DATE: Thursday,April 14, 2005
RETURN TRIP DAY: 15
ROUTE: Puerto Cortés, Honduras to Santa Elena, Guatemala
DAY: 284 Miles
TRIP:1840 Miles (from Panama City)
Say goodbye to solid stools, say hello to my friend, the bathroom. It must have been something we ate yesterday in Honduras, either our steaks and vegetables at lunch or our shrimp for dinner, but something isn't sitting right, and that mean's I'm not sitting right (sic).
Today's route took us from Puerto Cortés to the border between Honduras and Guatemala. There is a brand new highway being constructed from Puerto Cortés to the border, but the last 40 km or so are still under construction. As a result, we spent a good part of the morning eating the dust of trucks, driving through construction, and taking the old road through the countryside and small towns near the border.
I actually enjoyed the scenery but there were a few bridges that were a little rickety. One had railroad ties laid across it, with boards laid across it for the wheel tracks, but boards were missing on one of the sides, so we ended up having to drive several yards over railroad ties, with 9 to 18 inch gaps between the boards and the river 30 feet below. Naturally, I let Raúl go first. He inched his bike over the first gap, his tire dropping about 1/3 of the way before making it over to the next railroad tie. I saw the railroad ties bend a little, but they held, and he was able to make it across. I took a deep breath and inched my bike across the gap, the tire dropped into the gap but the ties held, and I made it across.
I stopped to take a picture and Raúl said "This picture will be a good memory of this shitty road." Exactly.
The migración and aduana for Honduras and Guatemala were at different places, about 20 km apart. The roads in Guatemala were very nice and wound through the flat countryside of cattle grazing and farm fields. There is no aduana (customs) for vehicles at the border for Guatemala so we had to drive 20 km to the nearest town, Puerto Barrios, to get my vehicle papers.
Puerto Barrios is another major port on the Carribean coast, although in Guatemala. I followed Raul as we did what has become typical for me in Central America - drive a few blocks and ask directions, drive a few blocks more and ask directions. We found the aduana office, and I was amazed when the clerk actually handed me a brochure IN ENGLISH, describing the process for securing the appropriate papers for bringing a vehicle into Guatemala. I was further amazed when I walked out about 15 minutes later with my papers and a sticker. Fifteen minutes, amazing. It was the best border of the entire trip, no hordes of people trying to change money, sell you stuff, asking for ''a dollar'', wanting to be a guide. Amazing, I think it's because they had computers in the main office.
We headed north into Guatemala and stopped in Rio Dulce for lunch. We ate a charming lakeside restaurant, and ran into some other BMW bikers headed north for the same convention we were heading to, at Tikal. Rio Dulce is a fresh water river/lake that connects with the Carribean at Livingston, about 40 km away.
The most noticable aspect of the ride was the tremendous amount of smoke caused by the deforestation of much of the land along the road way. The native jungle is being cleared to raise cattle, and I swear that at least half of the land along the 250km road heading north was either being burned or had recently been burned. The burning clears the jungle and leaves pasture grazing land on the thin surface of soil on top of limestone. All day long, all you could smell was wood smoke, at times mixed with the smell of diesel smoke.
We reached Santa Elena in the late afternoon and stopped at a Texaco station to refuel. I was amazed when I found out that my good friends Juan and Roberto, who I had met at the El Salvador convention and had kept in contact via email, were also at the gas station. They were staying at a different hotel, and we exchanged phone numbers for contact later.
Raúl and I checked into our hotel, the Villa Maya. It was incredible. Set 5 kilometers back from the main road on a little gravel road, it was located with rooms overlooking a lake in the middle of the jungle. You could hear birds, frogs, and howler monkeys and the setting was natural and blended into the landscape. And, it was only $35 dollars each for night, including breakfast and dinner. And the pool was filled with cool water and a waterfall.
Raúl and I were in the pool and I was thinkin about how to hook up with my friends, when I looked up and there was Juan and Roberto. They were unhappy with their hotel and just randomly, came to the same hotel as we were staying in, another strike for serendipity!
We ended up riding our bikes to the Hotel Real Camino Tikal, a luxury hotel where the BMW convention was being held, about 30 kilometers from our hotel. It was nice to see many friends and aquaintenances, and the hour of rain that occured while we were eating helped damp the dust down so our return ride was relatively dust free.
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