21.11.09 Huehuetenango, Guatemala

"How long you wanna stay? Like, the whole night? With sleeping?" asks the hotel manager in response to my request for a discount rate. What the dickens can he mean? Why would I not want to stay the whole... Oh! I get it. Perhaps, since it's called Hotel Pleasure, I should've guessed. The bedroom is a 1981 version of exactly what you'd expect. Someone's written "I love you Brian" on the headboard in mad-woman writing - all scratchy and black.

It seems very clean, but I'm glad I don't have one of those UV-light love-squirt detectors. Nice big private garage for Her Maj, though. An oil change, performed, importantly, with love, and a few other minor tinkerings have left the old darling running like a new kettle or a copper hat or something. 16,500 Latin American miles (for a clock-total of 51,500) and I want to run my hands over her opalescent curves and kiss her until my lips get all sore and dirty. Apart from the saddle.

---

Mexico tomorrow! Which is, is it not, effectively North America? AWESOME!

-

---

Met some lovely USA folks - two couples on two V-Stroms - in Antigua. I enticed them to a bar where they drank not enough beer but were nice 'n' chatty. After a while, I began to suspect that they might Love Jesus; there was a moment where I had to explain that I don't have a star sign, which didn't seem to raise the appreciative chuckles I'd been gunning for, so perhaps it's best they went home before I'd drunk enough Brahva (looks like Brahma - isn't) to start badgering them about empyrean matters. So many things I must remember not to bring up in bars when I get to the US.

---

So, one more day in Guatemala, and I've decided it's the best bit of Central America. Some of it is bad-fantasy-painting beautiful. If JRR Tolkien had been on the back this afternoon, he'd have died of burst eyes. Tragically there was nowhere to stop and take a picture of Misty Mountain Wonderland, but it was like being in a 1975 bedroom (without the yeasty smell). The only things stopping me from having a catastrophic psilocybin flashback were the impenetrable and unbreathable clouds of black smoke pumping out of the buses. The worst culprit today had a picture of Fat Stupid Jesus on the back. I'm not saying Jesus was fat and stupid; just that the picture was of a fat, stupid Jesus.

---

Worst Meal Of 2009:
While I remember, I should mention a brunch I had; Overcooked "Surprise" Liver in a Honduras petrol station (I thought it was going to be "meat"). Even though I was starving, it was inedible. It was, however, so disgusting that I had to keep picking at it to check it wasn't a joke. It was like a shit on a plate. Honestly.

---