Day 10: El Carmen (Guatemala) to Costa Rica

I stand at the customs window in El Salvador. Suddenly I am asleep. My legs give way and that jolts me back awake. It's like having strings attached to you in the way marionettes are jerked to life. I look around and catch a few smirks. After 16 hours riding it's possible to forget how to exist off a machine. It is like having a prosthetic attachment to your body On the bike it is different, you never forget how to ride.

Because of the stop start nature of passing through so many countries so quickly, momentum is lost and exhaustion quickly sets in. I always enjoy riding across this small country and while it has hidden blacknesses in what looks like a cheery make-up, for me it is one big highway that winds through a jungle. I meet with David and his friend Tony, two passionate bikers who found me on face book and want to help. We ride to Somotillo and turn left onto the Pan American Highway and grab an ice cream. David tells me about the San Salvadorian gang culture and gives me hints about what to avoid. He tells me about big cars that drive up close behind and passengers that take to close an interest in what I am doing. This sort of advice has been prevelant across the region. On the outskirts of the capitol city San Jose they leave me and the last hour across Salvador is now dark and there are many trucks heaving up hills blocking the highway.

Because I am crossing Central America using a system called ‘transito’ the authorities are charging me a great deal more than what I paid journeying north a few weeks ago. The 90 day rule, of which I knew nothing, disallows you from re-entering one of the CA 4 pact countries – Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador - until this time has elapsed. It has left me no option to comply, but fortunately there is a remedy. By purchasing a transit permit allowing me 12 hours to cross each of these countries I am able to continue.Entering Honduras cost $186 plus tips to the guides and now, Louis my fixer here in Nicaragua, asks for $90 to pay for the main document called a manifest, $62 for insurance, $22 for a tourist visa and $40 for road tax. It'll be $400 for these two countries, which, looking at the rust buckets arriving at cockroach infested cafes such as the one in which I am eating, must surely be a sizeable contribution to the Honduran GNP. Coupled with my waking bad attitude, my view of Honduras dropped a few points to which the Hondurians, I am sure, don't care.

Nicaragua however is a very sweet country with the politest people. They are not up to speed yet with the needs progress inspires, and that is maybe why my spirits rise the instant I cross the border. The first gas station attendant is intelligent and able to share a joke and people stop to ask if I need help if they see me on the side of the road reading my map. Equally surprising is that the traffic is light and forgiving.

By midday I am on the quiet and almost cute peripherique that by passes Nicaragua's capitol Managua. It is raining hard and it is cold and I have two hours ride to the frontier post of Pena Blancas. All too soon I exit Nicaragua and enter Costa Rica and as it is still not dark on the border, there are more miles to be done.

Used tyres carried as spares are not allowed by the Ministry of Health Paperwork completed I head off in day light which deserts me before I reach the southern route from Punta Arenas. Costa Rica’s famed resorts line this corridor of pleasantness. At midnight I am still riding and pull up to one of the few gas stations open and ask permission to sleep beside the forecourt for an hour. One of the attendants who wears an Erryl Flynn moustache and a kind smile, beckons me to take my time and rest well. And that is where I rest.

DAY 9: Santo Domingo Zanetapec (Mexico) to El Carmen (Guatemala)

Location: Santo Domingo Zapataque, Mexico to El Carmen, Guatemala Border
Distance: 250 miles

A short distance from the Guatemalan border an army vehicle stops me and six soldiers get out, all ordered to search my bike and have me hand over my paperwork. Without saying anything they search the open pannier when the man I presume is in charge asks me if I am carrying drugs or guns. Do I have mariajna in my pocket, did I know that there are men around here with guns and masks and that it is dangerous to be here? They leave me alone and I ride on to the border.

Now I am waiting at the Guatemalan border post at Cuidad Hidalgo having exited Mexico. The guys are round me like flies, wanting money to help. Not that it’s a complicated process, but I know what I am doing and they are impossible to shake off. I have the Mexican stamp in my passport and retain the permission to return any number of times in the next six months. At the Guatemala side the aduana are telling me I cannot continue, that I must return to the border post from where I originally entered the country. This is a shock and I don’t understand but have to comply. So I ride the 30 kilometres back to Talisman on the Mexican side, exit Mexico once again and ride into the frontier area to start the process of entering Guatemala for a second time.

The answer is a straight no, I cannot enter Guatemala. I have to be calm. A junior manager called Pablo is introduced to me, he speaks some English and starts to explain that because my vehicle import document has expired it cannot be renewed until a 90 day moratorium matures, which prohibits the re-entry of the same vehicle in the same country until after this time. When I was last here only 2 weeks ago I did tell the aduana that I would be returning but did not specifically ask if I needed a full or temporary cancellation of my vehicle import document. It is not something I would have thought about as no other country has imposed this law upon me. Also, what is worrying, I have never needed to return so soon to the same country. Will this happen again? Every other country except for Guatemala allows you to return on a temporary basis as long as you agree to eventually export the vehicle with you as a personal possession.

I now wait in the same corridor I sat a few weeks ago having led my riders from Ushuaia to here. I suddenly face the prospect of riding east across the Yucatan Peninsula to Belize to try to get a boat to northern Nicaragua. I’m not sure there is a regular service and it would add two weeks to the record schedule. Or, I ride back to Salt Lake, fly home and start again in August.

I am suddenly exhausted and want to sleep. Central America is a corridor of paperwork and well-meaning people, one a titanic amount of forgettable copy, the other a bewildering struggle to make sense of a system that cannot easily change.

Minutes turn into portions of an hour, a thunderstorm bangs and rattles. I think back to the morning. I rose at 4am and left the hotel at 5am. The sun was up and the wind was cool. I think then about losing the pannier lid, ordinarily minor but it exposes my baggage to the weather and the box cannot be secured. On the top of the pannier lid was strapped my outer waterproof part of my Touratech Campañero suit. Losing the jacket means I am not waterproof.

I have had to become aspergic about the detail of the project. Everything must remain the same. I must touch my documents in order and then look at them again, ride a few hundred metres and do it all again. I stopped early last night, 140 miles short of Tapachula. A ridiculous sense of guilt does not address free-time well but as an emotion it has become essential if you want to move fast.

I didn't want to leave – more guilt - I wanted to talk to the banana man delivering his fruit. Then I wanted a long breakfast in the restaurant across the way. There, a young woman was hosing down the tiled floor as a little girl ran around her legs. I remember how the rumbling noise of occasional trucks was broken by birdsong and the pull of staying there became nearly to hard to break free.

I put 250mls of oil into the bike and set off. This bike is so tight. I never had reservations, just didn't know of what it was capable. It is more than tight; it is taut, like a piano string. It is a thoroughbred of a bike dressed in quiet clothing. It has a sense of understatement, as if to say, 'can I really do this?' but my God it can. My understanding of what this machine can do has been up-ended by the experience it has given me. It is superb. It will be a world beater.

Up the road I stopped to gas up and enjoyed a coffee at the Italian Coffee Company. This is a rare but daily treat. I knew then that today is the day when I have many frontiers to cross and will arrive in Honduras at night. I therefore write for a few minutes before the day consumes me.
In that little hotel, that quiet sweet place with it’s sandy coloured façade edged in green, I was lonely, not for people, just a sense of gentleness that speed castrates. Life on the road has a rawness that traveling quickly magnifies. Perhaps in the way spilt petrol in a hot sun vapourises, moving fast could be considered like such an accelerant. Yesterday has already disappeared.

Creeping up on me is the gradual realisation that today is possibly the halfway mark of the journey south. I am on an 18 day schedule and wonder if this can be maintained?

Through the window the hills are hazy and the tips of nearby trees flutter in a warming breeze. I recognise that it is vital to get to the south with the record in the bag but the real greatness lies in the journey north.
The ‘90 day rule’ is potentially disastrous for me, and has shaken my confidence. Leaving Guatemala will be the test. The officials there will have a clear view on the effectiveness of my applying for transit permits across Central America.

Still I wait and more paperwork shuffles about. I sign typed letters allowing me special permission to overcome the previous block on the system. It is now dark. I ask one of the customs girls which parts of my night route she considers safe. Guatemala has a ruthless reputation for those who dare to travel in the dark. I asked about bandits and she said that there was only a short section near Escuintla where the trees come down to a narrow section of road. Is it here where masked men force people like me off the road with guns?

It was a poorly conceived idea to suggest that I enjoy this. There is some perversity in challenging the elements and deciphering what looks like random traffic patterns, but riding down that corridor of trees would be like a mountaineer on a sheer face grabbing a handhold, knowing it will not hold his weight.

Outside, a curly haired man holds a broken coke bottle and a bag, which I think is full of rubbish. Beside him is a little fawn dog. He talks to me in a growling type if language spotted with barely recognizable English words. I hear him having lived in Manhatton and the Bronx and while he looks like his adventures go no further than the nearest bin, I could be misjudging him.

It is 19.30 and I have been here for six hours. My driving license is returned and all I wait for is the registration document of the bike, my passport and the transit support documents. I think I have lost a day. Perhaps as I ride across El Salvador it will become clear how to claw back this miserable waste of time.

As I sat waiting for the main manager to decide my fate I remembered the start of today. The birdsong made me almost giddy with calm. I couldn't see them warbling because they were small and probably hid on branches atthe top of the tree, but as a sound they competed beautifully with the other raging noises competing for our attention.
Here at the border, I am still waiting.

Location: Carmargo to San Juan del Rio

Distance: 730 miles

Left Camargo at sunrise. Here it is a sudden change from dark to light in minutes. In the country the pace starts slow but in the cities it seems super charged at all times. Mexico’s economy is growing at 5% year on year, a remarkably steady rate and especially in view of its present security issues and it shows; Mexico has gone mad. The traffic at night is fast and oblivious to anyone not in a car or a truck. If you fell in the middle lane it would be difficult to estimate how many cars would drive over you until perhaps a small car with a small engine might get jammed with an arm or a leg and so cause a larger obstacle.

During the day it is just as fast but I ride hard with the rate of flow. The police have enough to deal with at trigger points so tend not to cruise looking to hand out tickets. For 14 hours I bob about between trucks and buses and quite a few cars and I only stop to fuel. Often today the autoroute discontinues so I ride on the untolled road. How the view changes. The autopista takes you away from habitations and such areas of congestion whilst the rural free highway hits every town and village and bit of junk that lies around and you start to see a life that belongs to shanty dirty buildings from where the tyre men wait for trucks to pull up with a puncture. The chicken men cook their animals skewered like a crucifixion, all stacked up and the rare daytime prostitute beckons from a doorway. I only catch a sideways glance but it is not beautiful this barrel shaped body squeezed into a lilac tube skirt.

Up the road the autopista starts once again and it is an excellently built highway. At the toll booths you have to look behind as well as in front in case someone rear-ends you. Maybe it is an old man who cannot see so well or a youth on coke. The traffic behaviour here is distinctly different to the relaxed American way. Here it is overtake, speed up, move over, turn off with nil benefit gain in distance traveled in the shortest time. In Mexico getting there fast is more important than how long it takes to arrive.

130 kilometres north of Fresnillo and I stop for a cold drink. Through the window I see people pick berries off what to me appears unforgiving scrub. Much is languid. Everyone friendly. The bike in its re-worked costume looks more muscular, bulking up the bike at the shoulders. It is less top heavy with the two spare rear tyres fastened along the side fairings. I stop again at 500 miles for an energy drink and some chocolate. It doesn't take much to keep me going. Feel in great form. Nothing hurts. Worked through my tiredness, carefully earlier. The land starts to become more productive than in Duragno province, the poverty of which is noticeable, but Mexico overall is getting richer.

At the superficial level I am travelling, I see only antipodal points of reference; very big cars and men who work in garbage, businessmen in fine suits and men who walk along the road many miles from habitation, carrying nothing only their own strange purpose. My own way of being here lies somewhere between the two.

Location: Salt Lake City to Benson, Arizona

Distance: 880 miles

It’s like space travel, moving so quickly across America. I am in Dennys in Benson, Arizona. A very pleasant man called Brandon, who moves carefully across the restaurant displays a number of bodily and facial tics. He appears normal, but maybe isn’t. Now he’s talking to himself quietly but in an involved way, answering a question he has just asked himself. I can’t hear everything but he doesn’t compress his words; every syllable is articulated precisely as he rubs his hands over and over, wringing his fingers.

This is now but nineteen hours earlier I leave Wrights in Salt Lake. Tim’s team have worked through the night, replacing the fork seals, front brake pads, dropping the oil, changing the tyres and rather disasterously they clean the bike. I had hoped to take it into Mexico looking ten years old because with 20 000 miles on the clock, it’s done the mileage. Now it looks new.

It is getting light and I ride along State Street, left at the first set of lights and left onto the I-15 and then south. The bike feels solid with not a nut out of place, truly growing on me. It is becoming a remarkable machine. But I am still tired. I slept for two and a half hours in Salt Lake and the same the night before in Calgary, three hours before that in Fort Nelson and nothing before that since Prudhoe. I have completed five full days, each 24 hour period covering 900 miles. I wake up shaking and at the end of the day, when I step off the bike, when I eat and drink, I suddenly have minutes before I need to be in bed. It is 1.35 in the morning and I must leave for Douglas before six. I have allowed myself four full hours sleep before attempting to ride across Mexico in three days.

After 100 miles I see a quiet sandy side road and pull off the freeway, park the bike and lie beside it. I sleep for one hour. Five metres away there is a train track and the yellow Union Pacific Railroad hauls its load right by me sounding it’s horn. I barely look up. When I start again I ride 200 miles before fuelling once again because that is all I do, ride and fuel. Sometimes I look around but it’s too quick to take in. I focus on the riding and not on the sideways glance. All day I ride along a prescribed route marked to the nearest inch. I never waver from where the bike needs to be. The tract of its wheels and tyres are controlled almost by intuition. The fast riding is not always on a conscious level. So much time is taken up riding this machine that it becomes like breathing, you don’t know that you are doing it.

I miss the highway 20 east turn-off for Pangulitch but come in further down on the 143 before Cedar City. The road winds quickly up to an altitude of 10 000 feet before dropping to the lake and then back onto the 89 south. I like this southern route to Flagstaff. The northern section is sweet, with country stores selling nothing that you need but some of the Americana memorablia that you want. There is a Norman Rockwell feel here that he as an artist captured 1950’s America so well. Further south it is poorer. Homesteads stick out all sorts of trash on badly made tables to sell. It goes from quaint to jumble to car boot along the same highway until at Kanab I stop for a quick coffee and half a sandwich.

I am parked on the corner of a quiet junctions where the kerb is painted red; “move your bike now,” a policeman shouted at me as he drove around the corner. He is a rude bastard and up for a fight and I’d lose. I leave and ride to Flagstaff. Then I switch onto the I-40 west before turning south on the 17 and east onto the 10 once again for Tucson. It is 19 hours and 880 miles since I left Salt Lake. A good day and still on a flying schedule. How long can I keep this up?