Ephemerica

We’ve had quite a ride on the way from San Cristobal, Mexico to Xela, Guatemala. The first day out was great. It’s always nice to be on the bikes again after a hiatus. We did pretty well—we were hot and tired afterwards, but not in pain. The second day was pretty nice, too. That is until we were about 5 km away from our destination at the border town, Ciudad Cuauhtemoc. All of a sudden there were tons of cars backed up and none of them were moving at all. As we biked past them, I noticed several trucks that had passed us much earlier in the day. Our first real road block*. When we got close enough to see the road filled with people in the distance, we stopped to ask some policemen what was going on. They told us that the country people were blocking the road in protest, but they were only blocking cars, and we should be able to go through with out a problem. Feeling reassured that we weren’t biking into a hostile situation, we forged ahead. As we reached the mass of people completely filling the road, we were pointed to a small path through the ditch on the side of the road. Around the people we went and were riding again in a couple minutes. We stopped to buy some pineapple and watermelon from one of the vendors catering to the crowd. Here we found out that the road block was to protest corn prices. The rest of the ride into town was uneventful and traffic free. When we arrived at the hotel in town we were greeted by a Dutch tour group who had walked to the hotel/restaurant leaving their bus behind the roadblock. They had passed us on the road earlier in the day and were happy that we made it safely to our destination.

The border crossing was uneventful and bribe-free. We got our passports stamped for 90 days in the country, changed most of our pesos into quetzals and were off. For the first 10-20 km there were many people on or near the road. They all seemed to want to test out their english—shouting “hello, bye-bye, hello, bye-bye” with the occasional “hey guys” or “good luck” thrown in. Later, we discovered that all little boys under the age of about 10 like to shout “gringos!” then run to the road to watch us pass and yell “bye-bye” or run alongside the bikes for a while.

The ride away from the border was almost entirely uphill, so we decided not to push our luck with the knees and stopped in a small town called Colotenango, where we spotted a hotel by the road. We had a nice chat with the hotel owner, who assured us that we would be very safe in Guatemala as long as we don’t ride at night.

Matt awoke the next morning with a bit of an upset stomach. We didn’t have much of a choice but to keep riding so that we could make it to the larger city of Huehuetenango, where we could find a cash machine to replenish our small amount of quetzals. After about 10 km, or 45 minutes of uphill riding, Matt was feeling light-headed and needed a bit of rest in the shade. We pulled off of the road just past a bus stop and some men moving a pile of rocks. The rest didn’t really help and after attracting a bit of a crowd who were watching us from a distance, Matt threw up all the liquid he had had that morning. If any of you know Matt very well, you will know that he faints very easily when he is sick or in pain. He can’t even listen to verbal descriptions of injuries without feeling faint. So, after throwing up, he passed out just long enough to freak me out. I was just about to start figuring out the Spanish for “throw some cold water on him” when he came to. Then vomited up all the solid food he had eaten. The crowd watched until he got up and started walking around again.

Feeling much better after throwing up, Matt decided he could try riding again. We only had about 35 km to go that day and not much money, so we made the attempt. We quickly came upon another problem though. Having thrown up all his food, Matt had no energy. And he wasn’t feeling well enough to eat anything. So, we gave up on riding to Xela and bussed the rest of the way to Huehue, had a day of recovery there, then bussed on to Xela today.

Guatemala on the whole is a bit more chaotic than Mexico. This is especially true of the busses. The most common type of busses are referred to (by tourists) as “chicken busses” because they take pretty much anything, including live chickens, as cargo. I had read much about these old US school busses in our guidebooks etc, but I still was not quite prepared for the experience. First of all, they aren’t just old US school busses, but techicolor school busses, some of which have what looks like the hood of a semi-truck. The bus stations are really just tiny parking lots crammed full of busses. There are no tickets to buy, you just find the guy yelling out your destination, then get on the bus he points you toward. Once inside the bus, there is even more chaos. As we were waiting to leave the aisles were full of vendors selling newspapers, sodas, candy, popsicles and jello. On the 2 hour ride from Huehue to Xela, the entire bus was sitting at least three across, more if there were children in the seat, hanging on for dear life everytime the bus tested the laws of physics on the curves of the narrow, winding mountain road. I was disappointed that neither of our “chicken bus” experiences involved any actual chickens—the closest we came was a bunch of eggs.

Despite doubts at times, we have made it safely (Matt is still a bit sick, though mostly able to eat again) to Xela and successfully met up with our host family. They have so far been very welcoming and fun. We have a date with the little girl to do some painting after we return from our first day of classes and orientation.

* We had previously encountered people holding up traffic to collect money for various projects. Two of them were very mild, held by school groups collecting money for their schools asking for money but not holding people up if they didn’t contribute. On the van ride back from visiting the runas of Yaxchilan and Bonampak, we encountered a fairly rowdy road block with probably around 20-30 men not allowing anyone to pass until they had made a donation to fund the building of a house in their community. Our driver, probably accustomed to dealing with this sort of thing, handled the situation very well and managed to get us past with a donation of only around 50 cents per person ($5 total) in the van, though it took some calm negotiating on his part.

Posted by cindy on May 7th, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico, Guatemala