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November 26, 2017
Day 15 [Mon 11/27/17] - Puerto Arista, Oaxaca to Ciudad Tecun Uman, Guatemala
Starting Odometer: 8,663
Ending Odometer: 8,849
Distance Traveled Today: 186 miles
Distance Traveled This Trip: 4,246 miles [8,849 - 4,603]
0........Puerto Arista, Oaxaca (0)
144....Tapachula, Chiapas (144)
42......Ciudad Tecun Uman(186)
My ride from today looks something like this.
Lord I feel like I should just cancel my trip, go home and take remedial spanish, and then come back should I ever learn the language. But I digress...
I wake up this morning, early. My alarm is set for 6:00 a.m. now, so I get up, get out of bed, and walk down to the beach. This is my morning ritual. And I kind of like it.
I'm down on the beach, watching the kids play, and a fisherman cast his net. The restaurants are all closed up now. The sun has just come up about maybe 30 minutes to an hour ago. But I am OK with this. It's not a competition. Just me trying to get a little more riding time in during the daylight hours, and getting an earlier start seems like a logical place to start.
It's sort of funny what you can do when you try. When you really put your mind to it. I think that, to me, that goes a long way to explaining what this journey is about. It's about seeing what you can do if you really try, instead of just laying around in bed like I usually do.
I remember when I started commuting. It never occured to me that it was even possible to get up at 4:00 a.m. to catch a flight. But once you start doing it, it's really not that hard. I'm not saying it's fun, or it's easy, or it's a great idea, but it is possible. And that's sort of what I'm trying to do on this trip, really. To see what is possible, if you really put your mind to it.
So I walk around on the beach some, shooting the pelicans and the sunrise. It's a beautiful beach. And you'll never talk to anyone that's even heard of this place. But it's beautfiul. Nothing wrong with it at all.
The fisherman casts his net, catches a bunch of fish that he wasn't intending to catch, it seems. And he pulls them from his net and just leaves them to die in the sand. The kids run about trying to put the fish back into the ocean. And when I walk past, I toss back in all of the fish that I can find. I have no qualms about eating meat, but killing fish just for the sake of doing it seems somewhat cruel.
I go back and check out of my hotel. Now I'm on the road again, and I get away fairly early.
Today, the winds are strong again, so strong that it seems too dangerous to ride a motorcycle in. A smarter person would stop, but I just ride on, chin down on the gas tank to lower my profile to the winds.
I gassed up the bike last night, so that's not an issue this morning. I just get up and run the bike and, after some distance, the winds finally die down, and now I focus on running the bike at 80 mph. I think that I chose 80 mph because less than 80 is too slow, and faster than 80 is too fast - too dangerous. And 80 seems like a good speed so that I can get some miles in today.
All day, I'm dodging potholes, chickens, goats, vultures, iguanas, wild pigs, street dogs, cows, horses...you name it. If you lose focus for one second, you're going to die. You have to constantly stay alert because, you start sort of focusing on something else for 1 minute, and suddenly you're going into a hairpin turn with a herd of goats in the middle of the road.
People always say that Mexico isn't safe, but it's not the drug lords you have to be afraid of. They're not after the tourists. It's the road hazards you have to watch out for. That, plus the traffic patterns down here are totally different.
When there is a shoulder, the traffic is much more complicated, and you have to constantly be watching for people to come into your lane, because this is how they drive down here.
By noon, I've gone over 100 miles. In fact, I've gone nearly 150 miles. So that means that I get to stop for lunch. That's my little carrot I put out there for myself. And it works well. It helps me stay focused.
It's really hard to describe the poverty down here. The saving grace is that the people are not starving. It's hard to fathom how they managed to build the roads. Who funded it and where did the money come from?
Every day, I see men clearing brush on the side of the road with machetes. And they often burn the brush on the side of the road, including trees. Because they're fighting an unwinnable war with the foliage, that is constantly threatening to overtake the roadways.
Occasionally, they'll have a mower that they can tilt and chop away at the trees with, but more often than not, they're just swinging machetes like it was 1840 again.
At some point, I come to a fake military check point.
There's a guy there, and he motions for me to stop, which is extremely unusual. They never ask me to stop. Never. But this guy motions for me to stop, and asks for me to present my Temporary Vehicle Import Permit, which I have, beacuse I'm in the country legally this time. So I show it to him. Then, he starts talking about how, when I get to the border, I have to turn this in to Aduana, and then they'll refund me the deposit that I put down when I got the permit to bring the bike into the country. And, he's right about this. That is how it works, and I'm glad he reminded me.
Then, he tells me that he needs to ride with me to the border, to process the paperwork. And I'm like....you're out of your fucking mind. That's certainly not going to happen. And I just pack up all of my papers and leave. So, that is sort of odd, and it's one of the strangest things to happen on this trip. He's reading from a piece of paper, and I ask him to show it to me so I can take a photo of it. And I have a photo of his little note card. Saying he wants to ride "in my car with me to the border", 45 minutes further down the road, and I'm on a motorcycle. Not a fucking chance, dude. Now I realize he's not anyone. He has no authority, and I get the fuck out of there. Very strange that this happened. Does not give me a warm fuzzy.
Just before I get to Tapachula, I stop for carne asado tacos in some little place in a town called Viva Mexico, in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
Paradas Continuas
As I'm eating lunch, these vans keep pulling up and stopping, and letting people out, and taking people in. The back of these vans says "Paradas Continuas" (Continuous Parade). And you can't fathom how many people they cram into a van. I can't imagine what it must be like inside of there.
My lunch of Carne Asado tacos and CocaCola (sin Azucar) cost me a total of $60 pesos. ($3.45 USD).
After lunch, I ride into Tapatchula and gas up.
I stop at some point and a woman is selling chilled cantaloupe juice on the side of the road. Delicious, but they're all drinking beer, and I feel like they're laughing at me, which I've never had happen on this trip, so I leave.
I'm now preparing to cross the border into another country, for the first time since I crossed into Mexico on Friday November 17th. So, I've been in the country for 11 days, I think.
But before I get to the crossing, I see a woman selling something on the side of the road, and I'm really thirsty today for whatever reason. I stop, and she's selling Hibiscus juice. Though that's not what she calls it. That's what they called it when they served it to us in Piste, earlier this year. Delicioso.
I get to the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo (or just 'Hidalgo'). My two GPS units are giving me wildly different directions on where to go. Finally, I realize that the Garmin is not trying to send me to even the right city, so I start following the Waze app, and eventually, I find the border crossing and go inside to Aduana. I hand him my Temporary Vehicle Import Permit, and he does some paperwork, and eventually says that my deposit will be refunded to me via my debit card. I'm not clear if that's true or not, but he says it will be refunded to me in a day or so.
I dunno what will happen really, but it's hard to call him a liar to his face.
So I leave, and try to drive into Guatemala. But they stop me at the border, and want to spray my bike with DDT. I remember this from the last time I was down here. So they spray my bike tires with DDT for whatever reason.
There's a money changer here at the border. The bible talks about these people. I have plenty of pesos, but no Guatemalan currency. I can't even remeber what it's called.
He quotes me a rate of 7:1, and I'll need the currency to get through Immigracion and Customs, apparently. I google it real quick, and his rate seems fair. So I hand him $50 USD, and in theory, I was supposed to get 350 Quetzal, but I think he only gave me 300. I dunno. I was so tired and hot I couldn't even speak, hardly. It's easy to make mistakes under these conditions.
Then, they ask to see my Passport, but I don't have an exit stamp from Mexico. So now, I've got to go back to Mexico, and as for an exit stamp.
So I go back across the river to Mexico and ask them to give me an exit stamp. I hand my passport to the guy, and he gives me some form to fill out, and I fill out the form sort of half-heartedly. He keeps asking quesiton and question and finally, gives me a bunch of paperwork, and then points to where I need to go to get the exit stamp that I need in my passport to get into Guatemala. So I drive up to the stop sign, get out, go up to an office, and finally I get the exit stamp that I need to get into Guatemala.
So now, I go back across the river into Guatemala, and I show them my exit stamp, and they've already sprayed my bike so it doesn't get sprayed again. Now, this guy starts telling me what all I need to get into Guatemala. Copies of my driver's license, registration, insurance, vehicle title, etc. So, I park my bike, and I go with this guy, and he takes me to a copy store where the guy makes copies of everything. (Many of these things I already have copies of, some I do not.) So we have copies of everything, and now this guy tells me where to go. Now, we have to go to another building. I've managed to get past Immigracion, but now I have to get through Aduana with all of this paperwork.
So, I go to turn my bike around and go about 1/2 a block, but it's so hot and I'm so tired, that I drop the bike. I'm not even moving. It just falls over, as I'm so exhausted I can hardly hold it up. Several people come rushing over to help stand the bike back up.
Now, I go into the next building (Aduanas) hand them my paperwork, and sit there for what seems like hours. I'm not sure how much time I wasted there, but it seems like Kafka's "The Trial". Like...you're just sitting there thinking....seriuosly people....WTF? It's 2017. What in the fuck could you possibly be doing.
And I'm so hot, there just aren't words. I'm sweating like a whore in church. Like...no one with any sense would try this. Smarter people fly into some destination, stay a week or two, and then fly home. Sadly, I am not this smart. So I'm sweating and it's so hot I could die.
Eventually, I realize that they're probably going to close the office before they've completed my paperwork, and I'll have to come back tomorrow. But finally, he gives me my paperwork that I need, and a sticker for the motorcycleta. I remember this sticker from my KTM....I knew I got it on that trip, and I always thought it was from Guatemala, but I was never sure. Also, this is where they do a serious VIN inspection, and it's the only country that they check the VIN in, as I recall.
So, by 5:30 p.m., they're finally done and I get on my bike and now, I'm legally in Guatemala, in the town of Ciudad Tecun Uman and I'm rolling through town at dusk, royally pissed that it took me half a day to get through these idiots' paperwork trap.
Now....Guatemala is markedly different than Mexico because, suddenly, I'm surrounded by countless little motor-scooters driving through the city of Tecun Uman so that I'm very concerned about crashing. Like...you thought it was dangerous in Mexico...you ain't seen nothing yet. Like fucking Mad Max on acid. There are scooters everywhere, moving unpredictably, like flies at a picnic. Mexico was nothing like this. Mexico was a cake walk compared to this.
And I head out of town, but the sun is about to set, and I really don't have time to make the next town, and I really hate how people flash their bright lights at me when I ride at night. So I turn back, and circle through the town looking for a hotel. But I can't really find one. I'm lost and tired and frustrated, and I stop and see a man on the side of the road, and he says he knows where there's a hotel in town with internet service.
And, I can't understand what he's saying at all, but he runs inside his apartment, comes back out, gets on his bike, and motions for me to follow him. So I'm following this guy on a bicycle, on my 2017 Honda Africa Twin, and he leads me to this hotel in town, the Hotel Arabe, and they have a room for the night, and they don't have hot water showers, but they have internet and A/C and I'm like....Good enough. Quanto Es?
200 Quetzal. I'm so exhausted that I can't do the math, so I get a calculator, and 200 Quetzal is about $29 USD, so I'm like....Good enough. I'm all in.
Now, I turn to my buddy who rode his bike down here to show me the hotel, and I hand him a 100 Quetzal note, about $14 USD. And he thanks me and rides home on his bicycle.
I go inside, do my laundry in the shower, and collapse into my hotel room (with three beds for some reason). Lord. Now I know why other people don't do this. Because they're smarter than me.
Posted by Rob Kiser on November 26, 2017 at 7:36 PM
Comments
Hey Rob! Thanks for your faithfulness posting the details of your adventure. I can see how it can be discouraging handling the seemingly useless details. Just remember, I it was easy, everyone would do it. If my memory serves, the closest you have come to taking a break was the ferry ride from La Paz. I hope you find a nice spot to rest and recharge soon. Thanks for taking us all along!
Posted by: STEVEN BALDWIN on November 28, 2017 at 7:39 AM