Firstly, Paul seems to have turned the corner today, he has started chatting a lot more, and feels much less wobbly, so I’m hoping that’s a sign of recovery.  I think we’ll stay here for a few more days yet, until he is 100% fit.  We can’t afford to be under par, and Paul needs to have full concentration when driving on the unfamiliar roads, and with the busy, erratic traffic.

It’s quite a walk into town, and I haven’t wanted to leave Paul for too long, so I haven’t had a look around yet, perhaps tomorrow, although I am quite enjoying the rest as well.  It’s amazing how fatigue builds up inside you, and we were talking earlier about how all of our senses are working hard all the time, as we constantly encounter new experiences. It can sometimes be difficult to process all that we see and do quickly enough.  This is the main reason why I decided to try and record our experiences and feelings about them.   I also hope that we might be giving readers of our blog an insight into the places we have visited, and a feel of what it might be like there.  

As I mentioned before, we have been immersed in the world of motorcycles in one form or another, and have been for many years.  We have also read lots of world travel biographical books, by all means of transport, and found these stories enjoyable and inspiring.  We are also in touch with, or can read stories daily of people who are also travelling throughout the world, mainly by motorcycle, so this stuff seems normal to us.  It’s easy to forget that most people reading this will not think this type of malarkey is normal!

People have different reasons for travelling. Paul has always had a thirst for travelling somewhere, for ‘going along’ being on the road. For him it’s always been about the journey, the going somewhere, it doesn’t really matter where it is.  My interest began when we first started travelling together 25 years ago, and has grown from there. I like to quietly observe what’s going on, and try to record the differences, and similarities, of peoples, and places and if those people seem to have a difficult time where they live, why that might be, in comparison to their neighbours.

Sometimes it’s hard to see past the warnings of other people, (particularly country to country), for instance the lady at the hotel here told us that the mosquitoes in Mexico and Honduras (which both border Guatemala) are different, much worse, carry many more diseases- but how do the mosquitoes know which country they are in? We encounter a lot of caution of the unknown place, or people, and making our steps to trust that the next place we go will be as good as the last is a huge leap of faith sometimes, but can also be a very beneficial one. There’s a lot of good people out there in this world.  What a wonderful opportunity we have, we are so lucky to be out here, exploring and finding this out for ourselves.

Paul has been a bit unwell these last few days. He woke on Thursday feeling under the weather, but managed to struggle on for the couple of days riding to get us here to Chiquimula, where we are about 60 miles away from the border with Honduras.

The last couple of days has been complete rest, and lots of water as Paul is running a temperature.  He's obviously picked up a nasty virus, but it doesn't seem to be related to an insect bite, which is good. We shall stay at this lovely little hotel for as long as we need to, until Paul fully recovers.

The hotel is owned by a lovely lady Carmen, and she and her staff have gone out of their way to be helpful and accomodating, adding a coolbox in to our room to keep drinks nice and cool for Paul.

This has meant me having to practice my Spanish, and luckily Carmen is very patient, whilst I struggle over words, so I am gaining confidence slowly.

It also gives time for a complete break from the relentless heat, and difficult roads of the last few weeks, and think about all the wonderful things we have experienced earlier in the trip and in these beautiful countries.  Everyone we have spoken to in Guatemala is proud of their country, and although it may not have the infrastructures that we're used to, it has a great rhythym, warmth and vitality, plus the Latin american sense of going with the flow.

I must be honest, it probably takes my Westernised head some time to get used to what is not available in these countries, because we are so used to our creature comforts, and although sometimes tricky to get, I could still find most familiar things in the USA.  Here, this is trickier, and I am learning to let go of things that I cannot get, and discovering that yes, actually I can still do perfectly well without them. In this country, and Mexico they are particularly fond of beans (frijoles), as you can imagine, but having them for every meal wears a bit thin unless of course you are really hungry!

Paul was still feeling under the weather today, but we decided to move on as we had tonight booked already, and last nights accommodation was very nice, but not somewhere we wanted to stay for a while, despite meeting Sparky the dog, and his little French dog mate.  Sparky wanted to come with us, and had jumped up to greet Paul as soon as we arrived. We knew that we were heading for a small city, and that would be a nicer place if we needed to stay for a while.

Today’s route was to take us past Guatemala City, we had planned the route using the paper map and Google Maps, and had written instructions to try and follow to navigate around the capital. Paul had spent time memorising the route. It worked pretty well, considering the amount of traffic and distinct lack of any signs, and within a couple of hours we were breathing a sigh of relief that we were out the other side, and Paul was tucking into a shop bought sarnie.  Sustenance after our breakfast of bananas. (Well, we are in the Banana Republics!).

We continued on our way along dual carriageway for a while, before it returned to one lane abruptly and we started chugging up the mountain roads, and back into the heat, we turned a corner and suddenly the temperature rose to 33 degrees again.

As we rode through this section, we caught sight of a BMW R1200GS heading in the other direction, and waved. The rider did not see us, as it was on a bend, in a very busy section. The rider turned out to be Brent Carroll, a nice guy that we have been in touch with who is also riding the Americas. He had crossed into Mexico, when we were still back at Phoenix, Arizona, and we have been a few days behind him ever since. Hopefully, we can catch up with him a little further down the road somewhere.

Somebody else who we have been in touch with since being away is John and Wendy, who also have had a Ural sidecar attached to their BMW1150GS by Watsonian Squire.  Watsonian Squire did ours for us.  John and Wendy are flying out to Buenos Aires next week (Sat), and will be riding around South America for a few months. We are very excited that we should be able to meet them somewhere, as they have been very supportive of our trip.

There is also another couple of lovely people, Chantelle and Todd Powell, who are riding and are now slightly behind us, in Mexico.  These two are from Australia, and are riding on Australian Postie bikes, little 105cc Hondas.  This means they ride a bit slower than us, but they are having a whale of a time, and we love following their antics. Sadly, we missed meeting up with them, but hope to meet them in the future as well.

There’s quite a community of people riding, cycling and driving up and down the Americas, and sometimes it really does help to know they are out there doing the same as us, and swapping information and ideas.

Paul woke feeling a bit under the weather this morning.  He had the shivers during the night, and was feeling low on energy and lethargic, and struggled to eat any breakfast.

After a couple of ibuprofen, and a rehydrate packet, he felt well enough to set off, but was not looking forward to the tumulos today. We had planned a much shorter distance because of the challenging roads here.  Luckily for us, the tumulos were a little less bumpy, and then when we passed through and out the other side of the busy town of San Cristobal, there was lovely dual carriageway. It did wind it’s way up and down some very twisty mountains, but dual carriageway! It’s a while since we saw that, and it was so much appreciated.

The dual carriageway ran almost all the way to our stop for tonight, taking us past the beautiful Lake Atitlan, which was enjoyable, particularly as the temperature was mainly around 20 degrees celsius.

We’re navigating using only Google Maps on our phones (you can still use the gps tracker even without a signal,) and a paper map, which works well until the last few minutes of trying to find our place for the night, particularly as all the roads disappeared from Google Maps.  Still, we found it, tucked away in a side street, and for the first time they didn’t seem to know we were coming, but quickly rallied around moving their car so we could get the bike behind their locked gates, and making up our room.

Paul is having a snooze, and will hopefully sleep off the rest of what’s wrong overnight.  It’s very peaceful and beautiful here. Guatemala is proving to be a lot more Spanish in influence and with stunning scenery.  The people have continued to be extremely friendly, and very interested in us.

We’ve crossed the border into Guatemala!  It was an eventful day, as a lot of them turn out to be…..

We left early, with a two hour ride to the border.  We were apprehensive about what to expect, we had to ensure that we cancelled our Mexican Vehicle Import permit (and get our refund), get both the passports exit stamped, have the tyres ‘fumigated’ on the bike (??), and go through the whole process in reverse when entering Guatemala.

We made excellent time, the road 190 was brilliant after yesterday, no Topes, only one or two potholes and we were approaching the border by a little after 10 am.  All good, or so we thought.. As we looked ahead we thought there was an accident, as the road was covered in people. We pulled into the service station for a quick break, and a guy approached Paul holding out his hand to shake, whilst telling us there was a blockade across the road which may last 2-3 hours.  Oh no!  We rapidly looked at our map the Sat Nav and Google Maps to see if there was another route round, and Paul asked a couple of men who came to talk to us- but no, if there were other roads, they were really bad (and when a Mexican tells you that you believe him!). So we settled in to wait, after moving into the shade.

Time passed, and more and more vehicles came, there were numerous ‘Chicken’ buses coming along letting out streams of passengers who were walking through the blockade and then taking a different ‘Chicken’ bus from the other side, dragging their back packs and suitcases. We also saw quite a few small motorbikes being pushed through one way or the other, but they were getting through tiny gaps.

The blockade was a group of local farmers who were protesting to the local government for better treatment, a nice local guy explained to us.  He was waiting to get through, then only had 20 km to drive on the other side of the block. Although a few people told us it was a big problem, everyone remained very peaceful and calm, just waiting patiently.  This despite the fact that the rumour now going around was that it would be cleared at 5pm.  We were worried by this, as we do not want to ride in the dark, had the border crossings still to make, and our hotel was at least an hour away.

Eventually, about 2 ½ hours later, a lady came to see if we wanted to buy any of her home made ice lollies, sadly we are trying to avoid anything homemade, or not made from a place that looks really clean, to try and avoid food poisoning, so we said no.  luckily, she didn’t mind and went on to tell us that we could push our moto through the blockade, even with the ‘little car’ on the side, she was very sincere.  

We thought we’d try this, and were amazed as the farmers allowed Paul to push the bike around them, and then all we had to do was wait patiently for our turn, before all the cars the other side of the blockade moved aside to allow us through. It seemed we could easily have one that at the beginning, but we both wanted to respect the blockade, and weren’t sure at that point how peaceful the whole thing was. We’ll know if it happens again.

We couldn’t believe it! We were through, and 5 km down the road was a very empty Mexican exit border who quickly processed all the paperwork we needed.

After another short ride, we came to the extremely busy little place of La Mesilla, and rode through what seemed like the middle of the market, before arriving at some cones. One side of the cones were the Mexicans, making sure we had all our stamps, and the other…..that was amazing! Suddenly we were surrounded by people trying to sell us Guatemalan Quetzals, another man was asking me something else, which turned out to be get out of the sidecar as I need to spray your tyres-- so I did quickly! He sprayed them, then went off with Paul’s passport and the payment for the service (we’re still not quite sure what that’s for).  Next was passport stamping, which was extremely quick, then Paul arranged the vehicle importation.  This took a bit longer, so I had a good time just to stand and be astounded by my surroundings.  What a colourful, bright place, teeming with life, and the people have smiles as wide as their entire faces.  I was lucky enough to see a lot of these as they saw the bike, it drew a huge amount of attention, with quite a few wanting to touch it, lean on it, or use it as a resting place!

Once this excitement was over, we were on our way.  As our Sat Nav does not work in any of these countries we are back to old fashioned maps, so we checked our route, then headed off into the extremely interesting Guatemalan traffic on the Pan American Highway.  All I have to say about that is, that the Topes are now called Tumbules, and that there were banners across the road about introducing Driving Licences into the country.

Our hotel tonight is lovely, and the people are super friendly.