Part 9 of the Blog
3 Sep 2010
Part 9
Today left Mexico and entered Guatemala. As I got deeper into the country the traffic soon increased dramatically and my progress slowed. Given the multitude of tasks other than simply riding, it was not clear in my head how I was going to ride so far so quickly. In fact my strategy, if I had one, changed all the time. Forgetting to bring any maps did not help and I was reduced to routing myself from the vague cartographical detail offered by my memory as well as tourist brochures. As I continued to ride a chap in a car drove along side me and started taking photographs. I ignored him for a while then realised he could be my film crew so stopped to speak to him. He told me he had an R6 and was passionate about his biking. It was still raining, something similar to the dying scene in the film Blade Runner.
"The rivers are in flood and we are rebuilding the roads," he said, "in the north where you are going, the border to Honduras was closed this weekend, a bridge went down ". He said this in passing but it changed the way I would transit across Central America. Instead of driving across Honduras, a country with a reputation for being dangerous should you drive there at night, I might now have to cross El Salvador instead. The choice was more riding against more paperwork and in the past I have weighed up the two options and have been undecided about which was the easiest way. On balance, the El Salvador option gave me an opportunity to film a little; more time to continue to dress my stage. So I said goodbye to Dave and rode from Esqiuntl to the border post exiting Guatemala, 70 kms away.
It was true, the rivers were full and the potholes were large enough for you to take a bath, but in between the rough bits, there were tyre widths of stunningly perfect surface.
