Day 42: La Ceiba, Honduras to Utila, Honduras

Shopping for cheap food is really important when before visiting islands, it is better to "ship" the food over yourself rather than having someone else do it for you. So we jumped on the boat with our reduce packing load of backpacks and grocery bag and headed to the top deck, aka the second floor. The rocking boatride took some time, I dont know exactally how long cause I was getting acclumated to island time by taking a nap.



I did wake up as we were approaching Utila though which was good for getting off of the boat, when we did so we were inundated with fliers handed out by blond haired Carribean accent speaking divers (or so I am assuming), we wanted non of that and headed to the place we did our research on. We spoke to the guy in the office and got a good vibe, we would be heading out to Jewel Cay to take our Open Water Dive Course.

We ended up sleeping at a little "hotel" overlooking the Carribean and the mountains of the mainland, a short boatride and nap away. Swinging in the hammics and eating fresh pineapple is a lifestyle change I can, and am, getting used to.

Day 41: Omoa, Honduras to La Ceiba, Honduras

Waking up early we enjoyed some nice fresh brewed coffee and I used the rush of energy to write down some thoughts. Coffee is amazing for helping ideas flow free in the morning from the mind. I know that it is just a tool but an amazing one at that. I wonder if green tea or another healthy substitue is out there.

We packed up camp at the backpackers and headed for la ceiba. This is the land where the mountains meet the ocean, massive mountains to say the least, my guess is around 1000 meters but could be more.

It took us longer to get to La Ceiba than we though it would, partly do to being lost in San Pedro Sula, a massive city said to be very dangerous. We were warned that we should be careful on our bikes cause someone might pull out a gun at a stoplight and try and highjack them. As a side note the signs in Honduras are not the best we have seen (or not seen).

Arriving in La Ceiba, or a little past due to lack of singage, we parked "downtown" and a lovely girl came up to the obviously lost travelers if we needed some help. Sure, we are looking for a place to stay and park our bikes. As it turned out she spoke amazing english and studied in the USA on scholarship. She pointed us in a direction, but as it turns out there is not a great spot to park our bikes, feel safe about leaving them there, and finding a cheap place to sleep. We found what we were looking for at Amsterdam 2001, a backpackers run by a 83 year old Dutch guy with some amazing stories.

For dinner we ate at a little cafe run by his daughter two doors down away from the beach (we were a house away from the beach. Amazing food at an even more amazing price. In Honduras they use the Limpiras, about 20:1. So a beer is about 20 limps, dinner is 50-65 limps, and you can see that getting fed is very cheap.

We were introduced to Joe, aka Colin, a life long traveler from britain who is also full of traveling and life stories. So between the Dutch fellow and Joe our night consisted of a dropped jaw, amazment and the checking of passports to check if the stories were really true. The Dutch fellow, I keep referring to hiim as the Dutch fellow because I have forgotten his name, was stationed on asubmarine in WWII and fought in Japan, Southeast Asia and around the world. Joe, has never been to war and will "die for no man". He has been to Timbuckto and crossed the river quie.

The concensis from people we have met so far is that the world is going to shit, thanks to the American imperialists, and the war in Iraq is the most absurd piece of bull.

Day 40: Rio Dulce, Guatemala to Omoa, Honduras

It felt good to mount back up and hit the road after four plus days in "one place". The road east rolled and twisted along, moving us forward quickly among sparse traffic. When the road intersected with the north-south road heading towards Puerto Barrios we experienced some pretty heavy truck traffic due to the port city being Guatemalas primary east coast shipping center. Turning east again we rode through huge tracts of land covered in banana trees and came to a cluster of trucks around some speed bumps made of thick rope.

Figuring this must be some kind of customs/immigration office, we voluntarily pulled over to see if there was anything we needed to do seeing as we had yet to fill out any paperwork for permits for the motos. Sure enough, this was the office where we were to have our passports scanned out and without any request for permits or whatever, we carried on towards Honduras.

The Honduran border outpost was the beginning of what became quite a saga. We had found through our research that Honduras had an arduous importation process, but descriptions in the guide books about a "police escort" couldn't prepare us for what we went though. At the first checkpoint, surrounded by enthusiastic-money-waving currency changers, we gathered that we needed to proceed to the monstrous building to our right to do something about our bikes. With the language barrier in full effect, we communicated with the officials slowly getting the story as to what needed to be done. Paperwork was followed by inspection of the bikes with the officials insisting to see the vehicle identification numbers so as to match them up with the paperwork.

Ok, next we go to the immigration office across the lot. Three dollars later we had flimsy pieces of paper with entry stamp stapled into our passports and then it was back over to the bikes. After taking our passports and bike titles from us, the officials informed us that we would have to pay 500 limpira each (about US$25 each) and proceed to Puerto Cortes with one of their agents onboard. I guess this is our police escort. After transferring my dry bag to J's bike, we mounted up with the pint sized border agent sitting right behind me carrying our passports and bike titles under his arm for the 60km to Puerto Cortes.

A wide smooth roadway led us towards Puerto Cortes interrupted only a couple of times with dusty dirt sections and at one point by a horse who, having escaped his roadside tether, had decided to chill out in the middle of the road eying the traffic zooming by on either side of him. Crazy horse. Arriving in Puerto Cortes, the agent began to direct me with hand signals which seemed to be all the same. Only upon swerving one way or the other would I find out weather I had made the right decision based on how wildly he waved his arm. Having successfully swerved our way to the customs building I headed off on foot to find a cajero automatico to take out some money for our dealings. Turns out that MasterCard is not accepted worldwide or at least not in this part of Honduras. With money in hand, we managed to move our paperwork along and sent our escort agent on his way. Now we have a new whole set of officials to deal with.

The guy who took our paper work proceeds to ask us in broken english:

"so do you want a permit for the motos? It's gonna take 2 to 3 hours"

"do we need one?"

"if you want to ride the motos in Honduras you do"

"ok then yes, we do"

Why else did we just ride 60km with a dude chillin' in back of me, sheesh. Ok, so now it's gonna take 2 to 3 MORE hours? We already have spent over 2 hours just arriving at this point in the process. Do they want people to come visit their country or dont they? Alright, lets find out what's gonna take 3 more hours... two more trips to the bank for "invoices" and we have to part with another US$75... then wait for a while, then a while more.

Eventually we left the premises of the customs office and in the toasty afternoon sunshine headed back south to the town of Omoa where there's reportedly the "best backpackers in Honduras".

Roli's Place is a chill spot indeed. A compound just 100 meters from the beach in a little "up and coming oceanside town". With our tent set up in the beautiful courtyard we headed down to the waterfront where we found a beautiful sunset unfolding over a narrow dirty beach. Several cigar smoking Canadian ex-pats have set up businesses here and seem to think that this place is going to be a destination in the near feature. We get the feeling that all these northerners come down to central america to run away from something. Dinner of garlic-butter sauce fried red snapper, nachos and cervezas cost a whopping US$15 and then we headed back to the hostel to crash out.

buenas noches

-Colin

Day 39: Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Christmas Day.

Today we plain to accomplish nothing besides going for a swim or paddle and lounging about reading.

Mission accomplished.

Day 38: Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Heading back to the waterfalls was in need after the long day on the launcha yesterday. Our plan of hiking into the caves was cut short with the overseers attempt to charge us more to be our "guide" to the caves.

I am really starting to love our backpackers, great people from all over the world conversing in many languages at one table.

Day 37: Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Rio Dulce is located 23 kilometer upriver from the warm waters of the Caribbean, so we decided to take a little day trip with two new friends by launcha to Livingston. Words can't explain how amazing the ride was.



We also visited a little cave system by pulling off to the side of the rio and hiking up a small jungle path to an opening into the earth. Walking down a little dark damp wooden staircase we make our way into the cave system with stalactites and stalagmites sparkling from our flashlights.

Livingston is more Caribbean than Guatemalan, more diverse with people from all over the world calling this little town their home.

Day 36: Rio Dulce, Guatemala

We are taking a liking to this place and are enjoying the lifestyle and lack of attention people here pay to clock and this thing we have invented called time.

After breakfast, and talking with John, we got a ride from this character to his house and got to see an ex-pats pace of residence, Waterfront with 80 feet of dock space just perfect for his sailboat.

John is like many older sailer men here, attracted initially by Rio Dulce's amazing harbor, the best in the western hemisphere. The have the ability, by being paid very good international wages, to take full advantage of both the real estate and the young women here. John has a "girlfriend" of 23 years of age, himself being well over 50 years. He justified their "relationship" as her having a better life, and him enjoying her company. Both Colin and I talked it over and think that he is just taking advantage of this Guatemalan situation and trying to surpress his social inability to be in his home country, finding a woman where he can have a mutual loving relationship with. And he is not the only salty dog to have this situation, it is most people at Bruno's.

We jump on our bikes without gear and ride 45 minutes through the main drag of town on paved roads through curvy banana plantation surrounding roads over a number of bridges to a potholed dirt road. We take this road through little villages and onto a little area where we park our our bikes and pay the Q10 per person to walk five minutes to the agua caliente, the hot waterfalls.

This place is phenomenally relaxing. It is conveniently located at the juncture of a hot water fall and a cold steam so you can mix the two water temperatures to find the exact relaxing temp for you.
When we got back to Bruno's we herd that there was a great BBQ over at another backpackers only accessible by boat. We packed up some stuff for the night and headed over to spend the night at this secluded spot.

It is dark by the time we leave the Bruno's dock in the launcha, the moon is just about bursting at its seams it was so full. We make our way across the harbor to a little swamp ravine.

Motoring slowly up it we are just amazed at the of this place. We arrive almost at the end of this little river to a thatched building bustling with people, red umbrellas over candle lit tables, truly magical.

Day 35: Flores, El Paten, Guatemala to Rio Dulce, Guatemala

Waking up to the birds in Flores is a truly amazing life experience, just at dusk and dawn the birds of the island and surrounding nieborhoods get together in the canopies and sing their goodmorning (or goodnight) song as loud as possible. The colors of the sky slowly turn from dark black to blue and orange and yellow until the sun pokes its happy little face above the horizon and shinning to its hearts content, reflecting on the beautiful lake surrounding us.

We start our journey heading towards Belieze and back onto the road that we got lost on getting to Flores in the first place, only to realize two hours into our journey that we are on the road southwest and not just west. It was meant to be, this is the second time we took a wrong turn. We took this "wrong turn" and the correct path lay ahead of us.

Today, we enjoyed some of the most amazing vistas of our trip so far, rolling mountains of green lush jungle, birds thermalling into the massive cummulous clouds raising above the hot landscape exploding into the heavens.

Finaly, we arrived at the bridge we have now learned more about, the longest span bridge in Central America, with an entire economy existing on the peak of it consisting of vendors and people trying to get us to take a trip to Livingston.

We found our place to rest for the night at Bruno's, a marina for semi-permenent yachties docking their boats to take full use of the harbor and local attractions (more about this later as it is a subject unto itself).

We met some characters including John, a oil support boat captain who works 45 days on and 90 days off, now living in Guatemala for the past 3 years.

The dorm was nice and cheap with great local salty dog characters including Steve who runs the place for Bruno, who can't come back to his own establishment due to some "problems" with some people int he local community. He did try to come back once, but left just before a group of men with ski masks on came looking for his, apparently to take him on a ski adventure in the snowy mountains of Guatemala, due to his love of powder.

Day 34: Flores, El Paten, Guatemala

Sleeping in a hammock takes a little getting used to. First there's having the right slack in it so you can get the proper sag, then there's figuring out what positions you can chill in that given hammock. Between fine tuning my position in the hammock and the chirping/screeching of the birds that slept about as much as I did on Cofre de Perote, my sleep was a bit restless although there was no where else I would rather have been than on that roof in that hammock.

Come 5am, all the birds were in full song creating quite a cacophany, so I put my headphones on and continued on with my adventure though my 600 something songs on my extremely tiny Ipod nano. I forgot that once upon a time my old Ipod could go 20 or so hours between charges.
I ventured downstairs to find J awake and fiddling with the computer. We brought all the fixings for making coffee up to the rooftop and started the day from there. Today we chill. Maybe we go to the ruins of Tikal this afternoon? Breakfast was a wonderful combination of classic eggs, toast, and coffee with plantains, and a unique Guatemalan specialty that was something like a fried whole wheat pancake. Then there were the smoothies. All for about $15, yum.

We ended up not going to Tikal today and the rest of the day J read and I worked on this here blog so that you all can live vicariously through us in this paradise. Here's some eye candy from today, enjoy!

Day 33: Frontera Echeverria (Corozal), Chiapas, Mexico to Flores, El Paten, Guatamala

Swarming ants and some nice hot coffee, those were the events surrounding waking up today. After giving the tent a good upside-down shake, J hung it in a nearby tree to air it out and prevent any other critters from climbing in.

Next it was off to get our passports stamped at the immigration office which opens at 8am, or 9am, or 9:30. I would say that when you are this far out there you operate on whatever time you want, or the official wants.


While we waited for the immigration office to open, several of the launcha drivers who we had spoke with the day before rode over on their mountain bikes (seems that's how most people get around here) to chat with us and make the final price negotiations. It was interesting to see how things operated with the launcha drivers: the two guys who we had come to an agreement with (the two biggest guys around) stood by us the whole time we were waiting for the immigration office to open. The other guys would come over to say what they had to say but would then basically stand in line behind the first guys. Did they really think the first guys were going anywhere? As we had suspected we would find this morning, there were plenty of launchas available and not many customers to serve. Our crossing would be the money maker for the day, or week, for whoever took us over.

Riding down to the boats was a bit exciting with a steep embankment and a concrete divider to navigate but with a little finesse, or speed, it was nothing. Then it was time to load up. These guys have clearly done this before. They said about 30 to 40 motorcycles come through each year, but I don't know how many of those these two characters have taken.






Now we had to figure out where to offload. The first spot was pretty steep and was all soft sand, not really anywhere to get traction.

Down the river a bit further was a much more gently sloping spot with more rock and less sand. The only trick was getting there as the launchas would have to slip through several narrow twists with quick flowing water in order to reach the spot. My driver expertly navigated the launcha through the skinnies and swung the boat around on the calm downstream side of the little beach. J's driver took a slightly more adventurous route taking the last two twists backward and placing the second launcha perfectly next to the first.



Unloading went as smoothly as loading and soon we were making our first tracks in Guatemala on the dusty road to Bethal where the immigration office is located.

Small clearings in the jungle along the road to Bethal contained small thatched huts (that could not have been more than a single room) with women and children huddled outside. Other groups of women and children were doing laundry or just splashing around in streams our road crossed. So where were the men? It wasn't long before we came over a rise in the road to find ourselves face to face with what is known as "slash and burn". In order to make enough money to survive, the people here (most likely hired by others) cut down everything on a section of land, put fire to it, and then plant crops (corn) or set cattle out to graze. The soil here, while it seems to support the jungle just fine, cannot sustain the crops or the cattle for more than a few years at which time they simply move on to another section of land. The land that has been "used up" does not grow back into the jungle and basically becomes barren land with maybe a few small plants. This of course leads to another whole dilemma as the soil is then extremely suseptible to erosion and even landslides as we saw the remenants of on several occasions.

Upon arriving in Bethal, we came to a halt by a couple of young men who we chilling at a refreshment stand, asking where we might find the immigration office. After them telling us several times and us not understanding, one of them mounted his own motorcycle and led us slowly down the road to the office, not even a kilometer away. The officer in the single story building with a single desk and computer inside, greeted us with a smile welcoming us to Guatemala and stamping our passports. Before sending us on our way, the officer supplied us with directions to Flores/Tikal informing us that with our 90 day Guatemalan tourist stamp we could pass through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua without needing another stamp. "What about Belize?" we asked. With a smirk he replied something to the tune of: "Belize is it's own thing". Apparently, well at least my reading has informed me, Guatemala has never really considered Belize a country and considers it a "territory" of Guatemala even though Belize has declared itself independent on multiple occasions.

The road leading east from Bethal widened as we carried on with a huge plume of dust behind us.


Most of the land along the road had long since been clear cut and was sparsely populated with green areas and cattle. Our momentum came to a halt at a gathering in the middle of the road between a few cargo trucks and several pick-up truck loads of fully equiped Guatemalan soldiers. As we rolled up, one truck driver was being frisked while several others were being questioned. After producing identification (hello laminated photo copies!) and a quick search of one of each of our cases, the soldiers sent us our way with nothing but 10 minutes lost.

After reaching paved roads and turning north, we came to a gas station with an ATM in the parking lot. Ok, time for a new currancy and new exchange rate. US$1 is about 8 quezals. Ok, how much do we need? Gas is 30 something per liter? Ok, 1500 quezals should be good. Oh wait, gas is sold in gallons here. Doh! I guess we will be coming back through this country so we don't have to spend it all.

The next time we came to a stop, some 50 miles northeast up the road, we asked directions only to find we were long past the turn off for Flores. That's funny, we didn't see any signs and when looking at the map it seemed we couldn't miss it. We backtracked 30 miles and found that the sign we had been looking for was only viewable to those traveling in the southwest direction. Sweet.

We found our way through a cooling drizzle to Flores; an island in the middle of a big lake with a little causeway out to it. The whole island takes about 3 minutes to slowly circle on the bikes with just about every square inch of the island used to accomodate what I would describe as a mini-european town.

Dinner, consorting with a tourist group of Canadians, Aussies and one bloke from England, and dessert consisting of Arabic coffee and a sheesha completed the day's adventure before we retired to our hotel, Hospedaje Dona Goya, where I slept in one of the rooftop hammocks while J chose the more traditional mattress in the room we paid a whopping 80 quezals (about $10) for.

Whew, what a day. Goodnight.

-Colin

Day 32: Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico to Frontera Echeverria (Corozal), Chiapas, Mexico

Waking up in the hammicas was truly amazing and relaxing, despite trying to get back into them after a midnight bathroom run. We made a pot of coffee and hungout (no pun intended) for a while. deciding to get our day underway we had a wonderful breakfast at the restaurant at Mayabell consisting of omletts and a fruit plate and jugo de naranja. Satisfied we jumped on one bike to the ruins of Palenque, pictures say more than a thousand words.































After throwing the frizbee and seeing the sights we went back to Mayabell, packed up and headed down highway 199 to Frontera Echeverria, a long road at the foot of some giant hills, it was warm and beautiful with a nice breeze from the bikes.


After turning off of the main road heading east we desended five hundred meters through a winding revene, that was surprizingly cold. Finally arriving at the gate to the ecotouresum community of Frontera Echeverria (Corozal).

We drove to the river that we are crossing tomorrow, found a place to pitch our tent and then rode down to the river to find a launcha to take us accross in morning.


After laughing at the first guys proposall of 200 pesos per person and bike we looked around asking other launchas what they would charge to carry dose personas y dose motos. Our finnal price quote from another launcha was 150 pesos for dose personas y dose motos. It pays to ask around and find a great and accureate price, tomorrow I would not be surprized to get both us and our motos across for 100 pesos, though 150 pesos is a wonderful price we would be happy to pay.