A Travel Story by Bruce Porter
Nowhere is far away in Belize and there are only 3 main roads. In theory, you cannot get lost, so they don't feel plentiful sign posts are worth the money.
And if you do make a wrong turn, concerned locals wave you down and tell you to go back. It's possible to drive through the country on one tank of petrol, without stopping or seeing any thing. However, this would be a shame.
Meeting people on the road is one of the cool things that happens, it can change the day, dissolve any possible plans and lead you off on paths that you would never normally take.
First we met Evan, a Canadian doing the trip on his own. He spotted the bikes, we started talking and decided to ride to Tikal the next morning together.Tikal is another "must do" backpacker pyramid touristy site.
Trip down to caves at Semuc Champey. The tour 'bus' from the hostel, get on and hang on. Single track dirt road winding around steep hills all the way!
The cave tour. All done by candlelight. In parts this involved swimming one-handed while holding your candle over your head, and jumping in pools while again attempting not to extinguish your candle. Followed up with swim in beautiful outdoor natural pools.
That was an experience, we have just finished 5 days of Spanish "immersion" lessons. Five hours a day of one on one tutorials, and around 2-3 hours of home work a night.At the same time we have been staying with a local family to get the full experience.
We chose Quetzaltenango (Or Xela, pronounced Shayla, by the locals) because it was ;-
a) At a high altitude (7600 feet), so no Malaria issues which meant we could come off the medication for a week
Performance in the Parque Centro, Quetzeltenango, Guatemala.
Marimba is the national music of Guatemala, and is played on large wooden xylophones with a group of players. Each player holds up to 2 beaters in each hand. What follows is an incredibly well sychronised multi-layered performance of complex pieces of music. When we arrived they were giving 'White Christmas' the marimba treatment!
The water is loverly, Surf's up !
We had a choice between Volcanoes or Beach. We both felt it was time to visit a beach.
It has taken us over three months to reach the Pacific, and it happened to be our 100th day on the road, so a birthday of sorts.
El Tunco beach, El Salvador. Looking over the Pacific.
Pengy considers theories of evolution and why there are a lot of surfers but no penguins on Central American beaches.
And then the sun went down, as it does every day........
Our plan for Costa Rica was to head straight through in the "Inter Americana" highway that cuts through the capital, San Jose, and then into the mountains.
We stopped over night just across the border ( a four hour crossing from Nicaragua) in Liberia and had an early start at 08:00.Initially the road was good, but then as it hit the first mountain range the number of trucks and tailbacks increased, and our speed dropped as it was overtake, overtake, overtake.
We feel naked.
After kicking our heels for a week, the bikes have been handed to the air freight company in Panama, along with $1800USD.
Now we just need to get our flight to Colombia in the morning, and play the 'get the bikes out of storage' game.
The Cargo company did worry us a bit though
Note the "This Way Up" arrows on the "fragile" cargo he has just dropped. For the 2nd time.
The hotel we have stayed in has been like a bikers magnet
Cuidad de Panama, from the 'old town'.
A city of big contrasts, where tin roofed shacks of the poor prop up the modern tower blocks of the rich, and the old rubs up against the new.
The Airport abbreviated name says it all.
BOG, well it appeals to my sense of humour.
Its not a bad airport, we just had some fun and games after landing. At first things went smoothly, we had no problems with customs, the tourist information lady was easy to understand and directed us to the cargo depot.
After a bit of going backwards and forwards between people they finally told us that the bikes were still in Panama. Not a lot we could do, other than go to the hostal we had booked into, the Cranky Croc.
Bogota, Columbia. 2 of numerous photos I took today. Well, you have to when you're in a new continent!
1. Graffitti wall near our hostal.
2. View from mountain to east of Bogota. Look! Its the foothills of the Andes (foothills being at 9000ft.............)
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Progress in Colombia continues at a snails pace.
We headed North for San Gil and then Santa Marta, on the Carribean coast, as everyone at our Bogota hostel said it was a good route to take to get to Cartagena.
What no one mentioned was the number of cars, buses and trucks crawling up and down the winding mountain roads to get north. We took 8 hours to do 330kms (210miles), and when we arrived at the hostel in San Gil we discovered the road north was 'temporarily' closed beyond the next major city (Bucaramanga) due to land slides.
Probably the most common road sign in Columbia.
With all the mad overtaking going on, its not a matter of 'if' but 'when'. Although Peru is worse, apparently.........
Salento, a little village on top of a hill, in the heart of Columbia's coffee growing area.
Its seems to have been a long time coming, the nearer we got, the slower we traveled. At times we even managed to venture further away.
But today, we finally crossed the equator.
As we approached the last few miles I, rather childishly, had my hiking GPS in the tank bag and was able to watch the "minutes" and "seconds" tick down as we got nearer.
Typically we were not the only ones on motorbikes there, two Texans had arrived just before us.
From near the Amazon basin to the sea, all in one day.
We had stopped for a couple of days at a nice Spa town called Banos, which sits in the shadow of Tungurahua, which last erupted in May 2010.
The town is about 60km from the start of the Amazon basin, but as the hostel offered sauna treatments and thermal baths we opted to stay and play in the water.
We seem to be re-planning the trip almost on a daily basis now.
Having taken our time coming through Central America (because we were enjoying it and we were avoiding the prolonged rainy season in Costa RIca, Panama and Colombia), we are now concerned about the rainy season we will hit in Bolivia. As many of the roads are unpaved, this may well mean having to not go to the Salar De Uyuni as the salt flats will be wet and the roads there un-passable (for us).
Our headlong dash out of the mountains towards Nasca to see the "Worlds Highest Sand Dune" and the Nasca Lines (un-explained detailed drawings in the desert, a bit like crop circles, but bigger and older) was interrupted by something neither of us had expected.
A sea of sand dunes, with an oasis.
It's stopped raining!