Buenos Aires. 20th June 2007

I took quick blast from Cordoba to Buenos Aires, stopping for a night in Rosario - flat, windy farmland the whole way. Argentinean drivers are definitely the worst in all Central and South America. I rode into Buenos Aries on the Accesso Norte highway looking for a landmark I could recognize. Pretty soon and without knowing where I was going I found myself on Avenida 9 de Julio with the Obelisco up ahead. It was a great sight to mark at the end of my journey.
I’ve spent the last few days here sorting out the shipping of the bike seeing a few friends. Fraser, the guy I met in Peru, recommended I get in touch with the wonderful Sandra and Javier at Dakar Motos for information about shipping my bike home. Sandra has spent the whole day helping me with the paperwork for the Aduana at the cargo terminal here in Buenos Aires. The bike is now all set for packing in a crate tomorrow, and I’ll be flying home on the 26th. It’s taken most of the day today but for has been a fairly simple process. It would have been extremely confusing without her help.
Soon after I arrived I popped in to see my friend John from London, who lives here now. Had a nice cup of tea and picked up my new debit card I’d had sent to him. Thank you for sending that here Mum. A day or two later he and I, and his architect friend Elisa, went up the river delta in his boat for an enjoyable day looking at the land he will soon be building a house on.
I’ve also been to see my old friends Vivi and Claudio that I haven’t seen since I was here in early 2002. It’s been really nice to catch up with them and their family. Claudio is a professional contrabajo (doublebass) player. They have three nice kids; Ludmila, Mariano and Fernando, aged between 21 and 16 I think. I’m looking forward to seeing them again and hearing Claudio and his tango band. There’ll be time for dancing too before I leave.
It’s been an amazing journey to get here. I’ve met some wonderful people on the way, and seen incredible as well a quite shocking things. At some time in the future I’ll look back and think, ‘did I really do that?’ But now I’m looking forward to getting home – looking forward to another, different adventure awaiting me there. Nushka, thank you my love for being there for me at all times when I’ve needed you. And to my Mum and Dad and brother Gareth thank you too. Dad, I wish you were at home to meet me; I’d have loved to tell you about it all. I love you and miss you.
Mileage; 20910 since leaving Gareth’s farm in Ham Sud, near Montreal, Quebec, Canada on 2nd October 2006

Cordoba, Argentina. 10th June 2007

I arrived here from La Rioja where I stayed the night after a trying journey from Cafayate. I’d been heading for Talampaya National park but found I’d taken a road that was being rebuilt – all mud and dust, and smelly trucks. It took far longer than I’d expected. Not much to report from La Rioja, just an overpriced and quite rubbish hotel. I forgot it was Sunday this morning too, so have almost run out of money. I’ve found a nice hostel here in Cordoba though. Some guy is cooking lomo asado and people are being very friendly. It’s quite difficult to find the time to write anything.
After some truly dreadful roads in Bolivia it’s a relief to be in Argentina. And not only for the much better roads (unfortunately drivers on them are terrible) - for the food and good coffee too. I met up with Fraser’s friends Chris and Susie in Uyuni, on the edge of Bolivia’s amazing salt flats - take a look at the photos. They have a restaurant there making what must be the best pizzas in Bolivia. From there I took the road my American friends Kevin and Clara had taken a couple of weeks earlier to Tupiza near the Argentinean frontier. By stupidly missing the turning to the riverbed I ended up riding a couple of miles of arse-clenchingly soft, sandy shale and hairpin bends before finding my way into the river bed where everyone else was driving. Mind you, the riverbed wasn’t much better since it was just a riverbed. I passed some of the worst towns I’ve seen anywhere on that road, as well of a couple of guys working at their one-man mines. I think they were probably prospecting for silver. I stopped to change my glasses when it started to get dark. A jeep coming the other way pulled up as it passed to see if I was ok. The guys inside asked the usual questions (where have you come from, how long has it taken? etc.) so I was able to answer pretty easily. They each had a cheek bulging with chewed coca leaves and offered me some. It was late, I was tired and had at least another hour and a half to go, so it was the perfect time to chew some of the leaves locals have been using to reduce fatigue, hunger and cold for thousands of years. I chewed it until I got to Tupiza where I spat out the soggy lump. I can report that my cheek and tongue did go numb, but I’m not sure about anything else. It certainly didn’t stop me sleeping that night.
After all that excitement in Bolivia I stayed for a couple nights at a very nice hotel in Cafayate, in the wine-growing region of Salta in northwestern Argentina. I ate good very food and drank good wine with a German couple, Manfred and Heiderose, and Heidlerose’s daughter Hannah, who where kind enough to invite me to their table at the restaurant we happened to be dining in.
Traffic getting worse; I’ll be in Buenos Aires in a couple of days…
Mileage: 20242

La Paz, Bolivia, 1st June

I spent a couple more days in Lima than I’d wanted to when I arrived back waiting for my bike to be fixed. Any time spent in Lima is probably a mistake. It’s grimy and uninteresting. Huacachina on the other hand, where I stopped on my first night after leaving Lima, is a beautiful oasis. It is literally a small lake surrounded by towering sand dunes. I stayed in one of the once grand hotels for longer than I had intended. The following morning I stopped to buy some fruit at the roadside in nearby Ica and some bastard grabbed my tank bag containing my camera, gps, some money and worst of all, my journal. After spending some time trying to explain to the police what had happened and getting an official report for my insurance, I returned to Huacachina to make some calls. As well as calling the bank etc., I rang the guys at the BMW dealer in Lima because just the day before they’d said I should if ever I needed any help. I didn’t expect much, but it turned out Luis at BMW had few friends in Huacachina and made a couple of calls for me. I met with Fernando and his mate Tyson (after the boxer) and they seemed to think we might be able to get some at least of it back on the black market in Ica. Nothing turned up for a day and a half. Then another friend of theirs, Manolo, came by to tell me he’d located my camera and gps. The rest he said had gone. Probably thrown away. The filthy thieves wanted $500 US for my camera and gps. That’s not all; I was expected to give the cash to Manolo, who I could probably trust, who would give it to some other guy who was supposed to pick up my camera and gps and give it to Manolo - an easy way of losing $500 I thought. I told them to forget it.
I spent a couple of days in Arequipa buying some things to see me to Buenos Aires - a new camera for one, and some more glasses. Luckily Arequipa seems to be specs shops capital in all South America and I was able to get a pretty nice pair for about $40. So that made me feel better.
All this has made me pretty suspicious of everyone in Peru. It’s not a nice feeling. I’ll be very happy to leave. Bumping into an English guy called Fraser in Huacachina revived some of my trust in people. We got talking and he said, ‘Hey, do you know Kevin and Clara.’ These things still surprise me. Fraser lives in La Paz, Bolivia, rides a bike and they’d been in touch with him via Horizons Unlimited (the website for world-traveling bikers) asking about the roads. He was in Huacachina driving a tour bus and happed to be in Arequipa while I was there too. He gave me lots of useful advice about the roads and towns in Bolivia. I repaid him with half my supply of PG tips, with which being English he was delighted.
I passed an English couple driving a Land Rover on my way here today. I gave them a hoot and a wave as I went by. A little while later I stopped to take a couple of pictures and they pulled up. Paul and Jill and their four-year-old son, Eliot, had driven from Argentina via Chile, having first driven all over Africa in their Land Rover and were making their way north. We chatted for a while as travelers do and brewed up some tea at 4,320 meters above sea level. My PG tips was a hit again.
I had a beautiful ride along the shore of the Lago Titicaca and over the Andes to La Paz yesterday. But last night I was up quite often suffering from something I ate recently. At least I seem to be over the worst now.
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be stetting off early for Potosi in the south. Mileage; 18109

Don Morgan 24th March 1936 - 1st May 2007

I had to return to England from Peru a couple of weeks ago. My Dad was gravely ill in hospital. I had been staying in Cusco with Nushka, who had come to visit me for a short holiday when I received a text message from Gareth’s wife Julie saying he may only have hours left. I am very happy that I was able to call him at hospital the following day. Amazingly, he sounded exactly as himself and in good spirits, although he knew he had little time left. I am so relieved that I was able to talk to him; to thank him for the help and inspiration he has given me, and to tell him I love him. He died in his sleep that night, in the morning of the 1st May while we were in Lima waiting for our flight to London.
We buried him on the 11th May at Offa’s Orchard, a beautiful green burial site, near Gladestry in Wales. It is close to the small village of Brilley where Mum and Dad lived after retiring from Kent. Many close friends and family attended the funeral.

I had a remarkably simple journey from Quito to Banos on the Panamericana – no stopping at junctions or waiting at traffic lights for me - I whizzed along apparently being saluted by policemen. I discovered later the convoy I’d joined contained the vice-president of Ecuador. From Banos I took a road through the Ecuador’s Amazon region towards Macas. After a couple of hours the road had become so bad that I began to consider that perhaps I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. There were huge muddy holes and boulders all over the place, but as I’d already come so far there wasn’t much point in turning around. However, I loved being deep in the real Amazon jungle with the green humidity all around and vivid butterflies fluttering up from puddles in the road. I dropped the bike twice, once stopping for a careering bus coming the other way (young lad on the bus behind jumped off to help me lift it), and another time by bouncing the bike rather too enthusiastically off one of those boulders. This time half a dozen soldiers who jumped off another bus helped me. By this time it was getting dark and I was hours from my destination. I asked a couple of guys in the next rather unpromising-looking town I came to where I could find a hotel. It turned out to be the ideal place to stop. There was a hotel a couple of kilometers away with nice clean rooms, food and even a swimming pool! All deep in the middle of what looked very like nowhere. Lovely, friendly people there too. The next morning and on the recommendation of local people I took a road that wasn’t on my map towards Loja in the South of Ecuador. It started off nicely tarmaced and headed higher and higher over the Cordillera Central, which is the name for the northern end of the Andes mountain range. The views were stunning until the clouds came down, which combined with the pouring rain reduced the visibility to almost nothing. The tarmac gave way to gravel and mud at about the same time.
It was dark and getting cold long before I arrived at Loja. On the mountains the fog had returned which meant I couldn’t easily see the potholes and mounds of earth that had been piled here and there on the road. At about 9pm as I was rounding a bend I saw the shape of a man collapsed at the side of the road. I stopped and turned my bike around to shine the lights at him. He was very old, lying on his side and poking with his walking stick for his hat in the ditch beside him. I handed him his hat and asked him in my terrible Spanish if I could help. I couldn’t understand a word he said to me. I gave him my water and tried to help him to his feet. I thought his house was probably the nearest shack I could see and wanted to take him there. His legs were so weak he couldn’t stand and he didn’t want to be lifted. I stopped some of cars that came past. Every single one of them sped off in panic as I tried to explain that there was an old man in the road who needed help. The battery on my bike had gone flat by now and I realized all I could do was try to make him more comfortable. I gave him the money I had with me and moved him further to the side of the road. I cut some branches from nearby bushes and placed them in the road ahead of him, which is what people do to warn traffic of a broken down car. Then I left. My intention was to stop at the next town, at a police station or whatever and tell them about him. But it was 50 miles and 11pm before I reached any kind of town and I knew no one would be interested. I spent an uncomfortable night in a cheap hotel. I imagine he didn’t last much longer.
I’d had enough of Ecuador. I felt sick that those same people who were so kind and helpful to me couldn’t be bothered to help carry a dying man a few meters to his house. I wanted to leave Ecuador as quickly as possible. The border crossing to Peru was a relief. No touts, just friendly boarder officials and no money to hand over at all.
I stayed one night in the city of Piura, northern Peru and left for Trujillo the following morning. I had long and hot ride through the beautiful Desierto de Sechura, frequently stopping to photograph the landscape and towns I passed. At one spot I found a large green-blue saltwater pond around which a thick crust of pure-white salt crystals had formed. I’d intended to spend a whole day in Trujillo visiting nearby Inca sites before leaving for Lima. However, I discovered that two bearings in the rear suspension had failed making the rear wheel was very wobbly. I adjusted it as much as I could and phoned Nushka to tell her we wouldn’t be able to use the bike when she arrived. It was very disappointing.
I rode to Lima nervously, and took the bike to the BMW dealer the next day. On the way to Lima a couple of Peruvian policemen pulled me over. The fatter of the two officers swaggered over to me aiming to intimidate me I assumed. He said I’d been doing 100kmh and demanded I pay a $100 US fine. I told him I knew I had been doing 80 because I have GPS on my bike and its extremely accurate. ‘Ah,’ he said ‘the speed limit’s 70. Didn’t you see the sign?’ I admitted I’d not seen one. So after a bit of negotiation and pretending not to understand what was going on I paid him and his mate $10. Satisfied, the two of them sent me on my way. However, I wanted to see this sign I’d apparently missed and headed back the way I came. There was of course no sign. So I rode back to the cop car and stopped right in front of it, climbed off the bike, demanded their names and numbers and my money back. Amazingly, they handed the cash back to me without a word! I didn’t care about their numbers.

Since the bike was broken Nushka and I had to leave Lima on a bus with the traveling public. First we went to Pisco for an enjoyable boat trip to the Ballestas Islands. The Islands were once at the center of a large bird poo industry, but they are now a reserve for marine life and birds. Our guide proudly pointed out an enormous but strangely inept drawing of a candlestick carved into the side of a hill above the ocean. It looked to me as if a bulldozer had made it. We took another a bus to Nazca to see the famous Lines. We couldn’t see anything of them from the bus even though the Panamericana cuts straight across the Nazca Desert (it was built before the significance of the lines was properly understood). The next morning however, we climbed aboard a little aeroplane and for half an hour took a bumpy flight over the desert. The pilot circled over the most significant drawings, the monkey, the condor, the so-called space man etc, giving us a wonderful view. Unfortunately, after about ten minutes we had both stopped going ‘woo, look at that!’ and were mostly concentrating on controlling our rising nausea. It took most of the day to pass, which was not ideal preparation for our unair-conditioned 15hour journey to Cusco. Cusco is a beautiful colonial city where people trying to sell trips to Machu Picchu or polish your shoes constantly bother you. The remains of the former Inca Capital of Cusco are clearly visible in the amazing stonework foundations on which the Spanish built their gaudy churches.
We took an early train from Cusco to Machu Picchu. There were too many tourists there of course, but the whole delivering and taking away of visitors is at least run with military efficiency. We wandered around with our hardly English-speaking guide for a while and then climbed an Inca trail to the top of a nearby peak in the pouring rain. It was incredibly slippery and precipitous, and quite scary. Nushka was very pleased with herself to make it to the top. Unfortunately we could hardly see our hands in front of our faces in the clouds and rain when we got there. But it was wonderful, a place Nushka has dreamed of visiting since she was a little girl.

I will be flying back to Lima on Saturday 19th May to continue my journey.

Quito, Ecuador. 13th April

I spent another frustrating morning at the customs office at Quito airport yesterday. But I do have my bike back! I was there all day the day before too, mostly just sitting about waiting as I was this morning. I lost two days in Panama as well because the cargo carrier, Girag, didn’t put my bike on the flight they’d said it would be on. Its all eating into the time I have to see Ecuador and northern Peru. But I’m sure it’s going to be great anyway and I’m so looking forward to getting to Lima and meeting Nushka for our mini-bike tour of Peru. It’s so exiting. I’ll be leaving just as soon as the bike has been serviced.
I haven’t had the time to properly look around Quito, but what I’ve seen is pretty humdrum. I gather the old town is very attractive. It does however have a wonderful collection of ceramic and gold artifacts from pre-Christian times in the Museo de Banco Central.
I finally hooked up with the Kiwis, Jon and Josh, in Costa Rica just before we left for Panama. Although beautiful I felt Costa Rica was too developed for tourism to be properly interesting. At the boarder we ran into my friends Kevin and Clara. I first met the two of them at Tikal in Guatemala, then again on the road to San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua where we spent a fun night with Shaun. In the two hours or so we were at the boarder three other bikers crossed in the other direction on their return to North America. As Central America narrows it’s pretty common to meet other bikers because everybody’s taking the same roads.
We formed a five-bike convoy from the boarder and stopped at the city of David for bikey conversation, lunch and photos before splitting up. The Kiwis and I wanted to get on to Panama City to sort out our onward travel arrangements and Kevin and Clara had friends to visit. After a couple of days sorting things out in Panama City, I rode with the Kiwis towards Darien province to where they were catching their boat to Colombia. I’d wanted to ride to the Caribbean coast with them but the rainy season has started early in Panama and the dirt road to the coast could have become pretty well impassable, leaving me with a nasty ride back. So instead I rode on as far as I could along the Pan-American Highway; which turned out to be not very far at all as the Police preventing tourists heading for trouble in the south blocked the road.
I spent the following day looking around Panama’s old town with Kevin and Clara. It’s a collection of fabulous old buildings ripe for redevelopment. Most of them are in an appallingly dilapidated condition, but some have recently been renovated into expensive apartments and five star hotels about to open.
Traveling through Mexico and Central America has been so much easier than I’d imagined, I’ve seen wonderful things and met some great people. Sometimes after spending few days somewhere I’ve been very sad to leave. Leaving those new friends feels like leaving home again. I think it’s because although I’m enjoying so much seeing parts of the world I’ve only imagined, really I’m looking for somewhere to put roots down.
I’d like to thank everyone who’s helped; Omar from Nogales in Northern Mexico who helped me with my first boarder crossing and showed me great hospitality; Shaun in San Juan de Sur who not only showed me around but gave up his bed for me while he slept on the sofa; Santiago who produced from nowhere all the bits and pieces I needed to make a repair to the top-box rack as well as plenty of cold beer; the Kiwis Jon and Josh for the good times we had on the road; Smellybiker Bob who I met in Costa Rica and who gave me lots of useful information on roads in South America; Kevin and especially Clara for her translation efforts at Girag, and to lots and lots of other people who’ve been generous with there help often by giving directions to one often slightly lost biker.

I also want to thank the people who were so helpful in the USA. Its a late addition, but I want to make it. And since this is a blogg I think its propably OK to make changes. In New York there was Monty's friend, who's name escapes me at the moment, who kindly put me up for a couple of nights. In Saint Louis Tom at the Huckleberry Finn hostel was very nice and helpful, hooking me up with his freind Jackie in Ashville on my way to Florida. So lots of thanks to her too. In Miami Nushka's cousins Iliana and Bobby kindly gave me a place to stay on my way to Buenos Aires, and looked after my bike with them too. Biggest thanks goes to Marty and Marcie in Tallahasse for giving me a place to stay when I really needed it after I crashed the bike, and again when I came back having recovered. Gareth's friend Dan in San Antonio was also very hospitable. In Phoenix David helped fit my new GPS to the bike and my good friend Brian's Mum and Dad helped too. Lastly thanks to Beth in Tuscon for putting me up on my last night in America.

One strange event from Quito: I was woken last night by half a dozen Police kicking open the door of my room and flashing torches around. Terrorizing tourists is routine apparently.
I can’t wait to get on with the next leg! Mileage 15710.

La Fortuna, Costa Rica

I’ve had an interesting couple of weeks. First of all it was only on the roads of southern Guatemala that roadside shopkeepers piled rocks and branches. Presumably this was to slow traffic in the hope of selling something to the occupants of swerving cars. Further north the roads were much less crowded and in much better shape. Except, that is, for the road from Sacapulas to Coban. It’s marked as a major road and begins like that – tarmac and even white lines here and there. Further on it turns to gravel, then into a single track past Mayan villages through the jungle. I thought I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere but the guys in what looked like a quarry (but was in fact a bend in the road) assured me I was going the right way. I had the feeling I was the only westerner to have come this way for years. Rounding a bend I saw a large Kawasaki cruiser of some kind parked up, and its rider and passenger taking photos. And a couple of days later the owners of an American RV I met at a campground told me they’d come that way too! The road did however get much worse; further on crews were working and their huge trucks were churning the surface to porridge.
I stayed a couple of nights in a small village called El Remate spent a whole day at Tikal. It is quite stunning. Two days later I crossed the boarder to Honduras at Corinto on the northern Caribbean coast. What a farce that turned out to be. Because it wasn’t possible to get the papers for my bike at the boarder I had to carry one of the boarder officials on my bike, on top of my luggage to the customs office at main town of Puerto Cortes 50km away. We arrived at 2pm. I thought that would be plenty of time to get the paperwork sorted. Wrong. For one thing all the staff were packing up and getting ready to go home. However, one of the guys there, Guillermo, spoke pretty good English and rushed around trying to get a form from this office, stamped somewhere else, paid for at another, copied here, signed there and eventually at 6pm told me I’d have to come back on Monday morning. So I stayed at a small village called Omoa on the coast and which was overrun on Sunday by partying Hondurans arriving in hundreds of buses. I’d have much rather gone much further up the coast to a more remote region but it was ok, although it rained all weekend. After three more hours on Monday morning and $150 later I was all set. So I rode almost all the way to Nicaragua, and left Honduras the following day.
The atmosphere in Nicaragua was immediately very different; the boarder was straightforward for one thing and I felt I was going to like it there. Granada is a beautiful colonial town, like a relaxed Spanish city. There are plenty of tourists, but it hasn’t been spoiled. In fact all those tourists mean there are lots of great hotels restaurants and cafés, and being in Nicaragua they’re all very cheap. After two nights in Granada, I set off for San Juan del Sur on the Pacific coast. My good friend Marty from Tallahassee had put me in touch with a guy he knows called Shaun who lives there. Shaun and a couple of business partners are at the early stages of setting up a solar powered wireless internet system for the town. I mooched about on the beaches for a couple of days then decided to take a short ride and a ferry to the volcanic Island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. Pretty straight forward I thought. Ah, no. After one night at a lovely hostel on a coffee plantation I fancied another watching the sun go down camping on the beach somewhere. At the first town I came I found about a hundred people in the road. They were standing around a barrier across the road made with rocks and branches. It was pretty evident they were not going to let me, or anyone past. If they told me why they’d blocked the road I didn’t understand, but I was on an island and there’s a rough road all the way around, so I thought ‘ok, I’ll ride the other way.’ An hour and a half later on the other side of the island I came to a bend in the road, which was a village. Hundreds of kids and men were standing around a barrier blocking the road. I might as well have just landed from space. The kids gathered around the bike shouting and grinning, and poking and pulling at things. Some of the adults walked over and made it clear I wasn’t going any further. I had the feeling ‘Christ, I’ve seen this kind of thing in the National Geographic,’ but I didn’t want to get off the bike to take photos. It was slightly intimidating, especially when another barrier began to be built behind me. So I headed back for another night in the hostel wondering what I was going to do to get off the island. The protesters had told me they were going to block the road for a whole week! They were protesting price increase of the only car ferry to the island. It had recently been doubled to $25 for a small truck. It’s a week’s wages for an islander.
Back at the hostel I sat up late with some of the others drinking rum and talking about what we were going to do to. One of those staying there, a German girl called Nicole and I thought we might have a better chance of getting through together, and maybe if we left early we’d get through before the protesters even arrived. Some chance. It was still dark when we left the hostel and I was feeling pretty queasy as we bounced down the track and sank into the sand dunes that cover stretches of the coast road. Sure enough, there were plenty of people manning the first roadblock, and a couple of trucks already waiting. Nicole used her Spanish to ask what was going on, as if we didn’t know! And to ask them about their protest with which we genuinely sympathized. $25 is a lot of money in Nicaragua. We stood there talking and taking pictures for over an hour. Nicole even videoed one of the organizers explaining the islander’s grievance. She promised to send the video and some of her pictures to the press. I’m sure she will. Just as Nicole wandered off to a nearby field to photograph a local man riding his bull (!), an older man who appeared to be charge, appeared and told me we could go. Or at least I had a feeling that was what he said. He was calmer than the rest and seemed used to making decisions. I think he was the town mayor. Just at this point one of the kids who were now standing around my bike again pinched my gloves. As he ran off the other kids shouted at him and pointed him out to me. He was made to hand them back to me. Those in charge where very embarrassed and apologetic. The boy looked pretty damn ashamed too. So off we went. And at every roadblock we came too we were waved through. It was pretty cool. I think ours was the only vehicle allowed to travel around the island that day.
We caught the ferry and I left Nicole in Rivas and went back to San Juan de Sur. Unfortunately carrying Nicole’s luggage as well as mine had caused the cast aluminium support for the top-box to crack. I didn’t think there was much I could do about it so instead I and took most of the weight out of the top-box and had my rear tyre changed for the new one I’ve been carrying since Phoenix. The old one was so worn that for the roads on Ometepe had scored it right down to the cord. The guy in the first tyre shop I went to tried to get the old tyre off the wheel by jumping on it and would have buckled it if I hadn’t stopped him. The fourth place I went to back in Rivas actually had the tools for the job.
I was about to leave on Tuesday when I asked the guys who were in Nica Geeks (Shaun’s company in San Juan del Sur) if they knew anyone who had a welder. Turned out that Santiago Mateer (another guy from Florida) was in checking his email and had got one, as well as a couple of pieces of steel. We sat outside his old school bus campervan under a tree on the property he’s just bought and fixed up a damn fine bodge.
I’m pretty proud of myself for fending off the touts at the boarder with Costa Rica and getting all my paperwork sorted on my own. I’m camping in the garden of la Posada Inn in La Fortuna and this evening I’m going to visit the hopefully lava spewing Volcan Arenal tonight. Mileage 13208

Panajachel, Guatemala

In Mexico drivers tend to take traffic rules as mere guidelines. Cows, donkeys and people walk in the road. I often saw smoke-belching tractors running the wrong way along the hard shoulder of motorways and in towns the scooters dart all over the place. Approaching Oaxaca city I was surprised to see quite a few cars running the wrong way along the duel carriageway. No one else seemed to be surprised, everyone just moved over from the ‘fast’ lane to let them past, not that we were traveling fast by this stage. The reason was over the crest of a hill – a crowd of cars and people so dense that I couldn’t even see the road. So I turned round and joined a stream of traffic heading back, even the complicated set of traffic lights we met were calmly negotiated in the wrong direction. Obviously this kind of wholesale ignoring of traffic rules could be dangerous but in a society where such behavior is not unexpected I think it’s pretty reasonable. It’s for that kind of freedom, as well as because of stunning scenery, the culture, the amazing archeological sites and the warm and friendly people that I loved being in Mexico.
I’m in Guatemala now, and it’s a whole other extreme. I crossed the boarder at Cuidad Hidalgo. It was thronging with touts waving wads of cash to change and guys ‘offering’ to help foreigners. Three things made it all pretty confusing: The language was one. That many of the customs officials didn’t seem to be wearing a uniform was another (a gun on their hips made them stand out a little). And lastly, many of the officials were in on the racket with the touts. So I had to pay Carlos, my self-appointed helper, to get me through it all. Unfortunately it all took a couple of hours and it was dark by the time I got to the city of Quetzaltennango in the western highlands (Its commonly known as Xela, its Quiche Maya name). But I found a room, and somewhere safe to park the bike easily. Xela is the second largest city in Guatemala, but its still pretty small place. I stayed two nights there – getting my bearings and considering whether or not to take some Spanish lessons. I decided against it. I have about a month to reach Panama and I’d rather see things than go to school. I’ve just arrived in Panajachel, on the Lago de Atitlan. It’s another tourist town but the lake is spectacular. It was formed from an enormous collapsed volcano cone and is surrounded by three more looming volcanoes. The highlands all around are populated by Mayans. I saw hundreds of their small cottages surrounded by maize fields from the road. At every small town dozens of Mayans wearing their brightly coloured clothes were hanging about and selling things. I noticed they’re not as inclined to wave as the Mexicans (in Mexico I waved from the Copper Canyon Train to a man pushing a wheel barrow in his field. He couldn’t help but wave back, almost tipping out his maize), but there were plenty of friendly smiles.
Clearly the condition of the roads is something I’d be interested in. In Mexico they were pot-holed and in the mountains the occasional landslide had caused sections to disappear, but on the whole they were pretty good. And I thought the Mexican drivers were pretty considerate too, more so than some parts of the US. Here however, it’s a different story. Traffic laws may be ignored in Mexico from time to time, but here they appear to be just a roomer. Where there’s road works its not unusual to see cars approaching through the dust on both sides of the road.
I had to leave the Kiwi guys in Mexico City six days ago. (Take a look at their website http://www.locokiwi.com/). Jon’s passport had not come through and I needed to get on. It was really nice to have companions for a while but I don’t mind being on my own. I like to be able to ride where I want to, and stop whenever I feel like it. Tomorrow I’m going to head north towards the jungle and the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. Mileage 11403.