Guatemala

A wise man (that’s probably the nicest thing Ali's ever said about his Dad)  once told me that the first phrase you should learn in any language is “My friend will pay”. The philistine in me has added a second phrase to this simple guideline: “Two beers please”, particularly necessary after a long day in the heat. This phrase still works perfectly even if you are on your own. However, in Guatemala the most important phrase, which we seem to have uttered almost as much as “Hola”, is “Es asfalto?”  Our route through Guatemala has at times been significantly amended to take account of where roads have beautifully EU-funded tarmac and where they have dusty, dirty, debris-laden driveways (and if that’s not reason enough to vote to stay in the EU, we don’t know what is).  

If only they drove on the left... 

Tale of a broken bridge.... 

The other significant feature of the route planning here has been the hills and volcanoes, which give rise to beautiful, verdant and lush scenery as well as the requisite conditions to grow the wonderful Guatemalan coffee that you drink in Starbucks/Cafe Nero/Costa/(insert independent coffee shop). Ironically, on arriving in Guatemala it took a long time to find a decent cup of coffee but we seem to now have the knack; however, finding a cup of tea that isn’t Lipton Yellow Label is still proving a significant challenge...now back to those massive hills that we’ve been conquering. 

On fully-laden touring bikes, we've truly discover the purpose of a 'granny gear' and learnt just how slowly we are able to go and remain upright (2.1 mph in case you were wondering). However, staying upright isn't the same as going in a straight line and at this pace we find ourselves weaving alarmingly close to the menacing gutter that runs 
parallel to the road, a foot deep. We've also learnt just how much stronger our legs are than our weedy arms, as pushing the bike is so much more exhausting than peddling it. However, on this trip, where we exist so entirely in the present, the intensity of every sensation is so stark and yet so fleeting. So that very moment when you crest the hill is filled with the sweetest satisfaction, the complete submersion of your entire being in the accomplishment and blessed relief as you take in the views and rejoice in the fact that the previous moments are now in the past!

Whilst we generally know what lies ahead by way of climbs (our sophisticated smart phones are able to tell us the elevation at the start and end of climbs) we tend not to have the data for what sits in the middle. We therefore continuously benchmark our progress against these two numbers to help motivate our tiring legs up the mountain (NB: we refer to none of the climbs as ‘hills’, regardless of accurate topographical terminology - they are all referred to as mountains. Or sometimes volcanoes if it’s a bit cloudy or they are actually a volcano). This means that when the road begins to drop prematurely, before we reach the top, our gritted joy fast becomes displeasure and frustration - we are losing hard earned metres as the road-builders confront the reality of a river, and the road drops so as to cross the water and continue up the other side. On this trip, never have we flipped so easily between absolutely loving rivers (immersing ourselves in them at the end of a long day’s riding) and completely despising them, as we slowly regain the metres lost to their unavoidable flow.

A wee bit of pushing

A wee bit more

At last! 

The top of the climbs are often also marked by towns. We usually know when we are getting close, warned by our GPS gadgets. However, nothing is as uplifting as the first sight of a tuk-tuk. Like the dove to Noah’s Ark, tuk-tuks are a sign that you are nearing civilisation. As they are only small three wheeled devices with tiny engines their range is limited. This means that the sighht of a bright red tuk-tuk zooming past (even a tortoise-paced tuk-tuk will speed past our snail pace on the hills) means that salvation, or at least a cold Coca-Cola, is near at hand.

The other lesson we've learnt on the Guatemalan roads is how to handle the extraordinarily prevelant (and pretty mangy) dogs. We've encountered plenty before, and in our pannier free days would tear off into the distance leaving the dogs for dust, but now that our load is significantly more weighty there is a rapid calculation to be done. As a growling bundle of fur charges towards us we quickly assess it's pace, calibre and the size of its jaws, and make a quick approximation of our own momentum and spirit level. It's probably as rarely as one time in four, but when the odds look good, we put our heads down and charge with all we've got, adrenalin pumping and shrieking (Lizzie) as the jaws miss our ankles by inches!  Then holler in delight as they fall away. For the main, we've capitulated to the fact that, counter intuitively, when the chancers are irritatingly yapping at us, the most effective way to deal with them is actually to slow right down and call their bluff. 

As in Mexico, one of the highlights of Guatemala has been the Mayan ruins - early on, we visited the hugely impressive Tikal and were blown away. We planned to ride up one afternoon and camp near the ruins, nipping in briefly to watch sunset, cook dinner and then get up early to watch sunrise from the top of one of the temples. 

Tikal

The pleasure of dispatching this plan was only disrupted by Lizzie's vivid imagination as she imagined more and more elaborate encounters with more and more terrifying animals during the hour and a half that it took to cycle through the national park to reach the site of the temples.  She was egged on by the signs we encountered along the way, the rustling in the under growth and the terrifying growls of the howler monkeys that sound distinctly like a lion roaring with ravenous intent. We'd been warned about the uncanny similarity between these sounds, but feeling particularly exposed on our bicycles and a bit emotionally vulnerable (on Lizzie's part) from the persistent warnings of dangerous creatures (jaguars more so, turkeys less) made it harder to ignore the deafening chorus.

A strange collection of turkey,  deer, snake, jaguar and something with a long nose

Bleary-eyed the following morning (from dreams of lions ripping us limb from limb) we were lucky enough to have a clear sky and see a fantastic sunrise from the top of one of the enormous temples in Tikal and then have a great few hours with a local guide. Tikal is home to a huge number of temples, the majority of which have not been excavated. The Mayans abandoned the site in 900 A.D, probably leaving the area as a result of drought. The jungle then reclaimed the land, which, fortunately for us budding archaeologists, meant the conquistadors were unaware of its existence and so didn’t destroy it and re-purpose the stones to build hugely lavish cathedrals as they did elsewhere. The cost and time of excavating the temples is huge and so happens in quite a piecemeal fashion as, usually foreign, archaeology groups raise the funding to unearth them. This provides the tantalising prospect of imaging that any bulge in the landscape could be a hidden Mayan temple, as many of the hills near Tikal are. This provided us with hours of fun on the bikes, analysing pointy hills and playing “Hill or Mayan pyramid?”

Hill or Mayan Pyramid? 

We have talked before about one of the pleasures of bike touring being the ability to end up in the most random and remote villages, where our passing elicits wide eyes and dropped jaws. This means that even medium-sized towns, without another gringo in sight, feel like a capital city to us, bursting with amenities (this accolade is awarded to ‘towns’ where the shops are big enough to sell Pringles, there is a 24-hour trucker hotel - although we’re yet to dare venture into one of these - and we can find a restaurant with free Wi-Fi). Camping, or even just stopping for a drink, in these rural villages has been hugely enjoyable. Our smug-ometers at how intrepid we are being were off the scale for a few weeks where we passed through villages where the locals didn’t really speak Spanish, just one of the many Mayan dialects that exist across Guatemala. This meant we had to dust off the PhD’s in miming we had picked up in Vietnam - always a fine line on how explicit to be with certain needs (see previous post on why we wanted to learn Spanish).

It's really notable how in these rural communities, the women dressed completely differently. In the north, and to the east of Antigua, we found the women to wear short shorts and low cut tops, understandable given the opressive heat. But in these mountain villages they wore thick embroidered tops with beautifully elaborate designs in vivid colours. Each village has their own design, distinguishing the women who live there. We had the pleasure of coincidently arriving in the wonderfully named Chichicastenango (known to its friends as Chi Chi) on market day when thousands of people, mostly women, descend from the surrounding area to shift their produce and tout their wares. The streets were buzzing with beautifully clad women sizing up the quality of one another's tortillas and exchanging gossip.  

The ladieswear section at Chi Chi

As we mentioned previously, we finished our time in Guatemala with a trip to Lake Atilan to improve our Spanish and a day in Antigua, the old capital and a beautiful colonial city. The only downside to both was the locals enormous fetish for fireworks and firecrackers. These would be let off at any time of day and for any given reason (no evening, weekend, special occasion required). We lost the number of times that Lizzie got 'air' as she jumped and shuddered at the unexpected shock. Let's hope she doesn't need a pacemaker fitted before El Salvador, a country which which we are fast approaching.  

View over Antigua