The drive to Choluteca was short in distance but long in time. I crossed at Amatillo, a horrible place. Hundreds of border helpers compete to steal your money. My helper was Jose, who saved me from eleven other helpers who stopped me in a roundabout on the way to Amatillo and waved their name badges in my face.

I followed Jose (in the bed of his brother’s truck) to the vehicle exit point and he had the official sign my papers. He had a military officer skip me to the head of the line and only asked for a quarter each to make copies. I thought these were promising signs that I was not going to be ripped off.

After officially exiting El Salvador I followed Jose to the first of two immigrations buildings where I paid a man in an official uniform $3 to give me an official receipt after looking briefly at my passport. I do not know what function this served.

I followed Jose to the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant where I was to leave my bike. I asked if I could park closer but Jose and his brother assured that I would be ticketed if I did. Jose’s brother assured me he would watch my bike and that I should be tranquilo. I took my tank bag (with the big Canon in it) and Jose and I took a tuk-tuk (Indian taxi) back to the immigration building 300m away.

Jose
again used his line-skipping powers to get my crossing application ahead of everyone else. We went to the photocopying center and paid $30 for copies and for a woman at a typewriter to type up my crossing application.

We went to the bank and paid $32 in road tax. I was out of cash at this time and so to continue the process of bleeding money everywhere I had to have Jose’s other brother take us back to Santa Rosa de Lima to an ATM in the pouring rain. We got stuck in semi traffic there and back and the process took an hour. Visa called me about “suspicious activity” and I assured them that I really was in a monsoon in El Salvador. The woman sounded quite surprised. I had to call my bank to find out why my card wasn’t work, it was my daily ATM withdrawal limit. This worked to my advantage as I was able to use it as an excuse to pay less money.

Jose brought me to another office where I was to pay $70 for a reason I am still not sure of. Jose also asked for $50 to pay off the fumigation man, which he assured me would save me two hours. It was now getting dark and I had to drive 50 miles so I paid them off.

Jose and his brothers escorted me to the immigration checkpoint and I was on my way. I entered Honduras at dusk in the rain. I encountered two police checkpoints and crossed the bridge to Choluteca in the dark. I saw signs for the Paradise Hotel but instinctively distrust anything with “paradise” in the name. I ended up staying there anyways, it’s quite good for the price. There was a convention of Shrimp farmers from the US in attendance when I arrived, drinking by the pool.

In the El Salvador pictures below please note the man guarding the Subway with a pump-action shotgun. This is the norm for many businesses in Central America, though sometimes they have machine guns.

Today I took pictures of Choluteca bridge and then went to the parque central and took more pictures. I met two brothers who wanted to talk to me about my bike. We talked for a while and then a third brother showed up, and then a sister. The first two are Alex and Hansel (there’s a picture of them below) and the third brother is in the yellow polo shirt. The sister is pictured next to Hansel. The sister talked to me for a long time in English about her life, her late Canadian husband, a boyfriend from Illinois, and about life in Honduras and Nicaragua (where she was born). She told me she thinks BMW bikes are the best and that they are muy bonita.

The picture of me with all of the girls below was at a gas station near my hotel in El Salvador. They wanted one for themselves and I asked them to take a picture with my camera too. They were all headed to work in a van but I didn’t catch what they did. The interaction started off with one of their coworkers walking up to me and saying “these girls think you’re cute!” I’m sure he was messing with them… It seems fairly common when only the guy speaks English.

Today Alex told me a girl walking by said I was cute and I assumed he was messing with me… Until she walked over and kissed me on the cheek. Alex then told me she was known for being muy loco.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Granada, Nicaragua, which is supposed to be fairly safe and touristy.

Pictures I forgot to upload from the hotel I stayed at in Antigua.

El Salvador, from San Miguel to the border with Honduras at Amatillo.

This is the bridge into Choluteca, Honduras.

Heading to Choluteca, Honduras today.

A few small updates. The heater shower heads do actually work as advertised if they are not broken. I’ve had occasion to use two now that provided water that was very hot.

I had a driving experience right out of an action movie. It was the cliché car-chase scene where the ties holding down a bundle of pipes to a semi truck break and spill the pipes all over the road. Only in my case it was a hay truck with a 18’x6’ sheet of plywood holding down the hay that came straight up over the truck (caught by the wind?) and then down into the road. I avoided it easily and then passed the truck driver honking and pointing up towards the bed of his truck. He pulled over to investigate.

I went to Metrocentro San Miguel (the big mall in town) and hung out for a while; my intention was to see a movie ($2 matinée) but I got distracted playing video games in the arcade and missed the first ten minutes. The theater was packed when I went in so I went back to the arcade. Hoping to see Indiana Jones 4 when I get to San José, Costa Rica.

I’ve been resting up in Antigua the last couple of days but today (May 19) felt good enough to attempt leaving.

Today was an exercise in the futility of navigation in a country without road signs. I made it out of Antigua easily and headed back towards Guatemala City. Once there I tried to stay on the CA-1, the freeway that would take me to El Salvador. I kept turning around and going towards the one place where it was marked that CA-1 was the freeway I was on and taking a different unmarked branch each time to see if it was correct. At one point it started pouring rain in rather large drops and about half the motorcyclists pulled over under bus stop shelters. I pulled over under an awning and put on my rain gloves and zipped everything up on the suit. After this I’m pretty sure I made it to CA-1 again but gave up after it disappeared once more. I decided to head South at the sign for Boca del Monte.

I drove past some military buildings and watched recruits get off of a bus and run through the rain. The road started to slope downward and all of the rain followed it in great rivers. There were rivers diagonally across the road the entire way down and I proceeded slowly to keep traction. Some of the rivers hit something solid at the far side of the road and exploded upward like reverse waterfalls.

I followed this road as it got smaller and smaller through cities and villages. At one point I made a large detour down a gravel road and had to turn around when there was nothing at the end but a bus waiting for people from the nearby town.

I made my way to a lake road that was very beautiful. I followed this all the way to Amatitlan, a fair-sized city near the West side. It was here that I used a school’s computer for a dollar and checked where I was. Google showed a road eight miles from where I was that connected with the freeway I was to take to El Salvador. I noted my odometer reading and took off the way I had come. Near eight miles away I saw a turnoff and took it. It was a great road for the first 300 meters and then turned into a gravel road. I figured this must be it, however, as it was the only thing that Google showed off the right side and it was the correct distance away.

The first half of the pass was OK and I climbed higher into the mountains. On a particularly steep curve I slowed down but lost momentum near the top. I grabbed the brake by instinct to stop from rolling backwards but it was too steep and the front wheel locked up. I couldn’t lift my foot to use the rear brake as it was keeping me upright. I slid backwards maybe 15 feet and fell over towards the right, thankfully uphill. I immediately got everything off the bike, lifted it up, and gas-walked it up to a flat space so I could reload it.

The reloading went disasterously and the bike fell over on me (downhill) and required muscles I did not know I had to right again. Thanks adrenalin.

Once everything was back on I was still stuck with getting it upright enough with me on it to lift the kickstand without it also falling over to the right side again. I set a large rock on the ground on the right side so that I could step on it and have more stability to lift the bike up and bring up the kickstand. With that done I started the bike and rode away from the horrible stretch of road.

The picture of me with the helmet on looking angry is actually before I fell over, I think I was just displeased with the gravel road. After I got out of it I think how I felt would be best described as elated.

I drove up higher through several small villages. Some were clean and some had garbage strewn all over the side of the roads. All of them had chickens everywhere.

I stopped at a small store in one of the villages on the downhill side and bought a cold Pepsi. I talked to the family that ran the store a bit and also to a gentleman who I think was probably not all there. The family acknowledged this and told me to basically ignore him. The man pleaded with me to wait for him while he wrote something down for me so I gave him my pen to expedite the process and he wrote his name (too illegible to read but he also said it was Freddy) and the word “volcan” (volcano) and his phone number, which he opened up his cell phone to find. Once I accepted this piece of paper I was free to go.

Further on I was passed the other way by two busses and a motorcycle carrying four young men. A motorcycle with two young men passed me and another with one rider did as well. All of the motorcyclists were going way too fast. When I finally saw pavement again it was the happiest moment of the day.

I entered the freeway right near a small town built up around a volcano named Pacaya and stopped at the first hotel I saw, a $10 a night place called the Hotel Paladium with a private bathroom and enclosed parking.

In Guatemala there’s not much hot water (I’m not sure why they haven’t embraced the ubiquitous black solar water heaters you see everywhere in Mexico) but most showers have a shower head that is supposed to heat the water. The one in Antigua did not seem to work at all but when I turned it off the lights got brighter. The wiring made me think I was in Abu Graib.

I haven’t used the one here yet but I will note that it is grounded to a piece of rebar sticking out of the partition between the bedroom and the bathroom. A for effort.

After I transferred the GPS track from my data logger and looked at it on the computer I noticed that the track I had taken was not the one that I had noted from Google. It in fact took me due West, back towards Antigua. Note to self: Country-wide road maps are a necessity next time.

Update: 10:30pm. Tried to watch the Fifth Element but my copy ends after an hour. It sounds like the rains of Armageddon outside. I went to see if I could move the bike under something but the door is locked. Most locks here are the kind that require a key to open from either side. I can hear it rusting now…

Last night I woke up shivering and feeling horrible. I’m sick again and had to use my 15 degree sleeping bag to get warm enough to stop shaking. Today I woke up with a nasty headache and went out to buy water and Gatorade. I had made a Spanish lesson appointment for 5pm but had to cancel (though I still paid him and told him to come tomorrow morning).

The teacher is adamant that the heavens conspired to put me in front of him because he hasn’t had a student in 3 months. He’s taken a job handing out flyers to tourists to make ends meet.

Panoramas from Tikal. The first is the view of the Grand Plaza from Temple V and the second is the view across the Grand Plaza. These were both on the big Canon with a tripod. They’re also both HDR panoramas but I didn’t notice much difference after combining the images… Apparently I had enough dynamic range already.

Pictures from Belize, Guatemala, Tikal, and more Guatemala.