it was overcast and could barely have been better for photography and comfort.
What a sight! The beautiful mountain setting and the expanse of the ruins spreading up the slope is awesome. The restoration has been sensitively done with the occasional reconstructed building and one area lower down that is still rubble. But most of the site has outlines of the buildings with the walkways and community areas in between. I had thought that the ruins overlooking Ollantaytambo were impressive but Machu Picchu is on another level.
Ollantaytambo ain’t so bad a place, either:
The second treat in the area was visiting Patacancha- a weaving village. I’d had this on the map since the UK and was keen to learn about Peruvian weaving. Before Machu Pichu we’d visited the village, 20km north of Ollantaytambo up a twisting dirt road to try to arrange it. The welcoming villagers at the bus stop directed us to Maria, Suzannah and Oleanda for tuition, Mariano for accommodation and gave us Annabella to take back into town. Returning a few days later we did some dye making, dying and weaving – a variation of back-strap, fun, but the available time was probably far to short to learn anything particularly useful. The homestay with our chatty host, Mariano, was a real bonus on the trip. Frost on our bikes in the morning was quite a surprise. They were tucked behind a bush up a footpath onto our hosts land. Gid wiggled both bikes up and down the footpath, across a makeshift bridge with a couple of alarming slides along the wet, grassy, way.
Patacancha Bus Stop
Preparing Cochineal dye
Vegetable dyes
Dawn in Patacancha
Leaving the area and setting off again on surfaced roads was quite a treat. It wasn’t long before we entered historic Cusco and were once again joggling about down steep roads on cobblestones. Having been very focused on planning to cover the ground it seemed a little disconcerting to hit the tourist scene again. My bike needed some attention and Cusco, where we arranged to met up with fellow biker travellers Damian, Alli and Yann, seemed the obvious choice. I’d had new steering bearings at the service in Medellin but when braking once again there seemed to be some travel in the headset. Demon Damian, a wandering motorcycle racer, overland biker and bike mechanic, suggested that the new bearings could have bedded in and just need tightening which did seem to do the trick. Equally, my back brake needed some adjustment but the alarming squealing noise my bike had made on two occasions when first moving in the morning was more concerning. We’d had a few suggestions as to what it might be but Damian was quite shocked when I said I didn’t warm the bike up before riding. I’ve got a fast idle lever but rarely bother to use it. It’s only now that we’re in a colder climate that it seems to be necessary. Unlike other bikers I can’t leave the cold bike ticking over as it just cuts out but have now rigged up a choke stay to hold it in position.
Lake Titicaca was our next tourist target. To get there, the road crossed a wide, flat, plain: the northern tip of the Altiplano. At 3,800m it’s quite high, but still populated. Scattered buildings line the road, and the grassland is used for low density livestock. After the bucking, twisting, mountain roads, the midwestern-style straight and flat blacktop was a fast-progress relief, if dull from a technical motorcycling perspective.
Gid read about Lake Titicaca’s floating islands and was intrigued. The Capachica peninsula was supposed to offer a similar experience, in terms of off the beaten track and rural village with a few ruins to explore, as the real islands in Lake Titicaca. Plus there was no worrying about bike parking and ferries. The peninsula was delightful. We stopped in the village square where the church was being renovated and one shop was open with a couple chatting away. In the corner there seemed to be a restaurant. Despite it’s cooking smells it wasn’t ready to serve at nearly 12:30 and ‘No’ they didn’t have a toilet. We explored a possible route onwards and decided quite quickly that it was degenerating into a dusty/sandy track. We turned back heading for the square noting an old lady’s bare feet as she turned off up the hill. It didn’t take long for the artesana (crafts) shop to open but the locked toilets stayed firmly shut.
Despite Gid loosing some interest in the floating islands, concerned that it was just a tourist hype, we took the boat trip out to see one. It was delightful. A man in his thirties, who had lived on handmade floating islands all his life, gave us a detailed presentation on how the islands are constructed, how long they last, the maintenance required and how four families lived on this floating island less than the area of two tennis courts. It was fourteen years old, approximately half its life expectancy. The small reed houses, into one of which we were allowed to peer, were raised to keep out the damp. Two reed boats were used to catch fish, a rifle to shoot birds flying overhead and nearby nesting birds provided eggs. What more could you want? Well, us to buy a cushion cover and model boat, obviously. Useful on a moto trip.
Mindful of how time was passing we were unsure of whether to go to Arequipa but were persuaded by the location of a Royal Enfield dealer, tales of frozen mummies and snow capped mountains. To get there would also take in the Valle del Colca and, maybe, Andean condors. Sold, we were on our way. Reaching our night stop in Chivay took us over 4800 metres high on sinuous smooth asphalt. In the slightly lower areas (a grassy terrain called puna) we saw lots of vicunas, but towards the top vegetation was pretty sparse and so was wildlife. Right at the top, though, Gid on a pee break saw a couple of mountain viscachas. Setting off from Chivay, we took the tourist road, occasionally peering down into the depths of the Colca Canyon. Looking up though, we were delighted to see at least a couple of condors. We were keen to continue the loop round to Arequipa despite knowing the tourist cars turn back to Chivay. Gid was confident of our route. An orange road should be hard surfaced, we weren’t going to take any nadgery dirt road. We should have known better – just because it’s orange on the maps (=”primary” – about 4 out of 7 levels), doesn’t mean it’s surfaced or easy.
It was clear right from Huambo – the end of the tour bus route – that Ruta 109 was now dirt road but it was wide and well surfaced. 111km to go caused a slight hesitation but potentially the alternative road was smaller. Off we went. Not long into the route we passed a small village and saw a condor soaring above. This was going to be delightful. Initially the surface fluctuated between reasonable hard packed gravel and washboard but as the kilometres passed and we wound our way round the mountain road we were beside sheer drops and on looser stuff. Gid squirmed losing the back wheel on fine sand. I managed to hold the bike up with a slide left then right but it felt like treacherous stuff. Trucks ahead seemed reassuring until we caught them up and couldn’t see a damn thing with the dust they threw up. We managed to pass one just round a corner as the wind took the dust-cloud away clearing the view. We comfortably pulled ahead until we again hit deeper sand. Gid got through calling back that I’d need to go slowly and put my feet down for extra stability. That worked until my back wheel caught on a large buried rock. I rocked backwards and forwards trying to ride over it but with feet sliding in the loose sand I was concerned about tipping over. With the truck approaching from behind and me stuck in the middle of the road Gid, now clear of the sand, parked his bike and rushed back. At 4000m that’s no mean feat. He pulled the child’s head sized rock from under my back wheel and off I went but he couldn’t make it back to his bike before the truck passed.
We were managing ok, the bleak scenery was worth a photo stop, but probably we averaged only 20-25mph, which makes 100km/60 miles quite a long ride – we don’t have the skills to drift and slide the bikes for higher speeds on loose stuff, and maybe the loaded down and modest Himalayans wouldn’t shrug off the hammering that would involve, even if RE show it in their (unloaded, day trip) publicity photos.
Then the road works began. Each one left the road in a very precarious state for two wheelers – loose fine sand, thick wet mud and other vehicles close behind. The road is too narrow to close only one side, and the terrain (and little traffic) doesn’t lend itself to constructing diversions. So the road is closed for a phase of work, then opened for traffic to clear. One such stretch took 40 mins to pass. Once through we thought that was it but hit a second major road ‘building’ disruption. Again we were stopped for 45 mins or so watching as the water lorry sprayed water across the road followed by the grader going backwards and forwards many times. We saw a roller arrive at the top of the road works and were quite relieved to think that the wet mud was at least going to be compressed. Wrong! Down came the approaching traffic. That was all the compression the wet mud got. We set off at the front of a ‘long’ line of trucks. The one immediately behind me thought it was a good idea to try to overtake. I blocked its way, not keen on being forced near the edge of a mountain road on wet mud. We made it! Pleased to have that ordeal behind us on we sped. Well, briefly. The last hour or more of our trip was blighted by awful quality deep dust road with an inaccessible new highway alongside us and copious amounts of fine sand. As we reached the unexpectedly sprawling town of Majes it was getting dark and we couldn’t see the diversion signs stuck up high on posts but were still faced with large quantities of this horrible fine sand. It must have taken 30 minutes – by then truly dark – to pick our way through the small town of Majes/El Pedregal. Our nightmare trip ended at seven pm having had one condor viewing stop since we set off at 10am that morning. Several days later when I look back I can barely raise a smile at what some would call an adventure!
In Arequipa we decided to go for an early bike service. The last service’s semi-synthetic oil might not be good for a full 6,000 miles of thrashing up and down many miles of mountain dirt roads. Equally, my clutch noise, whilst much reduced in these warmer climes and with a concerted effort to run/warm the engine before riding, is still occasionally discernible albeit much reduced. The original plan had been to service at the Royal Enfield dealer in Santiago, Chile, where the service schedule would be a bit late and more expensive than Peru. Better to be safe than sorry, although it might leave us hunting for more oil in Ushuaia.
The city itself is like many other ancient Latin cities. Its inner centre has the ancient square on this occasion the cathedral, a combination of museum, main church and chapels spans one complete side built in the local white rock and is then surrounded by large municipal buildings and perhaps a few tourist shops.
Our lodging as is our preferred option for city breaks is an AirB&B apartment which gives secured parking, some room to spread out in and often some sort of gym. We’re looking out over a park which is a nice touch on this occasion.
Having seen the cathedral we headed in the opposite direction to visit the Unesco listed convent. It’s an ancient self contained unit with numerous kitchens, chapels, prayer rooms, accommodations etc. each connected by narrow streets. Twenty sliced in half large earthenware pots creating a laundry system in one corner. The second floor, in the main, no longer exists as a result of many earthquakes but rambling through the expanse gave a feel of the tranquillity that must have existed.
Returning to our accommodation at around five took us through the rougher end of town. The traffic was dense and so was the foot fodder. The pavements were heaving as we wound our way past street vendors selling everything from single cigarettes to pop to gadgets to fried convenience food. These edged the pavements while small booths for shops lined the inner streets occasionally leading back through small accesses to rows of similar booths generally selling all the same stuff. One lady sat on steps leading to the first floor with shelves lined with pop and snacks on either side of her. Every space was crammed!
The logistics for getting the parts to Arequipa proved a bit on the sluggish side – nearly a week. As we waited for our bikes to undergo their services we spent a lot of time asleep, idling, or working on the computer. Gid had a cold, which he gave to me, and both our spines appreciated the idling. Seems we needed a rest. The parts finally arrived in the middle of Friday, and we picked them up last thing, back to our apartment. Saturday morning we rushed back to the taller, Clare’s bike seemed to have an oil leak – actually it turned out to just be a rather messy oil drain that hadn’t been cleaned – the Hims have a bash plate, and it does need some care, or a post-drain scrub-out, to not end up with oil caught in it and dripping everywhere. Cleaned up (and the clutch cover bolts tightened), we trundled off to the nearby gas station: Which led to another return, Gid’s tank was super-pressurised after sitting in the sun, which typically means the tank expansion hose was pinched when the tank went back on – how Clare’s fuel leak happened in Colombia. Freed up. Finally we set off. A bit hastily, it turned out, the next days were long old rides, it took Gid several days to notice that the rear axles were crooked, Clare’s so much that a lot of whacking was needed to free it! Asking around, this isn’t untypical, a lot of expert bikers always do their own work on quality grounds.
The Arequipa delay has also given us more time to contemplate the end of the trip. We have always known that our end-of-November deadline – actually the end of our 18-month travel insurance – means we’ll be heading into the chilly, windy, south at the end of spring, not summer. But getting out again may take a significant chunk of time too. The problem is the motorcycles. South American nations really don’t like private imports of vehicles, which means we can’t “just sell them”. Whereas shipping them home will cost more than a well-used Himalayan is worth, and these sturdy, versatile, but rather slow bikes aren’t what we want to ride in the UK. We always knew this, but the many different solutions discussed online, and used by fellow travellers need a bit more consideration.
Our last days in Peru were curious, we thought we’d check out the hot, sunny, sea level Pacific coast, since we’ve not seen the Pacific since Panama. How wrong. Thanks to the Humboldt Current, it was cool, foggy, damp. Not Marbella in summer, more like Minehead in March. Still, the mining works at Ilo were impressive. We headed back up the hill, back to the daytime warmth of the Atacama desert – and the Chilean border.
Sweeping back up and round seems to be our Colombian style. From Donkey Sunrise we headed back towards Bogota to cross the Cordillera Oriental (eastern mountain range) on our way down to Villaviejo to see the Tatacoa ’desert’. We knew we wouldn’t make it in a day so stopped in Saldaña with beautiful views of the river.
Setting off to complete our route to Villaviejo proved interesting as the hotelier was telling us the road was blocked. ‘The rice growers are protesting and have blocked the road,’ he said. We still had a fair way to go so thought we’d set off and see how far we could get. He hung around looking at his phone and strolled over to show us that it was possible to get through using the back roads but still didn’t mention, or we didn’t understand, that the road was blocked immediately – barely three hundred metres away. We set off crossed the bridge and there it was. Tractors and lorries blocking the road!
We snuck behind the lorry parked to our right and thought we’d cracked it as we were following a few other vehicles. The tarmac soon gave way to dirt but it wasn’t a bad road. After a few miles an approaching moto was talking to each driver. He told us we could take the next left. ‘Motos could get through but not four wheels,’ he said. The lane was a little sandy in places but ahead of one stationary truck we could see a few vehicles passing on the highway. All looked good. Approaching the end we started to notice something strange in front of the parked truck. Tractors had dumped a whole pile of mud over a metre high blocking the entire width of the road. One end was smoother where light bikes had nipped over and gone. Us, on our Hims, nearing 300kg weren’t going to nip over the loose dirt as demonstrated by a local, skinny old man on his 90cc step-through.
We turned back and set off again. This time heading off on a more remote track breaking away from the bigger dirt road. It was stony, rutted in places – a farmers track with beautiful views which crossed a stream and did, according to the SatNav, seem to make it back to the highway. None of the other wiggle-arounders seemed to share our route, but it was on our GPS as – something. Surely no one would bother to block this? One hour later having covered 8km we were speeding along the highway again.
Our loss of time didn’t matter as our destination wasn’t too far away and we could cut off a chunk by taking the ferry across the river. We found our way through the town and down towards the river Magdalena. A big fast flowing river which unbeknownst to us was in spate. The water was swelling up over the nearby fields and flooded the route down to the moto ferry. A visible but distant local signalled with crossed forearms that the ferry was cancelled. Try the car ferry that’s back up the road a bit another local suggested. That was also out of action. A long loop to a bridge at Nieve then. An hour and a half later we arrived at our destination, Villaviejo.
The lane to the moto ferry. Looks dodgy. Ferry cancelled anyway.
The Tatacoa desert ambles were very pleasant. Our guide, Catrina, was very knowledgeable describing geographical features as we strolled through the Gray gorge. After a siesta she picked us up, for part two of our day, in a tuktuk which is always great fun. She took us off to the Red canyons and later on up to an observatory. The observatory was small but perfectly functional. It’s owner Guilliame, a very knowledgeable man who enthused about his topic stating it was self funded and, as we were endlessly told, struggling financially. Having looked through the telescope we ended up on our backs peering up at the sky while he enthusiastically waved his torch around creating arcs in the sky. Thankfully Gid passed the trial and answered most of his questions when he stopped to draw breath and test us.
As we were released and returning to our feet I noticed something scurrying away. Initially I thought it might be a cockroach but it seemed rather big for that. I kept on about it and was just able to pick out it’s route in the dark. With a beam of light hitting it it was revealed to be a scorpion. We’d been snuggling up to a scorpion as we flapped our arms around pointing in the direction of this constellation or that.
Tatacoa beasties can have their own gallery….
Time is pressing. We’ve taken thirteen months to get from Alaska down to southern Colombia. Two months in Colombia – we can finally spell it correctly. We’re about to cross into Ecuador where we will cross the equator. That’ll be half way then and we have four and a half months left on our travel insurance. That seems like very bad planning but the trip has to be completed inside nine months or over fifteen because of the limitations of the seasons. Having started in Alaska in June, at the onset of the summer, one year on it’s the start of the winter in the tip of the southern hemisphere. Apart from the possibility of snow at sea level in Ushuaia we have to cross the Andes mountain range to reach it. Hence we need to delay our arrival in the southern hemisphere in order to complete our trip. Our plan is to head down the warmer coastal route and cross the mountain range at the last possible chance in a hope that the mountain roads will be snow free and open. Fingers crossed.
But we still have to make progress southbound and getting that right is tricky. Our route from Villaviejo according to our navigation devices was three hours long when we set off but took seven hours thanks to another road block by the rice growers, road works where an endless stream of trucks came through and delayed us another half hour, followed by a political procession which also blocked the road. Add in a coffee break and lunch – the combination of the lot more than doubled the time it took. Over three or four months it should even out but we certainly need to err on the side of caution when estimating the time it will take.
Our plan has always been to stop just short of a border and cross the following morning. Hence we proceed through the three hour process and set off in the new country early to mid afternoon. Plenty of time to make a destination before it gets dark. But San Agustin was an awkward distance to the border. More than a day but not two days or so we thought. Gid was keen to throw in some planning time to reassess our schedule for our southerly route and thought that our previously planned half day visit to San Agustin Archaeological ruins would give that opportunity.
Leaving San Agustin we set off with a clearer idea of our timing but once again we were caught out by reality. Our host said it takes four hours to reach Popayan and looking at the map we had thought we’d make it a whole lot further south and be near the border for a next morning’s crossing. The 90km of dirt road, Ruta 20, across the Puracé National Natural Park in the pouring rain put paid to that. An adventure all on it’s own as we squeezed past articulated lorries who seemed to think of course the road was theirs (not that we argued) but at times we where struggling not to slide off the muddy road into the soft ‘gutter’ at the edge. Once through that we thought now we’d make up some time. That was before we came round a high mountain pass to look down into the valley, across a river, and up the other side. Blocked! A complete grid lock. Luckily, on motos we can squeeze past a lot of it but as it winds backwards and forwards down then up the mountain side it was again slow. We never did find out what the hold up was as at the front of the queue it was clear. But, the army had clearly been doing something major down at the river crossing, and received lots of hoots and thumbs up from appreciative citizens.
DCIM100GOPROGOPR4300.JPG
South of Popayan we found a roadside resort – both tired and frustrated we stopped. It had two splendid pools, a bar, and no electricity. With no idea of what was ahead we still hoped that with an early start we could make the border tomorrow. An early start was breakfast at eight. It wasn’t offered any earlier but if we’d known that it would be nearer eight thirty we might have declined in order to get on the road. We had a drink break and stopped to put on rain clothes as the weather deteriorated and we were climbing up into the clouds but pressed on along the fine Ruta 25 to make the border.
We arrived at the Ipiales border at 3pm. Having read that the South American borders are quicker than Central America’s we went ahead. We’ll be out in a couple of hours or so I thought. The passport paper work might be quicker but the queues weren’t and neither was the Ecuadorian Temporary Import Permit (TIP) for our bikes. Four hours later, already dusk, we left, finally on our way again. At eight o’clock we saw a big HOSTAL sign aglow in the darkness. We beeped at the gate and waved until the owners emerged to check us out. They opened up and weren’t our first Ecuadorian hosts nice! Soon Clare was wrapped in a big blanket with a mug of chocolate caliente, or two.
Settling into Ecuador we made our way down to Quito ticking a couple of boxes on the way. The first was a Lonely Planet recommended scenic road from Otovalo out to Apuela. The road was twisting up and down the mountain side and I’m sure the view was spectacular but shrouded in cloud we didn’t see a thing! Our day at the village for a recommended ‘flat’ walk (no flogging up another mountain for me) gave better views as did the return trip back along the winding road to Otovalo. Otovalo itself was the second attraction with it’s biggest in Ecuador outdoor market.
Our initial route to Quito was a little ambitious for us. Recommended by a keen adventurer bike, & fellow Himalayan, rider, Redd. One hundred metres up the track was enough to decide that it was probably going to get beyond my skill level. We turned back and headed along the main roads turning onto the E20 for less traffic and some great views.
Quito itself was a bit of an errand stop. New (Australian!) tyres, replacement parts for my now broken GoPro mount and extra socks for Gid. We handed on Redd’s gloves that had arrived late at Donkey Sunrise. We did visit a couple of museums and were pleased to see we’d moved on from the basic clay pots as the ancient indigenous people were very sophisticated from an early stage. But Quito itself was fairly mundane, at least the part we were in. Anyway, we had a nice rest in the AirBnb yuppie flat.
Having missed the equator line, foolishly whizzing across without noticing, we back tracked to the Museo Intinan and did the Northern Hemisphere / Southern Hemisphere tests before setting off south again. Our route, recommended by one of the moto shops in Quito, avoided the PanAmerican highway again. Enroute we should have been aware that things may turn interesting when we looped around the strategically placed bollards and a police car blocking the access to the road. The lane allowing traffic out was open so we bypassed the obstacles and set off.
We thought we had the measure of the problems when we crossed a few minor patches where water was spanning the road. With so many waterfalls along the way it was to be expected as well as the odd bit of debris at the road edge. Wrong! Before very long we met the tail end of a fairly long traffic jam. One advantage of the mountainous routes is that it’s frequently easy to see a fair way up or down the mountain side. Being on motos it’s easy enough to jump the queue and get near the front. A mix of various sized lorries paved the way, one aimed uphill and stuck in six inch mud, which had swept across the road as a part of a sizeable landslide, was blocking the road. Workers were trying to dig out a route, aware of the precipitous drop metres away. The lorry, to the cheers of the diggers, gave up and edged backwards. A route opened up. The erstwhile “workers” gleefully leapt off towards their own vehicles keen to get through the gap. We being ready and waiting cautiously made our way through the channels of deep mud.
Through – that would be it then. But the road turned out to be a series of surprises. Endless small floods crossing the road and other areas of landslides and deserted hotels before finally we found accommodation along the road side. Yet again there were JCB diggers and workers with shovels clearing the road. Our talented, artistic host told us of heavy rain falls in the last 24 hours. The mountain stream running alongside his hospadje had burst its banks higher up the mountain bringing trees down in its wake, blocking the channel under the bridge, flooding out, trees and all, over the road and through his out buildings. The entrance to his property was six inches deep in mud and despite clearing up his extension, a tide line of mud was still there 15 inches up the wall. Fortunately, the Hims on their new chunky tyres trundled through said mud to a safe berth amongst piles of tarmac scrapings waiting, from before the flood, to go down as carpark topping. Clare managed to resist the very attractive orchid ceramics and colourful 80cm square canvases.
As we departed the following morning a neighbour was calling in. They couldn’t access their house as the bridge was washed away. But Colombians are fast workers, already a backhoe had diverted from the roadworks, and spread a deep layer of the dry tarmac scrapings over the gateway mud, making our exit much easier, and crucially, reopening the business for customers without chunky new 50/50 tyres.
We set off again far more aware of the scale of the disaster happening around us. Gid had rechecked the Government advice about states of emergency which was nothing to do with criminal safety as we’d anticipated but a month ago it had warned of floods and road closures in Ecuador. Here we were in it. For a second time on this mountain route we headed off cautiously thinking the worst was behind us. To a degree it was but we soon found more ahead as we arrived at the back of another queue, this time for a foot or more of water coursing across the road.
Over the saddle into another valley the region flattened out a little to give spectacular views. The frequent rivers we were crossing – fortunately on bridges – were brown and thundering along. The biggest in this area is 500m wide. No wonder hydroelectric power is the main power source in Ecuador, albeit severely affected by drought recently.
For the second day now Gid has checked the route profile before choosing clothes – up and down ranging up to 3700m with an average altitude of 2761m – snow possible at night on the higher ground. On the chilly side then but we’re getting used to it. We hadn’t expected to get so cold when on the equator but soon realised that around 3000m high we were feeling chilly but drop back down to 2000m and potentially the extra clothing would need to come off.
Heading further down through Ecuador we were back on the E35, the PanAmerican Highway. Around the bigger towns it was a tedious four lane dual carriageway, although the traffic moved fairly quickly when not jammed up in queues. Once clear of the towns it was a very pleasant winding road with a reliable good surface and sweeping bends. Our Hims could hardly rise to the occasion of speedy sweeping, for some knee-down corners. The views were equally impressive with panoramic manicured pastures, cows, some hedges and enough trees to maintain a rural image. It could have been the Yorkshire Dales in England so cultivated it was.
Our border crossing of choice was La Balsa. It’s small with a minor mountain road approaching it. The road was metalled for the first half. That’s when it wasn’t blocked with land slides or just disintegrated into dirt/mud or collapsed away beneath the edge leaving gaps along the carriageway. The second half was dirt road but is narrower and probably in a better condition. Once again the views have been spectacular. Recessions disappearing into the distance. Deep valleys carved by mountain rivers. A final army checkpoint just before the steep ascent along a mountain ridge before a wiggly, and loose descent to the border hamlet.
Zumba
Zumba
Zumba at dawn
Zumba at dawn
Nearing La Balsa
La Balsa was the best kind of border crossing. The dusty main street contained an equally dusty pickup and a few sleeping dogs. The pickup was noticeably better parked than the dogs. Time lapse photo frames would have been distinguished by the chickens being in different positions. We stopped at the last, open sided, building. An amiable policeman ambled out, gestured “park here”, and pointed us to the discreet immigration office. A few minutes wait, and the solitary official did his bit, stamping our passports. When we emerged, a full-sized coach emblazoned with a university logo was pulling in after descending the same twiddly dirt road – we’d got through immigration just before its 40 estudiantes! We had to ask for the Aduana (customs) office, and there it was, shuttered. Oh – 10am on a Saturday. Next door said, ‘He might be in the restaurante, or asleep’. Let’s try the restaurante. We went back to ask our helpful policeman. He grinned, and pointed to the young fatigued hombre sharing his table. A few minutes later, TIPs cancelled, we trundled over the bridge to the Peruvian side. Which had much newer, neater, bigger buildings, but was fundamentally the same. There were more travellers here for the equally few and friendly officials to process, but we were still clear of the estudiantes, and after an hour or two we were rolling in Peru, land of the Incas and Paddington Bear!
A few final pictures:
On a hike to Lago Otun in Colombia, we were lucky enough to see a brace of Andean Condors!
And an ad-hoc selection of photos from both countries:
Latin America shows the way in constructive recycling of old tyres. This was in Quito.
Panama was to be a means to an end. We had to enter it because that is where we will fly or sail past the stretch of land known as the Darien Gap. It has been crossed with motorbike – not by motorbike. At an Overland event back in 2018 we attended a talk by a chap who had taken his bike across the Darien Gap. He had had his bike strapped to a float/pontoon and a number of ‘gerkers’ to assist with getting the bike through the jungle, across the swamps and passed the bandits. Not for us!
Neither is the more attractive route taken by Itchy Boots, an infamous motorbike blogger, when her bike was lashed onto a small fishing boat as the family sailed her across in what she has described as a ‘nerve wracking trip’. These sort of crossings that visited the islands on the way are increasingly clamped down on by the authorities. A ferry frequently referred to is alas only found nowadays in the ether. Our choice is air freight or container ship. Three days, or three weeks. Expensive, or cheap – well that’s before you add the cost of the storage before and after the actual shipping at extortionate prices per day. Then there’s the need to meet at a time that’s convenient to all the people with something in your container as it won’t be opened until all are present. The actual cost is also dependent on what else it is possible to get in the crate after our two bikes. We’ll fly them across! As far as we can tell, it isn’t even significantly worse for emissions, although clear info on that is hard to come by.
So, is Panama merely a route to the airport? Heck no, there’s loads to see here and it’s pretty accessible – except for the canal zone which is very extensive, definitely private property and well, if politely, guarded.
The Rio Sereno border crossing is well named. A laid back sleepyville, with a helpful biking janitor, a slow process, but low hassle for a border. Thirty minutes into Panama we were in the comfort of Helen and Scoop’s home. Helen, an ADVRider ‘Tent Space’ member, was kind enough to put us up for a couple of days while we found our feet and got to see some of the local attractions. This is the second time on our trip that we have been taken on a bike outing by our hosts and it evokes feelings of camaraderie and biker unity.
Somewhere in the west of Panama…
We spoke of our general direction of travel and desire to see some of Panama before we rushed to the airport. Helen and Scoop recommended the Caribbean north coast stating that the route across the mountains was beautiful – that’s number one then. Indeed the views of cloud cloaking the mountain tops was spectacular. ‘Presumably you’ll be heading down to the southernmost point on the PanAm in the Darian region before coming back up to Panama City to catch your flight?’ That had never crossed my mind but now seems just as important to us as heading up to Prudhoe Bay to start our trip. Prudhoe Bay is after all, where the Pan American Highway starts so there was never any doubt that we would go there. We’d better see the end of this northern “half” then!
Our highest point on Panama’s northern coast was Almirante. It’s the port where tourists catch the ferry across to the Bocas del Toro archipelago for another dose of tourism laced with the attraction of turtle nesting beaches. The latter was very tempting but we were very happy to avoid more tourism having maxed out in Costa Rica. Sadly, it’s the wrong time of year for the turtles which also influenced our decision. Finding accommodation was our first problem as there wasn’t much online and even less when we tried to check it out down mud lanes barely one car wide. Thankfully a local on a pedal bike led us down one such lane and round the back to find Edgar’s BnB. Edgar spoke very good English and was delightful, encouraging us to go walk-about. It was on our morning ramblings that we came across the dwellings on stilts down by the waters edge. We’d seen houses on stilts, the traditional indigenous dwellings, earlier on our route through the mountains but here they were right up close. Amongst the houses there were modern dug out canoes with flat sterns for the outboard motor. We were fascinated by the area and I tried beating the local kids at skipping – guess what?
Still building – the style works for the location
Later, down at Calovebora, we saw more of the indigenous life away from the tourist trail. Again, on the Caribbean shore where we saw many traditional dugout canoes of varying sizes and states of repair. The locals were very friendly and mutually intrigued. We ate their pesca y papas fritas (fish & chips), they offered to take us on a motorboat ride. Sadly we declined. I’d have jumped at the chance to have a go in one of their dugouts but that was never on offer and I wasn’t bolshy enough to ask just in case I fell in – amongst the cocodrillos???
Somebody didn’t appreciate the climb up the Cerro above Santa Fe
Worth it?
Clare was trying to operate her GoPro while riding on deep gravel – guess what happened next? Here comes the rescue.
Arrival at Calovebora
Just by chance we were in the right area to visit to La Ville de Los Santos on the Azuero peninsula at the time of their traditional fair. We had no idea what to expect but soon realised it was a Latin version of our Ardingly South of England Show in the UK. A mix of stalls, souvenirs, eateries, agricultural machinery and livestock but with the added attraction of cowboys. We’d been told on the Thursday that said vaqueros do a tour of the town and indeed we’d seen them off or so we thought. There were maybe 150-200 of them. On our way ‘home’ somewhat later we realised the real scale of the event. It took us two hours to cover the 1.5 kilometres as we sat and watched the hundreds of horses pass by interspersed with beer trucks and free rum top-ups to keep things lubricated. No wonder that there weren’t that many caballeros in the cowboy horse trials the following day.
The Carretera Pan Americana, Highway 1, is the backbone of Panama. We had to use it to reach just about any destination whether it was skipping along the Caribbean coast or the Pacific. There are virtually no parallel minor roads joining the towns, all the roads radiate off the Pan-American. This seems to be the norm along much of Central America’s Caribbean coast where boats are the method of transportation – or gringoes can fly in. But here in Panama it seems almost as difficult to traverse the Pacific coast. On one route Gid was keen to make it across without flogging along the dual carriageway again and came up with some restricted access routes. We’d laughed when the Garmin had stated ‘take the road on the right’ and it was gated farmland. But here he was planning something similar. I vetoed, and he didn’t demur.
It was at about this time that I realised the Garmin seemed to be regularly failing to use excellent roads on obvious routes. It was clear that Panama is actively extending its road network. In the UK I get reminders every so often to update the Garmin maps. I just needed to get round to doing an update and all would be ok. Local guy Darby, who you’ll meet later, had commented that the Garmin navigation is compromised by out of date mapping. I still didn’t think it was a big deal. Then our Open Street Map route into Panama City took us around the Cinta Costera 111 highway – a six laner, plus cycleway, arcing 2km out to sea to bypass the old town and fishing harbour. Garmin’s biker icon was in the water! Highway 111 didn’t look so new. Research showed it opened in 2014. That’s how out of date the 2025 Garmin mapping is! Unfortunately, Panamanian highway engineers are expert at cramming multiple divided highways, with multiple simultaneous slip roads on either or both sides, of the main carriageway, into tight spaces. Garmin was usually oblivious, but Gid’s OSMAnd knew them all but didn’t let on which one we needed. We’d be frantically guessing in a stream of traffic, or stopping on a tiny shoulder so Gid could try to zoom in enough to see the slip-roads and work out what “turn slightly right” actually meant. Very stressful, and a lot of profanity-strewn misroutes.
By luck all our planning, on a bigger scale, had fitted together seamlessly which gave us an extra couple of free days. We took off back down to the Azuero peninsula where we’d seen the fair, but this time aiming for the Pacific coast at the tip. On our return route we more or less by chance ended up at Punta Chame, a sort of peninsula on a peninsula. The road out there was somewhat lumpy and breaking up in places and there weren’t many buildings as we made our way out to the point. It seemed deserted. We found a Swiss cordon bleu chef and ordered the cheapest things on the menu. He explained that it is a kite surfing destination but at this time of year there is no reliable wind. No. Plenty of rain though! He suggested accommodation just up the road but Gid nearly fainted at the price. We were going to give up but decided to take a look at the shipping containers place. We’d stayed in one before and it was alright. This was too with a beautiful view. Beach access, mini swimming pool, what more could we want? We walked out to the tip of the peninsula the following morning when the tide was out. Barely a soul to be seen but the plastic strandline told of the human occupation.
Beach 1
Beach 1
Beach 2
Beach 2
Beach 3
Beach 3
Punta Chame
Punta Chame
Birds abounded. One, a juvenile yellow headed Caracara, seemed rather needy. Not only did it fail to fly away when I cautiously crept up to take a photo it actually came down to join me. It made some heart wrenching mewing sounds and kept creeping up to peck my toes with its serious looking beak. Sadly we didn’t have any food we could give it. It was gone on our way back so hopefully off to find a tasty lizard or crab.
We packed up the bikes ready for the half-day ride to Panama City – then it started to rain. Rain? No, it utterly pissed down, with thunder and lightning. We hunkered down in our luxury container and waited for the storm to pass. Everything disappeared in a grey mist. Gid went for a trunks-and-barefoot run on the beach once the lightening stopped. It was about this time that Clare’s intercom and Gid’s to-hand bicycle light both stopped working. Clearly a nominal IP67 isn’t equal to Panamanian rain.
Like pieces of a jigsaw coming together I was getting a better idea of Panama and how it ‘works’. Each new piece of information filled a gap in my understanding of a previous experience. There are six or seven main indigenous peoples in Panama who still practise many of their skills and traditions, protecting their language and way of life. Just outside Panama City we’d visited an Embera village where the tribe is descended from the Embera-Wounaan community down in the Darien area. They are hunter-gatherers who have been allowed to continue living in the rainforest near the capital city. But as it is now a National Park they’re not allowed to hunt. The nations tribespeople are some of the custodians of the rain forests that feed water to the Panama Canal. Outsiders can not readily develop Indian owned land. But they can. During our time in Panama we had had minor but enjoyable interactions with the three groups of indigenous people.
In our first ride into Panama City we’d attempted to get freebie views of the canal. Unlike canals in the UK with towpaths it’s almost all fenced off, along with its roads and services, which are set a good way back. One access was a success but the other attempts ended up down dead-ends, fenced off as part of the “Canal Zone”. One such effort seemed to lead through – private entrances to the sides with an open section and view point at the end. Merrily we arrived just past the parked up coach near the signs stating that crocodiles inhabited the area. No worries, I thought, there’s a long three foot tall barrier right along in front of us. I wasn’t even off my bike before an official arrived in a car. “Trespassing” I thought but no. Crocodiles was the problem. I queried whether they would get over the barrier. The uniformed guy repeated my gesture nodding that, ‘yes, crocodiles come over the barrier.’
Still keen to investigate the canal we visited the official Canal Museum in the city. It was within walking distance from our lodgings but massively biased towards the political story. Three floors of it for the more robust inquisitor. We finally made a trip to the more expensive Mira Flores, the canal side viewing platforms and information centre. Still a bit frustrating for engineer Gid – there’s very little real “how it works” information.
Getting a ship through all the locks takes eight hours but cuts out a three week trip around Cape Horn. It consumes a huge amount of water – viable because of the huge amount of rain the region receives and caches in the rainforest and lakes. In 2016 at Mira Flores, Panama opened larger, modern locks to enable bigger ships to navigate the canal. This latest design conserves 60% of the water making them more water efficient than the old locks which are now over 110 years old. At the visitor centre, a film transposed sepia images of the original steam machinery digging holes, rubble all around, with modern cranes dredging larger loads from a water filled cut. All of our progress is causing its own problems as global climate change is impacting on the region, reducing the rain fall on which the Panama canal is dependent. What does the future hold? Even with the canal Panama is one of the few carbon negative countries in the world, as the 4m population is powered by hydroelectricity, and the rainforest, though depleted, soaks up more CO2 than the humans emit. Most countries have less renewable energy supplies, and nothing like the CO2 sucking rainforest (trees gain bulk maybe 10 times faster than in, say, the UK).
Panana City is like many other cities in Central America and beyond. A complex mix of sky scraper apartment blocks, improvised housing – plastic strips, corrugated iron, cardboard; street sleepers, bare feet, designer trainers, the near naked, beggars, private gyms, plush plazas, derelict sites, shipping container market stores, supermarkets, street vendors, blocked drains, localised floods, three lane highways round the bay. All juxtaposed impacting on each other.
Interestingly, it has relatively few motorcycles – most un-Central-American.
View from our AirBnb. 20m pool – win!
Old Town 1
Old Town 2
Old Town 3
Old Town Museo de Mola
Old Town seen from AirBnb
More locals
As Clare wrote at the top, Panama City is the conventional place where most PanAm travellers have to surrender their wheels to boat or plane. The PanAm loudly claims to be the world’s longest road, but it mumbles and blushes when anyone mentions “Darien”. For 90km across the Panama/Columbia border, there is no road. Not even an official track. The swampy jungle can be penetrated on foot, ask the smugglers, but even military teams struggle with any kind of vehicle. It’s supposed to be snake and bandit infested too. So like most “travellers”, we will use freight services to skip it.
But to the extent allowed by governments here, and our government’s advice limiting our insurance cover, we tried to get to the end of the road. We had to join, indeed create, an “organized tour”, to visit Panama’s Darien region. We had a jolly two days led by Darby, proprietor of Moto Tour Panama, who would normally prefer to hire you a speedy BMW. I have to say, we envied the F800GS’s headlamp, it seemed to show the road after dark, not a feature of the Himalayan lamps.
10th May was a big day. We rode into Yaviza, the last town on the PanAm’s northern half.This footbridge is the end. Most of the transport between villages here is by boat, as in the picture. However, in the background you can see a new bridge being built. Maybe soon, you can go a little further.
A Short Tour of Yaviza
Somebody said there’s a birdwatching event down here…
After this little adventure, we backtracked to Panama City, for a little more tourism and logistics, before freighting the bikes to Colombia… Officially, we’re either halfway, or two thirds, through the trip, depending on if you count in continents or miles or months.
I was a little anxious about entering Nicaragua. In my mind, fed by various perhaps out of date articles, Nicaragua was going to be more lawless and therefore more dangerous to be in. There are tales that the police are even more corrupt than usual. Both threats have been with us since entering Mexico. So far, either the reports are wrong, or we’ve been lucky. But, we have seen more road accidents in Central America than we have ever before.
The Honduras-Nicaragua border crossing was particularly tedious and rather exasperating as we had to stop here then there and no one told us about the over there. Having had our documents checked at one oficina and told now you can go that should have been ‘now you can go over there to the next stage’. Gid is very thorough at researching the requirements for each border crossing and not to be fobbed off, but even he didn’t foresee the number of times Nicaragua would check each document. There were about 7 stages! Regis, a fellow traveller we met in Leon told of how he was fined while exiting Honduras when imigracion saw that his entry documentation wasn’t properly stamped. He had been illegal and had to pay the fine of $250 but only had $230. He had to wait until a fellow French traveller baled him out! Although we’ve done plenty of borders before, these are remarkably long winded, and it’s our first trip combining tedious borders with motorcycle import permits, really hot weather – and motorcycle clothing. We melt.
From a border we usually plan to stop pretty soon after, but the pueblo of Condega was out of rooms – “Convencion” – so we rode on along the main NIC1 highway to Esteli, to kip in a windowless concrete box with free condoms. Our actual destination was San Juan de Limay, the nearest town to petroglyphs marked on the map but it was getting a bit late for that rather uncertain route. We wanted to settle into the country before setting off on potentially rough tracks and start earlier in the day.
From Esteli there appeared to be a route cross-country but the advice was not to take this ‘short cut’ because of the potential for problems crossing the multiple rivers! We looped back north and round. The paper map showed the NIC38 as mostly dirt road, but OpenStreetMap said it was fairly major. We turned onto a laid block surface which I had expected to revert back to dirt once out of the town but that wasn’t the case. In the main it was a beautiful rural road all the way with fab views where we could actually stop and take a few photos, if we lifted our eyes above the endless twists and turns through the hills.
Our arrival at San Juan de Limay was quite amusing. It’s a small rural town, no tourist hotspot. Gid had found three guest houses online but when we arrived the first didn’t seem to exist. We headed for the Parque Central to get our bearings in the town. Pausing outside the Museo de la Revolution, to Gid’s annoyance I went in. What were they going to tell me in there he was saying. The very helpful young lady understood enough of what I was trying to explain. She shut up shop and led us around the town on her trailie. The first two accommodations fell flat as they were full. The third place we visited was still running and had space. We’d never have found it – hospedage – lodging house – was badly spray painted on the gatepost . This was it then. I went to look at the room in a block that could have been the old stables out the back of the family house. I came out in fits of laughter. Gid was appalled at how rude that was but it bought new meaning to en-suite. The room was small. No problem there but it consisted of a bed and folding chair, a fan and a shower/toilet trough. No towel, no sheet, no soap, NO TOILET PAPER, no door lock. The sink was communal with a wash board and trough in front of the rooms. They all caused us some amusement. The shower head was at the top of a pipe as you’d expect but the slightest turn of the faucet and the head catapulted forwards spraying a gush of water over the gutter right onto Gid’s kit. More hilarity but the cacophony that started at 4:15 was definitely a groan. Our two cockerels were trying to wake the neighbour. Any disturbance in the brood resulted in an almighty thud on the corrugated tin roof that was suspended above our walls. To use the one socket in the room was a balancing act but it did the trick – we had a cup of tea in the morning.
Having settled in we set off in sloppy sandals to see what we could find out about trips to the petroglyphs. The town hall seemed a suitable place to start our enquires. A rather grand name for an old single story building with a few offices. The guard patrolling outside suggested the end door was the way to go. He took us down there and spoke to the staff. One very kind lady came out to check what it was we wanted and asked us to wait in the main entrance. Thirty minutes later we were off! They didn’t check whether it was possible but had arranged it there and then. Five of us – three staff and the two of us, piled into the 4WD Toyota Hilux. The lady passed us a leaflet of gordas – stone fat lady carvings that can be found around the town and local area. I thought we were off to see some of these but no. We took a back road out of the town and bounced along a dirt track, forded a small river and finally stopped at a pool. The driver stayed put but the rest of us piled out and set off on foot clambering over rocks to cross the water flow. What were we doing in flimsy footwear with not a camera between us? Benito, the main guide, led the way and swept the debris off the few petroglyphs. The young lady was new to the carvings too but was at least wearing trainers. Our return route was adorned with stops at a couple of local craft places – what a lovely day!
I had expected to move quickly through Nicaragua but in fact it has been the opposite. Spurred on by near perfect road surfaces (everything is relative) and the relaxed nature of the people it’s been a pleasure to be here. As always the people we meet and their recommendations of must see this or that has helped to forge our plans.
At Leon, our first stop after the petroglyphs, we stayed at Casa Lula hostel and bonded well with a lovely group of experienced travellers. No one was in a rush, tales were exchanged, must visits suggested. The luxury hostel was a comfortable contrast to the Esteli condom box and Limay hospedage. A guided tour of the town very much focused on the revolution despite there being some lovely architecture too. That isn’t so surprising as all the murals were of scenes from the revolution. It may have been forty years ago but some murals were reworked as recently as six months ago to keep their political message fresh. Our guide, Antonio, explained the events portrayed and also some of the symbology. Many of the characters (the deceased ones?) were painted with prominent shadows, and these represented their effects on Nicaraguan society and politics after their – mostly premature – deaths. Leon is Nicaragua’s intellectual – and revolutionary – hub, and while there were a fair few tourists, they didn’t swamp the place as they had in, say, Antigua, Guatemala.
Christian,Aude,Roger,Regis, in Leon
One’s never far from politics anywhere in Nicaragua – red and black FSLN banners are everywhere, and on some roads I noted all the electricity poles were painted in the colours, too. It feels a bit one party state, although formally, it isn’t.
Thankfully our hostel host was interested in our petroglyphs excursion and pleased that we’d gone off the beaten track. He lamented that most tourists hit the west coast going straight down the main road and out the other end. ‘It’s such a pity,’ he said, ‘as Nicaragua has so much to offer and is a very safe place.’ Our horizons were expanding! Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Central America, but also unusually – kind of – socialist. It’s also, currently, not terribly democratic. Some effects of this might be the lower murder rate, far fewer visible guns, the better highways, the better driving, the much greater use of beasts of burden, and the worst housing we’ve seen on this trip.Plus the curious phenomena of being begged by a chap who was fitted with a pacemaker – But then, since Belize, the Caribbean coast has offered a uniquely stylish form of begging.
No matter where our new routing may take us Granada, just down from Leon, was next. It’s the oldest city in Central America, with elegant buildings and lots of history. So it’s a must see destination and indeed is a very touristy town. It has a lovely promenade to edge Lake Nicaragua, and a small pier. We stayed near the lake but were warned to go further along the shore away from the town centre to find more pleasant places to swim. As I’ve said, everything is relative. We did venture thus to risk a dip only to find that our swimming strokes stirred up one bit of rubbish or another. One dip was plenty! Shady trees and a strong morning “sea” breeze made it bearable in the 7am heat offering Gid a venue for a rare jog.
The town was lovely with a vibrant central square. Despite the churches being flagged up as having splendid architecture and historical relevance they were in the main shut. There were three on our bucket list to see: one we did see inside, a second we were able to peer into a rather dull side chapel when a service was taking place but the most ancient cathedral in Central America, the piece de resistance, was hidden behind its firmly shut doors with nothing to suggest opening times. Circling it we found a very shabby rear door that advertised language lessons, but nothing about the cathedral itself.
A large part of northern Nicaragua is inaccessible jungle while the southern half has the 160km long Lago Nicaragua in the middle creating a this side of the lake or that side of the lake dichotomy. Surprisingly there is a border post at the end of the east or west route down past the lake but no joining road at the bottom. It’s an odd looking border, really, why doesn’t Costa Rica extend up to the shore of the lake? Presumably the Spanish Empire had a reason, when it demarcated the administrative boundaries this way.
From Granada we took off slightly northwards curving back to reach the ‘that side of the lake’ more petroglyphs being a strong attraction. Ok we’d seen some in very enjoyable and amusing circumstances but our National Geographic map has many references to them and surely some were going to be more impressive than the six carvings we’d seen. They were! Over 2000 we were told. Many of them were highly graphic and in remarkably good condition for their 2000 years of existence. We’d followed a sign from the highway 8 miles up a dirt road to reach the ranch style site. A young guide took us around a trail explaining the meaning of the petroglyphs. Many were to do with fertility and childbirth. Some carved on standing stones showed the chief. While another showed the dog he would eat. We were now, after months, out of the Mayan area – these carvings were by the Chontales, but there were still some similarities of style.
At the end of the NIC71 highway – mercifully now all paved, and really rather a lovely ride – was Bluefields. ‘We don’t see tourists down here. They don’t come this far’, was one greeting we had. It was a bustling town with a multitude of taxis. Tichy cars that four people would pile into and off they crept, or lunged, forcing into a gap. At least three taxis would fit across the narrow, bumpy streets, and frequently did.
This eastern coast on the Caribbean is called the Moskito Coast after its original human, not insect, inhabitants. The Moskito Coast of Nicaragua (and coastal Honduras & what’s now Belize) was isolated from the Spanish Pacific coast, with only one through connection – via Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. Consequently it was associated mostly with the British-dominated Caribbean islands, and was part of the British Empire until around 1860. To this day, English is spoken in Bluefields.
A museum told the tale of the slave trade dating back to the 15th century. Two hundred years later it came to an end in British territories when the British Government offered to pay the slave owners £25 per slave. They were never paid but the people were freed. Quite a few freed slaves from the Caribbean islands came here at that time. That was the British/American slave trade of transatlantic journeys: The Spanish Empire’s slavery was quite different – the Spaniards enslaved the indigenous population of the Americas where they found them. That form of slavery was formally ended a little earlier, shortly after “New Spain” declared itself independent of “old” Spain in 1821, although “old” Spain waited another 20 years.
To this day most of the regional transport is by boat. Bluefields’ connection to the capital Managua was by dirt road and riverboat until the new road was completed in the last five years. Bluefields is Nicaragua’s Caribbean port, and the boat hub for the rest of the coast.
For me the market by the waters edge was the highlight of the town. A small school hall sized market where people sat with their wares peering out of the gloom backlit by the opening at the far end where it reached a harbour arm. Out on the harbour arm a few boats were secured, produce still piled high. Gid was keen to try some of the novel fruits. One lovely Nico hombre split his fruit open for Gid to try it. One came my way too. Gid slurped through his and agreed to buy a few. A bag was a problem but voila! I had one. The chap enthusiastically put a good dozen or so in and said “30 Cordobas” (about 70p). Gid pulled out a 50 note which caused some concern as there was no change. After a moments hesitation the man put another half dozen fruits into the bag despite our protestations and was then happy to keep the money. I was highly amused as I’d given Gid my fruit too. Thankfully, back in town a barrow man pulling his cart full of fruit passed me as I waited for Gid to buy groceries. I carefully stopped the man whose tummy enabled him to support the bar no-handed. There was a space on his cart so I quickly put most of the fruit on it smiling at him as I did so. He soon realised what I was up to and didn’t seem to mind.
Our route through Nicaragua continued as we backtracked hunting for sloths and quetzals. Having been fairly unsuccessful at finding much wildlife on our own we opted for guided tours. One such tour overlooking Matagalpa resulted in guide David claiming for us a female quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala [Alas, when, later we looked at the photo with Nubie, a keen birdwatcher, it looked a lot more like an elegant trogon]. At the same location we had a sloth in a tree and a toad in our handbasin. We were told, ‘Yes, there is a toad in the basin. That’s where it lives.’. And did we mention the butterflies?
Lake Apoya was our best location. The warm volcanic crater lake was clean enough to swim in. The hotel pontoon tantalisingly floating twenty metres away. Our steep jungly trek up to the village at the craters rim, to the soundscape of howler monkeys, passed another load of stunning petroglyphs – completely unsigned and unexpected. The lack of exposure to the elements may be why they are still so pronounced.
Ometepe island was another attempt to see sloths. An online search suggested that they were around on Volcan Maderas. Wrong! Not here we were reliably told by locals. The scenic ride around the eastern end of the island compensated for our lack of sloths. Amusingly, when we passed a sign for petroglyphs we didn’t even stop. Mombacho on the mainland came up trumps though. We found our own sloth – distantly – curled up in a tree, then a guided night walk found one actually doing the sloth upside-down tree locomotion – hurrah!
Now by this point in the posting, our biking friends are chafing – what about the riding, how are the bikes? The roads are in pretty good nick, and more are surfaced than to the north. At least two long rides (38 and 71) were really nice, light traffic, good surface, entertaining and scenic roads. There’s a much more restrained feel to the driving and riding. That’s possibly because we saw a lot of police actually taking an interest in driving standards, which may be why foreign riders complain of “corruption” – the speed limit is maximum 80kph and even those roads have many short sections of much less. A KTM Super Adventure might be hard to restrain: The Himis kept us out of trouble, but still blast past the lorries. Someone says it’s more fun to ride a slow bike fast, than a fast bike slow. The SUVs and new pickups still flew past, occasionally.
But some of the accommodation – even posh places – have been up bloody awful tracks that we would have not voluntarily have tackled. The Himis seem to take it in their stride – first gear seems to chug up anything that can claim to be a route – but our skills and strength are strained and we arrive in a frazzled state of mind and a muck sweat.
DCIM100GOPROGOPR2720.JPG
There was a scary moment leaving our hostel in Matagalpa, coming down the very steep, loose, dirt track (can’t call it a road), Clare couldn’t hold the bike on the rear brake, pressing with all her strength. The 300 kilo combo of Clare, baggage, Indian steel and souvenirs was gaining speed! Fortunately it all stayed rubber down until the slope eased.
Photo – Peter Damsgaard
That’s when we spotted Clare had unexpectedly worn down her rear brake pads (not the fronts, of course there’s a set of those under her seat). Unfortunately, Royal Enfield have no presence in Nicaragua. The pads might have lasted until we got to San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, but Gid’s online researches revealed that possibly a very few local bikes shared the pad pattern, and after about half a dozen dealers and parts places (repuestos), somebody found a badly packaged set from Bajaj in the shop’s box of oddities. Alarmingly, they cost only $3. But they dropped in fine and do seem to work. Adjusting Clare’s pedal higher has made it easier to apply more pressure, even seated, which seems to have been the actual problem.
I-Spy on the highway: The 1979 revolution didn’t enamour Nicaragua to the United States (remember the “Contra” affair?), so of course the USSR pitched in with support. Thus giving Gid a little entertainment spotting the USSR’s automotive antiques among the Toyotas and Chevrolets.
So, as we go on to Costa Rica, crossing a border from one on Central America’s poorest countries, to one of the richest – how was Nicaragua? Just great. It actually did feel safer than its northern neighbours, for example, police and security guards are still common, but less often armed. It’s often quite underdeveloped, with an eye closed we can mistake poverty and improvisation for bucolic bliss, and tourists are rare enough to be welcomed. The underdevelopment, and perhaps a degree of isolation after the revolution, mean that much more old growth forest remains than in some neighbours. The only regret, really, is that so many times, we stayed in accommodations run by foreigners, as we ofttimes didn’t find local places where we were headed.
Finally, a few scenes from Nicaragua that don’t fit into the narrative above, but are just nice to see.
After extending our beach stop in El Salvador to allow Gid to rise from his sickbed, it felt good to be back on our bikes and focused on covering distance. Well, some distance – our stops aren’t far apart in Central America, as there’s plenty to see. Most of these countries have nominally a middling population density, but in practice crowded urban areas, and middle density farming on the coastal plain and valley bottoms, leaving very few folks left to populate large areas in the hills or the north, toward the Caribbean coast. Much of which is still roadless jungle. Many of the small communities there are not connected by road to their countrymen. Being roadless, these large areas are not connected to us, either, we’re only in the more populous areas.
Copan Ruinas, our first Honduran destination, was slightly NW from our border crossing. After 2 hours in the border, Aduana, we were fairly focused on making some progress but then reality hit. The road was still under construction. Sections of it were near perfect but for some reason it had 2m bands of gravel every 150m or so. No need for speed bumps here. The views were beautiful but viewing spots are a luxury seldom found. Other parts of the road were very much still under construction but we soon learnt to go ‘native’. Honduras is back to swarms of bikes. At road works they weave their way to the front and beyond given half a chance. On one such occasion we followed the bikers and a family of cyclists through on to the coned-off raised new road. Ten metres or so before the end of this section the lead bikes peeled off to the left, across the approaching traffic, along a dirt track bordering the road, through the petrol station and down a narrow lumpy path and back onto the road. I stopped at the start of the footpath. I wasn’t alone. A man on his bike loaded with wood stopped too. We dubiously looked at each other and the kangaroo jumps the bikers ahead were doing along the footpath. Gid squeezed through. He got 2/3 of the way along with his bike bucking all over the place and stopped on what seemed like a position stranded half over the next lump. After that moment of route planning, so Gid says, (or buttock clenching), the Him bounced through ok. With a subtle shake of our heads the guy and I turned back. We had to wait a short while before we could squeeze out alongside the approaching traffic. Safe and sound off we went.
A little further along the road we took a turning. Dirt road the navigation informed us but – wrong, It was a newly laid 8km stretch of beautiful surfaced road with some wonderful views thrown in as we wound our way up and down mountain sides. Encouraged by this we took the next dirt road too. This 30km short cut bypassed a whole big loop around the top Gid informed me. But no such luck this time. Although a definite road it was dust, gravel, ruts, gulleys, hills, descents and a ford , along which, in the main, a steady dribble of motos overtook us. That was encouraging as it felt as if it was in constant use servicing the villages and other tracks along the way. Nearing the end however, three men overtook us but then stayed just in front. That was unnerving as they should have disappeared into the dust. Why were they hanging back with us? Thankfully it wasn’t too far until we were back on the main road. Our escort went in the other direction.
Copan Ruinas was delightful. Although another cobbled ancient town it had retained some of its charm because it wasn’t so full of tourist shops or heaving with tourists. When walking round the ruins themselves we were two out of four people in the place although a couple of groups were arriving as we left. The main attraction of Copan ruins, another Unesco site, was the option to go down into two tunnels and look at the previous temples. Because the temples were enlarged by successive kings who wanted their temple to be bigger and better, the carvings on the former temples had been covered and were still in very good condition. Somehow it felt magical to glimpse at what had been hidden away.
Archaeological work was very much still in action both on the surface and inside the tunnels which felt as though we were experiencing history as it was being uncovered. The displays in its mini museum linked the Copan ruins to several of the temple sites that we have already visited. Copan is the last major and most southerly Maya site in Central America.
We decided to traverse Honduras along the northern, Caribbean coast. This has a wealth of cultures with eight different languages being spoken. One of which is Garifuni – the Caribbean freed slave culture & its partly creole language scattered all along the Caribbean coast from Belize south. Asking for milk at the local store in Tornabe proved interesting. It wasn’t Spanish or English is all I can say. The place felt a bit like Hopkins in Belize, except zero tourists, as the locals were of African heritage and mooching around on foot. The only hotel, like most of the other buildings, was right on the beach, with our bikes parked on the sand between us and the sea. Locals wandering past. We had a comfy night, although it bucketed down at some point.
To get there, we’d swing by the famously beautiful Lago Yojoa. Appealingly, we could stay in a micro-brewery. When at Lago Yojoa we took another archaeological walk around Los Naranjos. We were warned that the original temple was made of clay so had been left covered but that hadn’t sunk in until we arrived at the temple to see a relatively small grass mound and nothing more. Thankfully a small museum at the site’s second entrance had a display informing us about the ruins and its place in history, being very old in Central American ruin terms.
Both of us enjoy birdwatching and one of our best experiences was on Lake Yojoa. We’d booked onto an early morning bird watching boat trip. Honduras does boast a wonderful number of resident birds but our own efforts to see them have been fairly pitiful. Our guide, Mattias, took us off to the canal armed with binoculars. We hadn’t even reached the water before we were looking this way and that. Two to three hours passed in perfect bliss as we were paddled along spotting various birds. The highlight of the trip for me was the osprey. Sitting high in a tree but clearly visible with binoculars it wasn’t far from a white chested hawk. The pair were magnificent. The osprey flew over which Gid spotted first. Sadly I barely saw it. As we so quickly forget, Gid made notes of the different birds that were pointed out to us, many of them brightly coloured, and announced we’d seen over thirty species. A few of them like the herons and fly catchers were almost omnipresent.
The botanical gardens at Tela was another attempt to see more wild life. It was more of an arboretum but occupied a spacious area with signage informing us about some of the species. We had hoped to see some birds here but in the heat of the afternoon nothing much was evident. We stayed onsite, in a splendid wooden cabin left over from the fruit company days, so the following morning took an amble in the softer light which was much more pleasant but still lacked wildlife. When preparing to leave our host came to tell us that they was some issue up the track. ‘Motos would get through,’ she said, ‘pero no carros!’ True enough! There had been rain overnight and a land slide. Part of the road was missing. Cautiously we went through aware that a lot of the area looked sodden.
Gid hasn’t been interested in waterfalls. To be fair in 2023 we toured Norway where in places there’s a stunning waterfall every 100 metres. But link a waterfall walk with bird watching and we were off. Three toucans almost make up for our cumulative zero quetzals. Our stop here was a guest house focussed on the local rafting tourism on the Rio Cangrejal. Right on the rocks by the white water river, it brought back a lot of memories of our paddling days.
Biking back along the muddy & potholed dirt road from the rafter’s guest house towards La Ceiba I had hoped that some of the slimy mud down the lane might have dried out a bit. No such luck. The drizzle started as we finished packing our bikes. That together with last night’s rain ensured that it had remained a slushy, muddy, dirt and gravel road with numerous pot holes and oversized puddles. Faced with a large muddy puddle and an on coming moto that was going to take the rim around the left hand edge I went for it straight through my side. My bike squirmed a couple of times, some water splashed over into my boots but a bit of adrenaline kept me going and I didn’t slow down. ‘ A twist of the wrist’ so the name sake book says will nine times out of ten get you through a problem. It worked. I was chuckling, the approaching biker, who had slowed to watch the drama, had a broad smile and gave a thumbs up. Who else was on the road? – oh yes – an inexplicably abandoned porker.
Sodden was here to stay – we had a lot of heavy showers in Honduras. We had set off at 9:30 with a 100mi to cover so expected to be there by lunch time. With just a short lunch break we arrived sometime after three. The potholes along the way had disintegrated into large areas of mud and broken road. The traffic ahead of us on both sides was weaving across the road and slowly negotiation the holes. We picked our way along the main road at times behind tired buses, trucks and tuk-tuks. Consumed in clouds of exhaust as yet another overloaded knackered out X tried to pull away from the speed bumps or pot holes. Frequently, at the speed bumps, we sped past. Once we were officially on a dirt road the surface was in a much better condition. Thankfully a lot of the traffic had also turned off by then so we were able to make better progress.
Here’s an assortment of Honduran road photos. We take more photos on dirt roads ‘cos there’s usually more to see, and time to look.
And here’s a few photos of what we could see from the road.
As far north-east as we could reasonably go, a couple of days at the beach at Trujillo was to round off our trip to Honduras. Gid had highlighted the fort and a couple of historic points of interest in the small town. Yes, um, it was indeed small, but attractive enough, once it had stopped pouring with rain.
Leaving Trujillo we soon turned south and headed down a lovely road enroute for the capital city, Tegucigalpa. It was the best road we’d been on for a while so we were merrily cruising along. We soon realised that we had a third rider also on a touring bike tailing us. After a brief roadside stop we agreed to a coffee somewhere ahead. Steve, a Canadian rider, was on a tour to Panama – his version of the Snow Goose descent south for the winter. We stopped together for the night and shared food, beer, and stories. Steve’s BMW RS boxer was five times as powerful as our Himis, but the sporty suspension & position wasn’t so accommodating over speed bumps and potholes. He might have said it wasn’t entirely happy on the low octane gasoline, either. But we’re all doing it, that’s the main thing. Forums are full of “what bike for …” discussions, and journalists pontificate endlessly (with a nod to their advertisers!), but the best answer seems to be “the one you have”. We do seem to be a bit off the moto tourist trail now, we no longer see occasional groups of looming, be-panniered, be-foglamped adventure bikes going the other way, or whizzing past us. Of course, just by time and distance, we’re getting beyond the range of a ride-from-home tour for North Americans with jobs and families needing them back soon.
Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa was busy but pleasant enough. After all the usual online warnings about crime, the biggest threat was clearly as a pedestrian trying to cross the roads. Maybe it was our location, but the traffic seemed more cramped and more urgent than either Mexico or Guatemala Cities. Tegucigalpa is not reckoned to be much of a tourist destination, although we did visit a few places. We were in the city because it had a Royal Enfield dealer, one of only 2 in Honduras, and I had discovered some loose spokes in my front wheel. I wanted to be nearby when I had my first ever go at a motorcycle spoked wheel tweak. In the event, the adjustment seemed to go smoothly, and no parts or help were called upon.
Although our Honduran visas were for 60 days, we were aware that the CA4 group of countries only gave us 90 days from entering Guatemala, so we had to exit both Honduras and Nicaragua, by 29th March. East of Tegucigalpa the Honduras/Nicaragua border hove into sight all to soon, after around 3 weeks in Honduras. Another border to cross, another country to plan. But just before that, Gid misunderstood what he was told about the nightly rate, and our last night in Honduras was rather a splendid indulgence, and a bit of a moto museum, too.
Clare: The first tourist spot heading into Guatemala from Belize is the Mayan site of Tikal. We were both feeling rather pyramid puffed and ruins’ed out but it had to be done. Tikal itself has just a few expensive holiday apartments, way above our budget, so we cruised up and down for accommodation in the nearest village of El Remate. Bingo! A nice little local non-internet hotel. Even a swimming pool it boasted. Pool there was but rather small and murky so neither of us jumped in. As accommodation goes it was fine by our modest standards, friendly staff, bikes parked right by our window, and the gate closed overnight, a roof terrace for a bit of gym. It was new year’s eve, and a fair was in town – Gid took a few sunset pictures, but we both conked out before midnight.
Being on the bus route to Tikal was what really mattered and we duly caught a collectivo the following morning. The driver and conductor were flexible. The sign in the windscreen suggested this route normally finished in a hamlet some way short of Tikal but us and another “wealthy” tourists were too much of a temptation and they diverted for Q50 (£5) each, which initially struck us as extortionate. We weren’t sure if they would take us the whole way to the ruins or just to the ticket office on its outer perimeter. We hoped for the former, but it didn’t matter. ‘It’s only one kilometre down the road to the actual ruins,’ Gid said. The crew started to earn their Q50s as they sorted out our tickets in the queue of “tour” tourists. Thankfully they did deliver us to the ruins as 5 kilometres after the tickets, we still hadn’t reached the site!
Tikal was unique. The extensive site was spread out amongst the jungle with small tracks joining the buildings (there are still hundreds that haven’t been excavated). We choose from the map which we wanted to visit leaving the central plaza until last. The outer edifices were fairly quiet with a feel of having been recently discovered and left in a more rural state which added to the attraction. Plus, we could clamber all over them. A few which were more delicate – or dangerously steep – had steps up the side with a ledge leading back onto the pyramid near the top which seemed a good compromise. From the top, we had a view over the jungle treetops, with the odd pyramid protruding.
The stepped pyramids are so called because they’re built as layers of successively smaller squares, often with tapering sides. We’ve all seen the great flights of stairs up the front. Except… those stairs are very awkwardly tall and narrow, hard to get up, and ruinous to fall down. It’s all the more curious as the modern Maya, and presumably their ancestors, definitely tend to be short-legged folk, even allowing for them being shortish as well. It would be wonderful to understand why the ancient Maya built them just so.
The central plaza was awesome. It had a large pyramid at each end and a maze of buildings/dwellings on each side. The plaza itself had a line of standing stones to one side from which one could readily envisage edged the market place. We clambered all over, taking time out to observe the howler monkeys in the trees overhead and a coatimundi that was snuffling around looking for scraps amongst the ‘Don’t feed the wildlife’ signs.
The island of Flores was next on the tourist trail but didn’t appeal to us. It seemed to be an overcrowded little island joined to the mainland by a causeway.
Gid: Clare didn’t even go to see it, but stayed in bed nursing a cold. I ran around the periphery, once – it was a bit like a miniature St Malo made of coloured cottages, sans croissants. The main drag, on the mainland, was much more interesting – full of motorcycle shops & workshops and hardware shops. My souvenirs from Flores included a SIM card and a useful selection of washers. As in El Remate, a “local” hotel found by cruising around was comfy and a lot cheaper and less touristy than the online offers.
Semuc Champrey was another of the Lonely Planets recommendations and one we plotted into our itinerary. That failed due to us grossly underestimating the time it took us to travel on the northern Guatemalan roads. We finally gave up on swimming in the picturesque limestone pools when we were still 50km away riding in rain with soon to be fading late afternoon light. Enroute our tarmacked surface finished abruptly. Faced with a steep stony but wide track sweeping sharply up a hillside round a corner to err, where? That was the problem. What was round the corner? How far did this gravel with fist /palm/head sized rocks continue for? Ominously, there wasn’t any traffic whatsoever on this stretch whereas we had been accompanied through all the small villages along the way. With a blackening sky overhead we turned back scurrying downhill (video here) into the first hotel we found and just about got inside before the heavens opened. Anyway, it wasn’t going to be much fun in tomorrow’s drizzle scrambling around the rock pools in our swimmers. As it happened it was a stroke of luck, as it really did take us three, not two, days to Quetzaltenango (Xela), and we had not only accommodation booked, but Spanish lessons too!
While idling in Flores (Clare had a grotty cold), we’d realised that we’d dropped into a rather tiring pattern of riding for a day or three, arriving at some tourist site and “doing” it, then moving on. Although it broke up the riding, it was pretty remorseless. Whereas when we cycled 2016-2018, we’d ride for several days, with odd rest days, then stop for a few days in an interesting place. That gave a time for a real break. When cycling, the physical break was more appreciated, as churning out the miles, if not too gruelling, is mentally relaxing, but the legs, shoulders, bum suffer. Whereas on the motos, usually the riding isn’t physically demanding (no iron-butt rides for us), but the constant enhanced alertness is very taxing. We decided to change. Lonely Planet suggested Xela was a great place to sign up for Spanish lessons with an immersive homestay. At the last minute, over the weekend, we booked with El Quetzal Escuela de Español!
Arriving in Xela mid afternoon, we found our way to El Quetzal. Proprietor Glenda and husband, Daniel, bade us welcome, refined the week’s plan, and posted us to our homestay for the week, where Fabiola and Jenny made us very welcome.
The arrangement was, we had a week of one-to-one Spanish lessons from 2pm to 6pm, and four mornings of outings in Spanish. Spanish was the language with Jenny and Fabiola (actually Jenny’s English was pretty good, but she was very tolerant of our garbled espanol). Claudia was assigned to wear out Clare, and Fernando was to exhaust me. So much for our mental rest!
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Pollo Guisado
Another attraction of Xela was the presence of schools of traditional backstrap weaving. A taster session as a part of our language course was all it took – Clare was going back for more. Another week in Xela. I continued with 4 hour Spanish lessons, Clare cut down to two, and spent long mornings and late afternoons in the weaving school. By the time we left Xela, we were loaded down with:
Two tablemats from the taster session (one each).
One table runner
Scarf #1
Scarf #2 on its portable loom of sticks and string.
One thing that has been remarkable in Guatemala is the amount of traditional fabric actually worn by the ladies. According to Clare’s spanish teacher Claudia, it’s not cheap, and it’s blooming heavy – multiple layers of heavily woven cotton. But a large proportion of ladies – rural and urban – especially those maybe 35-plus – wear the skirts and blouses every day. It was very notable that as soon as we crossed into El Salvador, this traditional dress vanished.
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When we planned this trip, the Americas were easy to visit in terms of paperwork, but since August 2024, UK citizens need a visa to enter Honduras (in retaliation for our government doing the same to them), and the visa application needs a home country criminal record check. As we hadn’t planned for this, we put hurried arrangements in place paying HMG extra for a fast track, and Gid’s sister, Jo, kindly got it couriered (thanks!) and El Quetzal was a perfect postal destination. As we finished our second week of school, the certificates set off via DHL.
The wait for the courier opened up the perfect time slot to visit Lago de Atitlan. It was maybe half day’s ride away, so an visit. As we approached the famous lake, we stopped at a mirador (viewing spot) near the top of the mountains surrounding the lake. I had looked at the map and knew there were habitations around the lake but was expecting a few villages dotted around the shores. I was horrified. It was so built up! Creeping down the endless tight hairpin bends kept us very focused on the road. Emerging into the cobbled streets of the town there were the familiar highly coloured murals adorning many of the walls juxtaposed with wrecks and rubbish abandoned along the way. Town dogs mixing it with traffic, tuktuks filling every possible gap while Mayan ladies wearing their tradition costumes, baskets on their heads, boldly striding down the streets set a more appealing scene. The roads, we learnt later, are one of the three prime uses for the volcanic rubble which accounts for the random cobbles.
13 metres – and she did it again!
We trundled along San Pedro main street eyeballing possible hotels – could that alley allow us to ride our bikes right into the hotel? I scouted on foot. Sure! Park amongst our family bikes the friendly owner, well, gestured mostly, to be honest! The hotel had the requested lake view if you poked your head out of the door but even better was our easy access to the water across the road. Atitlan is a swimming lake we’d been told. It didn’t take us long to head off down the opposite passageway to assess it. Sharing the path with a deep ‘road water’ run off channel was the first dodgy point but on reaching the lake the piles of rubbish, and locals washing themselves, their laundry and crockery was enough to quell our desire for a dip. A couple of days later however when visiting San Marcos, a small hippy hamlet on the opposite shore, famed for its jumping platform, it had to be done. That activity also showed us where all the young male tourists were, to complement the young women prowling the tourist stalls and cafes. We were definitely the oldest jumpers while we were there!
Antigua is a must see in anyone’s book. A UNESCO listed ancient capital city overlooked by menacing volcanoes has numerous ruins following a series of eruptions & earthquakes over the centuries. In 1773, then the capital of Spanish Central America, it was shaken to the ground and the capital was moved, taking the name Cuidad de Guatemala with it, and bequeathing the name Antiqua Guatemala to the ex-capital. Antigua has numerous respectfully painted one storey buildings lining broad cobbled lanes. As a UNESCO city there are very strict rules as to what is acceptable and no advertising slogans disfigure the walls. One has to pass a building and peer in to see what is sold. Open spaces were crowded with street sellers, musical performances and a few omnipresent beggars but pavements themselves were oddly devoid of café furniture and sellers. A procession in connection with the build up to Holy Week took place at the old cathedral. These processions gain in momentum up to Easter Week when the streets of Antiqua are blocked. During the Easter festival the streets, which criss-cross the city, will be lined with flowers and relics from the biblical scenes.
Oddly enough, Antigua has weaving schools, too. It also has jade shops. Clare had been looking forwards to these, and dived in with enthusiasm. Most of the worlds quality jadeite jade comes from the Sierra de las Minas, a few hundred km north, and much finds its way through Antigua to be made into jewellery. But although the city’s buildings were attractive, whether in use or elegant preserved ruins, the place was such a totally tourist town – 20 person long pavement tours and hardly being able to put a foot down without negotiating another tourist – that we both got a bit fed up with it after a day or two. Rather pricey, too.
We travelled on to Guatemala city aiming for the the Honduran Consulate to get our visas. Cuidad de Guatemala isn’t much of a draw for tourists, although it does have the modest national museums, and a fine central plaza. It’s the only place in Guatemala with a Royal Enfield dealer (there’s none in Belize or El Salvador), and one of the few with outdoor gear shops. As in Cuidad de Mexico, we chose an apartment rather than an hotel or hostel. Again, it was newer and smarter than anywhere we have lived in at home. Unlike Mexico, this time the district was rapidly gentrifying, new towers springing up in every block. But we could still get a cheap lunch from a street vendor, if we avoided going into the posh malls hungry. I, at least, quite enjoy the buzz of a city, if only for a while. A big draw was that the deal included the gym on the top floor. We could try and get fit for our return to Antigua and the…
Volcan Acatenango Hike:
Gid has had ‘climb a mountain’ on his bucket list since Alaska. I was not so motivated. I’d managed to avoid a couple of possible climbs riding down through the Rockies and wasn’t keen to change my resolve but Acatenango had added attractions. It came with a base camp sleep-over near the top, a view of an erupting ‘sister’ volcano, Volcan de Fuego, from our campsite and a follow up extra hours hike to the top for the sunrise views the following morning. Whilst it did look enticing we had hiked up the Volcan San Pedro to admire the views of Lago Atitlan two weeks before to a height of 3000m and I had struggled badly. Scary after a lifetime of breezing up things like that. Was I just unfit? Nine months of very little exercise sitting on a motorbike has to take it’s toll. (Gid has taken every opportunity to jump up and down, workout on the yoga mat and go for sporadic runs). Or was it the remnants of my cold and chest infection? Either way I was nervous of committing to a 4 hour plus hike, sold as ‘hard’, up a mountain to near 4000m. Gid was generally unaffected by our Atitlan hike but had foolishly not manicured his feet. The descent wrecked his big toes’ nails as his feet pressed against the front of his boots. The toe nails got infected, to the extent of seeing a doctor who prescribed intensive cleaning, antibiotics and no running for a week.
We enquired at an Acatenango hike tour operator before leaving Antigua and rather hesitantly booked up for two weeks ahead. A bit of breathing space for both of us. We could have a personal guide so could set our own pace, and private hut at the base camp so could have uninterrupted sleep and rest. Gid is very sociable so would miss the cameradie but that was the deal if I was to do it. That gave me two weeks to make some improvement on my health or fitness – laughable really. A good start was our Guatemala City AirBnB in a sixteen floor apartment building so up and down the steps was the first stage, the treadmill in the gym was stage two together with actually using my skipping rope which had started to collect dust. Out walking around Guatemala City for 3-4 hours each day must also have helped. Plus I bought some lightweight fabric boots – our Altberg dual purpose boots are comfy, grippy and robust, but very heavy for a long climb. Altitude sickness pills completed the preparations.
The day arrived. I had to keep my head focused, brain in gear – the next ten steps, the next ten minutes. Keep my head down. Don’t look up – I don’t want to see the bigger picture. Slowly but surely. We had regular stops and snacks but didn’t stop for long. Just keep plugging away. Our guide, Ezekiel, was fabulous. He started by telling us how many minutes it was to the next seated rest area. As we made progress he would tell us how much we had covered and how far to go keeping it all very positive. A stroke of luck was that our tour operator was one of two that had its base further up the mountain side (it has a small camping area, and is accessible by motorcycle). The others’ Ezekiel said were a further hour’s hike down the mountain side. On the climb I chatted to a couple of men and a lady who were on their way down. All three looked nearer our ages than the hordes of thirty somethings that seemed in abundance. The guys said, ‘It’s just a long slog, take it steady and you’ll be fine.’ The lady was equally encouraging. On we went. It was pretty much a dusty footpath the whole way up with some fabulous views – very steep in places and rocky clambering once or twice but nothing remotely technical. We made it in a respectable 4 1/2 hours, to ‘our’ comfy little shed with a fabulous view.
The following morning we made it up to the top. Not quite in time for the sunrise but we still had plenty of low light views. We had decided to have breakfast before leaving camp and taking all our kit so we could continue on our downward route from the top. This would enable us to take a less populated route down, and see different views. After a quick lesson in scree running down a mountainside we bounded down. The volcano’s outer layers are made of volcanic ash and ejected rocks, it’s very fertile for plant life, but also very uncompacted. At times the trail was eroded 3m into the soft surface – the trailside clifflets showed all the layers of successive events. The technique changed to little tip-toe steps down the steep loose sandy gravel. With only one slip between us both proved successful. There are some remarkably dramatic or epic youthful tourist (influencer?) descriptions of the hike online – it’s perhaps a lot harder wearing the wrong footwear whilst trying to Instagram at the same time. While we were both pretty knackered by the end, we weren’t as broken as after the easier San Pedro hike – the training, new boots, and toe care had paid off. In addition, Clare shrugged off a nasty attack of dodgy tummy that she had at the base camp.
Volcan de Fuego is famous for it’s very frequent low level eruptions – until 18th Jan 2025 – just three weeks before we arrived when it stopped. It has a long history of violent eruptions which resulted, back in 1776, in the capital of Guatemala being moved. Our masseur, a post walk treat/necessity, informed us that it hasn’t been so active over the last twenty years and now they are waiting to see if it’s building up for a big explosion or is actually dormant.
Luckily, girls in our neighbouring hut at the top of the mountain discovered that whilst we couldn’t see any glowing lava with the naked eye that night, cameras and phones could long-expose a red peak (they’re probably more sensitive to infrared than us). During the afternoon we’d been watching steam trails wafting up so knew something was happening. The night before, at 1:15am or so, a tremor had shaken our hotel bed in Antigua, a morning Google said it was 5.5 on the Richter scale. Something was occurring.
Guatemala – what have we missed? Well, it has to be said that our relatively unadventurous riding style means we didn’t make great loopy diversions amongst Guatemala’s mountain roads and tracks. There’s a lot of fun riding here for those with better skills and bodies. We felt it was too physically risky for us, even when we contemplated hiring lighter bikes and a guide. Even so, of the 90 days we’re allowed in the “CA4”, Guatamala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, we’ve spent over 40 days in Guatemala. Most of it stopped in cities.
Leaving Guatemala was a strange experience as we had been in cities and towns for weeks. The road to the border was back to rural. Vast expanses of wilderness, valleys and mountains but we were on a relatively busy road, and as is the norm in Central America there are very few places one can safely stop and take a few pics.
We try and take nice pictures, and occasionally succeed. I, at least, was really impressed by the postcard images by local Marino Cattelan (https://www.instagram.com/cattelanmarino/?hl=en). Lovely. Perhaps our own standards have slipped, or maybe we haven’t the time (great images rarely just happen).
After Mexico, we were lulled into a false sense of security by the smoothish roads in Belize. Except for the road approaching the Guatemalan border. That was full of pot holes, dirt, gravel and was generally broken up in places. At the border the bikes, as usual, demanded more time than we did – numbers had to be checked against documentation- registration and vehicle title, photocopies of driving licences provided, wheels and underneath framework sprayed. The whole process took 2 1/2 hours with the guidance of a local helper, who magically appeared at our sides. Strictly speaking, his services were unnecessary, but he knew where everything was, and probably saved us 30 minutes. No specific fee was solicited, I think we tipped him 50 Quetzals – about £5 – probably too much.
Then – we were back into the bumpy ole Mexican style roads.
Initially we stayed on the main road into Guatemala. The decision was easy as it is the direct route to one of Guatemala’s key tourist attractions – Tikal, which we were keen to visit. After that we went a bit more freestyle.
Until we left Mexico, we had had quite good navigation. My Garmin Zumo XT was the mainstay, and Gid’s cradled and powered Android phone with OSMAnd was backup and a second voice. Both systems often came up with different routes and both maps had a different interpretation of ‘no dirt roads’/’no 4×4 roads’ and other criteria. The Garmin also scores in crowded areas because it verbalises the instructions. ‘Turn right at the traffic lights’ is useful in crowded unfamiliar areas. Although maddeningly, it cuts off the intercom not only while it does so, but for many seconds before and after just at the point when we are trying to discuss the intricacies of our route. OSMAnd verbalises too, but it’s instructions (or mapping) are poor, and utterly useless around slip roads, which it can only display in very limited circumstances.
As a back-up and for planning we always have a paper map, old farts that we are.
But as soon as we left Mexico, Garmin’s North America mapping finished, leaving a blank screen. Occasionally it did show a road but we wouldn’t be on it. It wasn’t a big problem in Belize because it is a small country with relatively few roads. The small scale free tourist map did just fine, although absent from it were the new bypasses of some of the larger towns such as Orange Walk.
Gideon: In Belize we hit quite a bit of rain, so the cradled Android phone was pretty useless. The charging arrangements are not waterproof, and it can’t run all day without power. The Samsung A series phone is nominally waterproof, but water got into the camera, and it now often won’t focus properly. It’s not just waterproofing as such – a phone touchscreen can’t reliably distinguish raindrops from fingerprints. Clare’s Garmin is a totally waterproof device wired into the bike’s main battery and has an outdoors touchscreen (and big buttons), so it isn’t fazed by riding in wet. Thankfully, we’ve just discovered, I can at least download the free Open Street Maps onto the Garmin so we have reliable navigation in rain but now it’s the same data as Gid’s phone, so we lose the useful combination of different mapping systems.
Why not use Google Maps? Well, the basic reason is that one pretty much needs to be online, and in the trickier or remoter areas there’s frequently no signal. Also our IT incompetence and my strange priorities and meanness means that we don’t have a good, mountable, phone which will work on American cellular frequencies. The upside of this is that if some hood does nick one of our phones, we can giggle about their experiences when they try to sell or use it. Clare’s is over a decade old, and its “new” battery holds charge for, well, several hours – if it’s turned off. Mine doesn’t work on American networks, and the camera focus is broken, and has either an expired Latvian SIM, or an expired USA SIM – ideal to leave on the bike.
Speaking of navigation, for those family members unfamiliar with Guatemala (Map here), we entered the country in the little inhabited, jungly, north. Flores is a scenic village on an island, in a lake, in the middle, and Quetzaltenango, Lago Antitlan, Antigua and Cuidad de Guatemala run from west to east along the spine of volcanoes that run about 75km north of the Pacific coast. For the first time on our trip, we actually rode on “the” Pan American. The carreterrewas named on signs. It runs along the north slope of the volcanoes, from Mexico in the NW, out to El Salvador/Honduras in the SE. Most of Guatemala’s 18m population is in this southern part of the country. In retrospect, it’s no surprise that the roads in the north are, err, quite adventurous.
Clare: Heading from Flores down to Xela (Quetzaltenango) was quite eventful. Gid had programmed in the destination and was informed that the 90 odd miles would take seven hours. Cursing the lack of information on the map of Guatemala he assumed that the time required for the trip reflected the mountainous area we were coming into and was quite relieved when he realised he’d set the transport option to ‘boat’. Boat wasn’t so far out. We did wind our way up and down the mountains, the roads were quite little. It was at the bottom of one of them that our road ended at the river. Approaching the tail end of the queue of cars Gid was on my left. I could see the small wooden boat almost full of motorcycles starting to pull away from the shore whilst Gid was looking at the large nearly fully loaded car ferry. ‘We can make it!’ he was saying, urging me forwards. Noticing that the little wooden boat was indeed returning for us I gingerly progressed down the muddy sloping bank none too sure about the prospect of boarding it. Gid, still focused on the car ferry, hadn’t a clue where I was going. ‘The ferry,’ he was saying ,’the ferry!’. Well if that’s what you call it I’m on my way I thought. I stopped 2/3 of the way down none too sure about what I was committing to. Gid by now could see the little wooden boat and was horrified with where I was heading. ‘The Car Ferry!’ he shouted. Too late, half way down a wet muddy bank I couldn’t turn round now. I decided I was going for it, took a deep breath and was internalising ‘Give it some throttle over the metal grid, over the lip at the edge of the boat, then brake hard before I hit everyone else.’ The theory was great. I managed it. I shuffled forward to make room for Gid knowing he would follow. Bless him, he did. The crossing was brief, but about halfway across one of us realised that the boat – floored with loose, gappy, planks – only had a ramp at one end. Sure enough, the local riders, clad in jeans and tees, had all swivelled their 100Kg motos around on the side stand. Oh shit! A loaded Him weighs about 250Kg. Everyone was delayed while we sweated our steeds through 25-point turns wearing All-The-Gear-All-The-Time.
Later that day we still had to reach a sensible place to stop as our actual destination was several hours away. We made the decision to find somewhere to stop at about 3 pm. Plenty of time. The first town we entered didn’t have accommodation with off road parking and it was still early so on we went. By 5:30, and aware that it would be getting dark soon, we were still looking. Just a bit further up the road towards the next town Gid was saying. It sounded promising but an unexpected diversion we were meant to take was blocked off. In amongst a deluge of swearing Gid shouted “next left”.
‘Have you seen it! You are kidding!’ I replied.
‘Well, it’s got to be one of these, it’s a short cut back to the main road,’ he said, urging me on.
We took next left. From the start it was a pretty rough narrow lane. ‘It’s no worse than Mill Lane,’ he assured me, the rough track to our home in the UK. After 10 mins of up and down past houses and homesteads we were about to reach the main road Gid declared. Fast acceleration got us up the next sharp incline but no-one in their wildest dreams could call it a main road. We had an ariel view over the valley of widely spread dirt lanes interspersed with houses and smallholdings. The stone strewn, rutted dirt track under our wheels continued who knew where. We turned back.
Thankfully, approaching the nearest town from the other direction enabled us to see a hotel sign. It had a gated entrance, always a requirement. In we went.
The following morning we had another look at the map and navigation. There didn’t seem to be any reason why OSMAnd had directed us off the main road. The “shortcut” looked ludicrous when we could sit and study it. Gid figured that perhaps the OSM data for the main road had a tiny break in it, or 5 metres of dirt road, so OSMAnd would not route it unless it was allowed to use all the dirt roads (we’ve seen this before, but then the Garmin was working and happy to make sensible compromises). Determined to stay on the main road we set off. It wasn’t long before the surface deteriorated. We had patches of broken road, stretches of gravel and the odd bit of sand. So much so that when we came to a dirt road that was a legitimate short cut we decided to take it. It started off fine and generally was but had some interesting sections of hairpins, gravel, rivulets and ruts. We made our way down the mountain side across the bridge and up the other side. Nearing the top we thought we had made it and were quite surprised to see the road ahead blocked. A policeman directed us to his left waving his arm in a snake like fashion to show the direction of the road. A dust trail to his left confirmed the direction of the road and that other road users were on it. It was clearly a single track lane with very poor visibility because of the dust flying up. We set off not knowing how long this diversion was or what traffic we might meet.
We reached a steep hill and approached it behind a 125 that had come careering past. It whizzed up. Dust flying. Gid was right behind it. ‘1st gear, 1st gear, ‘ he was calling back to me. ‘And plenty of throttle.’ No one was getting up that hill without plenty of throttle but what was about to come down? Thankfully, shortly afterwards we reached to end of the diversion. The poorly surfaced concrete road seemed awesome.
Glamour never rests
Heading further south in Guatemala we were back on surfaced roads. Belize had offered a respite from Mexico’s endless tupes/speed bumps, but in Guatemala they were back with vengeance. Some are quite brutal – Gid has scraped his bash guard on a number of occasions, and now takes most of them standing.
On the other hand, bikes are a lot quicker across them than anything with three wheels or more. Both us and the local riders get a lot of (slow) overtakes in at the speed bumps especially when they’re one of the few places the chicken buses slow down. Oddly enough, later, in Cuidad de Guatemala where there aren’t speed bumps, we’ve seen quite a few Porsches (I mean real ones, not repackaged Touaregs) – they and similar low vehicles must be pretty much confined in city limits – odd.
Reaching our destination, Xela, was also interesting riding as in the old town where we were staying it has a great grid of calles and avenidas cobbled with pretty much random rocks. They’re ok at speed, but stuck behind crawling traffic, the bike’s front wheel swerves all over the place. As the streets are so narrow, it’s an irregular grid of one ways, making navigation tricky, and distances much longer than the map suggests.
It must have been around this time that we started seeing tuktuks. I don’t think there’s a factory nearby, I think they’re all imported from India. For some reason, they’re almost all red. They seem to thrive in mountain villages, or pueblos & cuidades with tiny streets. They’re geared to labour up any mountainside, but with only half the Himalayan’s engine, and six people aboard, boy, they can be slow. They must be alarming to drive around downhill hairpins, too.
To reach San Pedro on Lago Aititlan from Xela, we turned south-east, aligning us with Guatemala’s volcanic spine. So we encountered the actual Pan American Carretera. Woohooohoo! Here, it’s a mostly well-surfaced dual carriageway. Not, normally, the Himalayan’s favourite domain. But this road corkscrews its way up, down and around the volcanic slopes, and almost all the wiggles are blind, so few folk dare exceed 50mph/80kph even if their vehicle can do so (and many here can’t). The Himis were fine, although a little more overtaking ooomph, or even a lot more, would be appreciated. Still, we tried to exercise restraint: Altogether now: “Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear” (UK HC Rule 126).
Occasionally we’d be passed, sometimes by a chicken bus – these often belching clouds of black muck from a primitive, or maladjusted (depending on age) diesel engine. USA school buses are tightly regulated, and it seems have to be retired at quite modest mileages and ages. So, like a fair few human retirees, they head south in fleets, and live to a great old age as chicken buses. Often these are brightly decorated, usually they have powerful horns, to blast traffic and alert potential customers. The drivers are not necessarily the most cautious and safety aware of señores, although not remotely in the homicidally obnoxious league of their Indian and Indonesian colleagues (or Aussie truck drivers). So they do tend to hurtle around the bends – after all, the driver saw no obstacle there 2 hours ago, so there can’t be one now, can there? We saw the aftermath of one apparent head-on between a bus and something smaller… the bus seemed to be facing the wrong way at that point. Looked like it’d need a new cab.
Finally, a few snaps of curios encountered on the roads. If you’re into 70s/80s car and truck nostalgia, or radically optimised loading, there’s plenty to entertain on Guatemala’s roads.
Postscript: Sadly, a week after posting this, 55 people were killed in Guatemala when a chicken bus crashed, and a few days before that, nearly as many died in a bus accident in Mexico. On our way back from our volcano hike at Antigua, our shuttle passed a fatal motorcycle accident, the poor fellow still lying in the middle of the road.
Mexico had such impressive pre-hispanic ruins that we gave them their own post. So what else did we do in Mexico? We certainly zigged and zagged. North and east of Mexico City to start with, then south to the Pacific coast, then north east again to Yucatan. Cheap, basic hotels are readily found in most small towns, but we generally pre-booked to stop in tourist hotspots.
After Mexico City and Teotihuacan, we travelled a short day’s ride to Real de Monte the Mexican home of Cornish Pasties and a British style graveyard dating back to the 1880s. Cornish miners were encouraged to travel the world to find work back in 1880s when Cornwall’s mining industry was collapsing. One intrepid group had arrived in Real de Monte. Families had packed up shipping everything from personal possessions to heavy mining equipment, and not forgetting the recipe for their prized pasties, to their new homes. The streets were littered with signs for Traditional Pasties, and we’d arrived amidst some kind of fiesta. It had to be done. We tried a few. My first mouthful almost reduced me to tears as the chilli, not a modest amount, scorched my mouth. I courageously swallowed it washed down with copious amounts of cold drink. Now my whole throat was on fire. ‘No chilli / Sin picante!’ became a new phrase in my Spanish vocabulary. Our Cornish friend, Tony, complained that they weren’t properly crimped. Neither were they limited to swede, tatties and mince. An interesting take was the rice pudding version. We tried a few others over the next few days.
Arriving in the town had been an interesting experience. Once off the main intertown route the streets were pretty much all cobbled. Garmin was navigating us to hotel accommodation which Gid often sorts out on-line, but had not this time. We would stop, he’d speak to the receptionist and a decision was made – yes or no. On this occasion, complicated by it being a bank holiday weekend, the first nice looking accommodation was deemed too expensive. We tried a couple of others which were full and ended up heading off out of the city centre. It was, naturally, rather warm, and compounded by the steep 45 degree cobbled lanes – a number of them being blocked by bollards necessitating a u-turn, or festivities linked to the bank holiday, I was getting rather fraught. Across the valley we’d seen an orange hotel halfway up the hill and headed for that.
Not so simple. The sinuous narrow roads were blocked by delivery trucks, the street names weren’t visible and who knows whether this road would actually go somewhere. The sat nav didn’t distinguish between the tiny streets and twittens with staircases. We ended up going far too high up the hill and clearly needed to head back down to find the orange hotel. Gid was leading. The road got quite narrow heading steeply downwards. I refused to go. Very quickly Gid realised it wasn’t such a great idea (steps, bollard) and was trying to u-turn. Nope that wasn’t going to work either. He accelerated at the grassy bank thinking that he might progress a little bit up it and then be able to roll back. Wrong! The front wheel went down not up, now he was stuck in the hole. I had to get off and help but was on quite a slope myself. I managed to turn my bike around by going into an entrance to my side. “Reception”, it said on the side of a rather grand looking building. Staff rushed out. They were keen to check my non-existent booking. I needed to help Gid. ‘Esposo stuck’, I repeatedly said pointing over my shoulder in a down the lane direction. Communication established two guys rushed off to pull Gid backwards. Minutes later he arrived by my side. After thanking the staff he asked me if we were going to continue looking for cheap accommodation. He must have seen the glare on my face as he conceded we were staying here, in possibly the most expensive boutique hotel in town. While there, Clare found that nearby was a rather exciting via ferrata course. She did (Clue: Photos not taken by Gid!).
Another box to tick was ‘the best roads in Mexico’. The Mex-175 was regularly near the top of the lists especially the section from Oaxaca down to the coast. Gid wasn’t that fussed about going to the coast but I was keen to ride one of Mexico’s top roads. Alex, in Mexico City, had told us it was through jungle which added to the intrigue. The road itself was a delightful mountain road, full of twisties some of them very tight. A little unsettling was the contrast between the bright sunlight which was at times dazzling and being plunged into darkness as we cornered round the base of another ravine especially as the road surfaces are very unpredictable with ruts & ridges, gravel & gullies, pot holes and generally broken surfaces in the mix. Not to mention topes (speed bumps), which vary considerably from signed, smooth sloped, rising mounds to severe unmarked, abrupt, high lumps.
Later we were on the Mex-190 which I think I preferred. The road surface was generally a lot better and the bends were more sweeping meaning we could maintain a higher speed throughout the twisties. The, at times, frequent cow on a yellow warning sign had vanished with a slinky big cat replacing it. Later came an explanation – you might see one of Central America’s last remaining big cats but it is illegal to purchase a jaguar the signage declared. Sadly we didn’t see one.
Pot holes which locals sometimes very kindly fill with anything from leaves and sticks and more usefully small rocks are everywhere. Cones are not unknown in Mexico, but absent officialdom, locals put rocks out, sometimes even painting them, usefully marking subsidence at the edge of the road. The lack of any such notification on a section of subsidence caused Gid a flutter or two when he nearly took the nearside round one “pothole” only to discover that the road was completely missing. The road had subsided down a small cliff. We’d just passed subsidence on the opposite side of the road with an approaching car not far from it. The height difference was about a foot which would have hit the undercarriage of most cars angled between the two. I wondered how the approaching car was going to handle it and had luckily taken the higher section when we hit the same problem going round a mountain bend. In quite a few places, the villagers seem to dirt-fill potholes in the village, then stand in the middle waving a hat for change. This also happens by a tope, or, they put cones out to bring the traffic to a near halt. Unfortunately, a motorcycle doesn’t have a change pocket (HD or BMW might, electric of course), so we don’t contribute. Similarly we leave unremunerated the occasional jugglers, snack sellers and screen wash merchants at traffic lights.
It can be tricky to get the correct balance between making progress and going slowly enough to avoid all the pot holes, especially when dappled shade makes the surface hard to see. It’s far better to be some way behind the vehicle in front especially through towns but not always possible because, inevitably, as a gap appears someone will overtake and fill it. Among days of biking we’re going to get it wrong somewhere. On one such occasion Gid hit a large hole at speed, the front suspension and tyre both bottoming out. He yelped! The bike felt ok but he could see the fork legs vibrating from 50mph – the cruising speed for these roads & bikes. At an approaching village we stopped for lunch and to asses the damage. Yep, he’d flattened a section of his rim, with four loose spokes. The massive front tyre* looked unscathed, and the tube obviously hadn’t split. We decided we could limp on but Gid was obviously disappointed and concerned. He explained that there was a problem with his bike to the waitress who cheerfully said the mecanico de motocicletas was across the road 10 metres down a dirt lane.
Moments later we were in his yard amongst an assortment of relics and a jumble of tools straining our Spanish to explain the problem. “Si, ahora”. He could fix it, right now. Verily he did. Off came the wheel, then the tyre. Out came the dead-blow hammer. Bing, bang, bong. Fixed. Well almost. Gid tried to explain about the wheel balancing and the need to mark where the tyre was situated to be balanced on the rim. Such interference was politely resisted, but our man – Tito – was very careful to line up the bolts to show the order of reassembling. That worked well until one of his offspring, keen to be a part of the intrepid fixing of the European’s bike picked up Gid’s disc that had been carefully placed on a seat, bolts all in place and put it upside down on the ground. That part was reassembled but back to front. To be fair, it was very much a family affair as one person held this or that while dad walloped it.
This process got the rim all but circular. Unfortunately Gid had hit close to the balance weights, which Tito couldn’t replace, so didn’t take off, so that bit wasn’t hit and was still a little flat. Tito was sure that he could do a better job so into the workshop they went. The wheel was placed on a big bearing press and a jack wedged in to try to press the last flattened part into shape. The result was pretty good so the bike was reassembled. Tito took a considerable time, with the traditional screwdriver fixed onto the forks as a guide, to tighten the spokes so that the wheel ran true. And it did. It must’ve taken 2 hours, albeit interrupted by other things. We guess that straightening moto wheels must be pretty common on that road, and fortunately the Him’s are steel rims with spokes. The charge was very modest indeed, we tipped a bit, and later added him to Google maps and Open Street Map – his business was undetectable to the phone generation, which clearly included his daughter, who was inseparable from her device.
*Tyres: Dunlop Trailmax Mission, 21″. It has huge knobbles for highway and dirt, deep tread, and weighs about twice the stock tyre, or indeed most front tyres. We both commented on the bike’s loss of steering response when we put them on. But they’re versatile, tough (fingers crossed) and long-lasting.
At the coast we stopped at Zippolite, a wonderful Pacific beach resort. It’s also Mexico’s only legal nudist beach, and a dangerous one. No, no – it’s because of the rip currents, it’s not a place for much swimming or beach toys. The beach boys, on the other hand, were out in force (did you see that!?). We did a tiny swim – there sure were strong rips- but it was nearly sunset. Gid’s still wondering if he should have done his morning run along the beach starkers – but none of the other runners did.
Although Mexico has around twice the UK’s population, it is much bigger – each Mexican has, nominally, over 4 times as much space as a Brit. So there’s a lot of wild country and wildlife. From the Pacific we headed north to Frontera on the opposite, Caribbean Sea, coastline, and took a river trip into the Pantanos de Centia nature reserve. Our hotelier had a mate, that old chestnut, who appeared very promptly at our hotel door, introduced himself as Negro Chon, and outlined the deal. It sounded fine, just exactly what we were looking for and he could pick us up from the hotel. All of this was agreed from our hotel room.
At 9:30am promptly Chon was there. And so was his car! It hadn’t passed an MOT in the last 30 years. No self respecting scrappy would touch it! Gid, who’s normally quite particular about working seat belts, got in the front, relieved, I think, that the door did actually shut (allowing for a certain amount of visible daylight around the edges). I climbed in the back. The door almost shut. Thankfully it wasn’t likely to rain. I needn’t worry about seat belts – the attachment point didn’t exist nor was the seat actually attached. In fact the whole car, inside and out, was totally rusty, wrecked or ripped. Off we went. It did seem to work. Around town Chon was perfectly cautious but once on his local road he changed up a gear. Chicane Chon would have left any grand-prix driver in his wake the way he spun the wheel weaving left and right avoiding the pots holes, using the dust along the tree lined edge and back to the other side. The boat trip with his son-in-law was tame by comparison, but we did glimpse a croc – eeek! – and a multitude of diverse herons as well as other birds.
The next mission was another set of ruins, Calakmul, but this time in the jungle that covers the south eastern part of Mexico. The site is quite large, but isolated with a slow, narrow, jungle access road. Pootling along it, ocellated turkeys were little concerned about our bikes, and Gid glimpsed silhouettes streaking across the road, one probably a marmol or ocelot, and later we saw a grey fox. A day later, still based in the town of Xpujil, we visited some much smaller, quieter ruins. For 30 minutes we sat quietly on top of a small structure, at treetop height. To our right, a bat falcon polished off something more like a small chicken than a bat, and on a path ahead of us a grey fox lounged in the sun. Perfecto.
That evening we rode back down the road to the “bat volcano” and watched 3 million bats stream out of a cave at sunset. The second largest bat cave in the world. Talking to a Scottish couple at the event they exuded excitement about the cenotes they had been to. It had become a theme in their holiday to explore as many as possible. They were telling us the merits of this cenote over another. We’d not even heard of these sinks holes / caves, many open to the public to swim in, which are abundant in this area of Mexico. Yucatan is dry on top, but made of limestone, it’s riddled with underground watercourses, many quite near the surface. Cenotes are formed when the roof collapses. Many are connected, and scuba diving them is popular. Our new Scottish friends had said that they were often warmer than their hotel swimming pool. Our posada (inn) in Xpujil barely had a shower.
But first, we had to return the maybe 40Km to Xpujil. In the dark. We knew there were a few big dangerous potholes on this stretch, but at least we had ample time and knew where to go. It was still terrifying at times. In daylight, we observed that Mexican vehicle lights are quite random – all sorts of flashing colours, indicators/hazards used according to all sorts of strange thought processes, none of them in the UK highway code, brake lights left broken. At night – well, Mexicans driving at night either have very little or total trust to the gods, or fit huge LED lamps that only half of drivers dip. Even though traffic was light, it was scarey – statistics confirm that it’s a massacre. Our worst moment on this ride was when truck B decided to overtake truck A with us oncoming. The road there was actually quite wide enough to do this, but the b*st*rd didn’t dip his huge LED floods and didn’t indicate that it intended to pass (they never do). We were completely blinded as it pulled out into our lane and couldn’t see the road 2 metres in front. It had taken us a while to realise what was going on, because most truck drivers did dip, and the relative positions weren’t clear in the dark. We pretty much came to a scrambly halt, unsure if in front of us was ditch, pothole, or road. It confirmed that riding at night in these parts was a very bad plan.
On a brighter note we spent much more time on larger single-carriageway roads, but the excursions were more interesting. Two of the pictures are points where we gave up and backtracked: One road shown clearly on the sat nav shrank and shrank until it completely ended in a logging camp. Another road was flooded out for maybe 50 metres.
A bit of research had us concerned at the cost of entry to some of the cenotes. Undeterred Gid came up with an area close by that had a few. He picked one that we visited enroute the following morning. It was fabulous! We’d become a bit wary as two of our selected underground attractions in the area had been closed since Covid. One was a cave system with paintings the other was an underground water system. Both shut. The chosen cenote was open, cheap and not highly populated. We descended about 5m down a wooden stair, to water level. There were two small diving groups who disappeared downwards to explore the cave system joining it to other cenotes in the area but the surface space was pretty much clear, except for their bubbles. The natural lighting was beautiful clearly lighting the stalactites and different colours around the cave. A guy who seemed experienced at the qualities of different cenotes told me that this one was one of the best because it had crystal clear water and you, together with the fish, could swim about in it. He commented that some of them are rather pokey holes with murky water. ‘The ones nearer ground level can be cold’, he added.
Looking at our Mexican travels on the map, there’s quite a zig-zag, but now we were getting to the end of the road Mexico. We decided to stop for a couple of days to catch up the blog and plan next steps. The east coast of the Yucatan peninsular is more beach resort than history, scenery and nature. We chose Tulum. Tulum the town had every tourist facility at a US price, but we found somewhere cheapish. After a stroll around Tulum’s small, but very scenic ruin, one of the few in Mexico to have been walled, we wondered down to the beach. But the sun went on strike at the sight of Gid’s bethong’d behind. Overnight it poured down with warm rain and into the next gloomy day which didn’t clear until the following afternoon making it perfect for updating the blog.
Wanting to finish this leg of our trip with something more Mexican we set off along the back roads and were rewarded with many rural villages. We had hoped to stay in an isolated nature reserve at Noh-Bec where we might see the elusive jaguar but the rain thwarted us.
Not able to make it to Noh-Bec, Bacalar, a low budget traveller town on a big freshwater lagoon, became our final Mexican stop. The signage on the board walk notified everyone that swimming was fine but stay 3m away from crocodiles and not to feed them. At the other end of the town the fort, Spanish built back in 1729 now a museum, was very informative. It outlined the succession of invaders from the Spanish perspective. In the mix was Sir Frances Drake. Whilst the text acknowledged that Queen Elizabeth 1 had given him a knighthood, to the Spaniards he was no more than a bandit.
Let’s sign off the Mexico blog posts with a reminder of Mexico’s colours.
We’d spent the previous afternoon filling in the forms at the campsite. Gid’s android translated the info into English. Mine didn’t. I felt as though I was signing my life away with a blindfold over my eyes. He was feeling challenged with his own form and didn’t need me constantly quizzing him. We finally got there. Paid up, two forms. Copies of this, copies of that. But one of them said we needed a paper copy and please arrive at the border with it. We were crossing the border on a Sunday and suddenly we needed a paper copy.
On the way out of our Palomar campsite we’d called into the local convenience store. The part time lady cheerfully said she’d ask the manager for a print as they did have a printer. It all seemed quite hopeful. The manageress arrived flushed and in a considerable flap. ‘I do wish you hadn’t offered to do this,’ she admonished her assistant. Despite three heads trying to solve the problems it was not going to happen – passwords, signals, connections – the list goes on.
Gid was keen to try the few random shops we passed. I was more, ‘Of ‘cos they’ll let us in. Are they really going to send umpteen tourists away?’ One more failed effort just before the Mexican border left us with no option. We progressed forwards. It all seemed very relaxed. There were a few officers there in uniform but they just waved us through. Gid exploded. ‘We can’t just go through. We need our paperwork stamped and the bikes need to be registered.’ He conveyed this to one guy who casually pointed to the office at the side and told us to go through the barrier and come back to do the paper work!
The Mexican immigration office was to the right on a one-way street. With no access to it we had to park further down the road and walk back. The señor in the office was very patient as we tried to locate, from among the umpteen forms we’d saved, the ones that he wanted. We emailed them to him so that he could print them out. Stamped and dated off we went. The vehicle importation was equally trouble free once we’d sorted out which paperwork equated to which bike and whose it was. Our recently hard-won, but very elementary Spanish hadn’t really been challenged, but it had had a little outing.
In. Now we needed some Pesos. Going down the main drag I spotted an ATM sign. We pulled in behind a car. Gid jumped off his bike and in he went. Moments later un hombre policia appeared pen in hand opening the pages in his ticket book. He pointed to the writing on the side of the kerb and said what must have been, ‘No Parking’.
‘Un momento, Un momento,’ I cried, calling to Gid through the intercom that he was about to get a parking ticket.
‘I’ve just put my card in, I can’t come now,’ he anxiously replied.
The policia was gesticulating that Gid’s bike needed be to moved. I indicated that I would move it. But of course as I swapped bikes mine was now illegally parked. I was trying to wiggle Gid’s bike round mine when Gid reappeared. Thankfully the policia seemed to despair of this comedy act and walked away. Two bikes two riders, money, we were off.
As we set off down the road Gid informed me that a high proportion of the population have never taken a test. Pay a little extra and the licence was yours is what most Mexicans did. Somehow I was sensing that and the signage wasn’t as clear as we’d got used to either. There were stop signs used in the same way as in the US but the accompanying stop line had been erased – some of the signs had suffered over the decades of time. I ploughed straight through one. Thankfully no one was coming. Later we learnt that irrespective of red lights, Alto signs and what ever, ‘Get eye contact!’ before progressing, that’s the important thing. Things seem a little “loose” compared to the UK, Spain or USA, but it works on civility yet is not remotely in an Indian or Indonesian league.
Further down the road I was overtaken on the hard shoulder. A car just came careering past me on the inside. Wow! What was that? The next half hour was a sharp learning curve. The hard shoulder albeit much narrower than the road lane was regularly used to over take. One vehicle straddled the solid white line that demarked the hard shoulder while the overtaking vehicle straddled the central solid yellow line. All sorted then. One good thing was that as the hard shoulder served as a lane, of sorts, it wasn’t full of debris. The crap was piled high in the pull outs and off the side of the road. No $1000 fine here for littering.
Another surprise was the trucks passing along through the towns and along the highways with armed soldiers masked and in full uniform standing in the back. Regular check points along the roads also told of the extent of the drugs problem in Mexico, a lot of it driven by the trade over the border in the USA. The nearest we got to being searched was one bored pair of young military guys asking where we had come from and where we were going. Other vehicles, mostly northbound, had numerous inspectors with torches pawing all over their trucks. The bigger the vehicle the more extensive the search. We settled into the new regime. The road to Ensenada passed through a scenic wine making area, and wasn’t heavily trafficked – a great introduction once we’d worked out the hard shoulder plan.
Ensanada was our first destination, for very prosaic reasons. But it was a joy to visit. The internet-booked motel was just fine, and after months in the western USA and Canada we could again wander around a town. While none of the pavements were consistently flat it had a centre we could amble through enjoying the atmosphere. Gid could have stayed a few more days, but after all the delays I was keen to get on. The plan was to travel the length of the Baja peninsular, then ferry across to the mainland. Interestingly, it was two weeks before the famous Baja 1000 desert race. We decided not to enter.
We’ve visited Spain a number of times and the similarities here were stark. In some towns with buildings set back from the road, many things were broken down or in need of repair with the occasional thing half built while others had large murals and were brightly painted with bougainvillea adorning the walls. Whereas the western USA has almost everything in town concreted over, in the pueblos the road had a wide apron of dust – of course, everything was coated in it unless it moved.
We’ve travelled fairly extensively across the globe, and it was a pleasure to see again local, improvised, low key services along the road. Home made as well as printed signs are common, and as Baja California is both very sparsely populated, and not highly developed, sometimes we needed to see that “man with a can” gas stop, or the little stall selling burritos (we hadn’t even been entirely sure what a burrito was). And every café had a “wifi” sign – the wifi may well have been the most reliable service. There were many “proper” gas stations, but interspersed with can men whom we really needed at least once pricey though he seemed. Very sugary pop is also always available, more difficult is avoiding it!
Another change – to us – is an expected one. In the USA we tended to avoid the trafficked and expensive megopolises, and skip from scenic park to scenic park, camping. In the less developed parts of the world, there are fewer campsites, debatably less safe, and our pounds go a lot further. So we tend to reverse the pattern and skip between cheap hotels in towns. Cheap hotels here can be jolly nice, usually best not booked through a big website – local rates are cheaper. El Hotel Frances was a memorable 19th century historic building, in rather mid-western style (but of probably tropical hardwood), but most are pretty new, Hispanically concrete. None has yet approached in cost the San Diego campsite!
We still felt very wary of much adventure in Mexico and there’s only one main road down through the Baja peninsula which was generally ok, two lanes, little traffic, and relatively few slow bits through pueblos.Occasionally it was a pristine new surface but at times a pitted pot-holed mess – no worse than our home town in the UK, but that’s not a 60mph road. On our Himalayans we didn’t need to lose much speed to plough through whatever the road surface threw at us. Along the grotty sections we even overtook some cars and trucks. We passed a road repair team on a couple of occasions. It was a truck loaded with tarmac and some spades. The truck stopped. Out jumped the team. One filled the hole, another raked it flat while a third flagged the approaching traffic. All sorted. Move on. They had their work cut out! More dangerous than the overtaking, and the potholes, was probably the occasional livestock, rare in the first place, that had gotten out of the fenced ranches and now munched at the roadside.
But plenty of the roadside was also lovely to look at, and especially in the north, quite curvy with fabulous views.
The country side we passed through changed from sparsely covered desert to a rich environment with many desert plants thriving. Despite my resolution to not camp in Mexico on the grounds of personal safety we did camp at Cataviña. We’d just passed a police station next to a deserted motel when we came across a small community: a campsite with two motorbikes and a tent inside a perimeter fence, opposite a taco shack and a fuel stop. Encouraged by the gated entrance and bikers already camping we went in and were enthusiastically greeted. We were staying then. Alexandros spoke reasonable English and encouraged our efforts in Spanish. He’d also done the southern half of our planned trip and gave us the book he’d written pointing out the pages that recorded his crossing of the Darien gap. ‘Three weeks for the bikes,’ he said. ‘Three hours by plane for us.’ We spent a fabulous evening sharing tales. A surprise bonus was the campsite’s tour of the desert by truck to see the painted caves just up the road and off in the desert.
So, we’re off! ¡Vamos! Well, now we stopped in the lovely resort of La Paz, there is the ferry terminal, but it’s so nice we’ll pause awhile.
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