raining ruins

i entered Honduras today with little trouble other than having to fill out a stack of paperwork for me and the bike. the immigration station looked more like a stable for horses than a government building and it wasnt busy which was great. border crossing are always stressful situations with peddlers nagging you for this and that but there were only a handful today and we didnt need any of their services to get thru. the cars in the background didnt make it thru the border and are buried in the duty free zone

after entering the country we only rode a 20 miles-ish miles to Copan in the mountains with rock slides all over the road. it was intense and beautiful. thankfully there was hardly any traffic. Copan is another nice colonial, cobblestone town with mayan ruins. the ruins here are the smallest i have seen so far but they have incredible detail, both on the buildings and statue/monuments. very cool! it makes sense as this was the focal mayan location for artists and also a major market place for people to come and trade/sell goods.

this is the rock/method mayans used for human sacrafice. they would lean the person back putting their head in the hole up top (demonstrated below by the guide who taught me that) and drain the blood down the grooves they carved out collecting it at the bottom to eventually be burned on another carved out block. psychos. walking to the site entrance is started raining pretty hard. of course i didnt have any rain gear and got soaked, so i rented a red poncho and walked around in the rain all day. provided for a good opportunity to be laughed at. with.

wheres waldo?

my favorite part of the day was coming across a dozen or so brilliantly colored parrots. they were not timid at all and you could almost touch them. gauking, shaking their feathers, and gnawing a chain link fence was quite the spectical.

antigua

i gave this elderly women some $$..there are lot

of poor beggars in antigua, its sad

Antigua is a cool cobblestone street town with a strong colonial feel.
It remains today what it looked like when built and is touristy but low key at the same time. You can get lost on the tiny cobblestone streets that feel like a maze while stumbling across tons of old buildings and churches in their original or totally run down but still up state.

roof top views...antigua is surrounded by 3 volcanoes, one huge but never cleared up enough to see it all all that time spent looking/ waiting for tires when i could have just rode to antigua and grabbed this one off the roof
Ive seen more travellers in this town than the whole trip combined so far and it was nice to speak english with people for a couple days. Im starting to feel the funneling effect of motorcyclers (met 3) in the narrowing central america who are also goaling to be in Ushuaia for Christmas that have taken various routes so far (we stick out like obese kids.)
Got caught up on some internet stuff, ate great food, found a sweet tiny watering hole and even had beers at an irish bar....yes irish in Antigua, Guatemala…. which prior to coming here would never even been a thought. I felt like a tourist and it was a nice break from the superb, but tiring last few days of ride-hard-put-away-wet.

carbon dioxide

Guatemala city sucks a**. sorry but im not gonna skirt around the reality of this disasterous excuse of a city. Granted this is my jaded opinion after spending 8 hours (of which I’ll never get back) of my life there. Based mostly on the amount of weapons on everyone from oh…..a guy riding on back of a motorcycle with a sawed off shotgun, to every single store front and street corner, to the mayor of Guatemala packing a large pistol in the front seat of his Smart Car. No joke. We went to aa downtown bmw dealer for one of the guys I am with to service his bike and me change my tires. Shortly after we got there a distinguished looking guy pulled in in a smart car. We noticed he had an entourage of 3 cars packed with goons. the bmw dealers combine both car and bikes here so I assume he was looking at a new car? When he went inside I moved my bike over to his car to take a size comparison picture and looking at the car noticed right away a huge pistol sitting right on his passenger seat. He came out shortly and greeted us with a handshake and asked where we were from/ what doing etc. after he left we thought, who is that…must be someone important, so we went into the dealer and asked the manager who told us he is the number one person of Guatemala city, mayor. Packing heat. Ironically he was driving a low to no(?) emissions producing car in the most co2 emitting city I have ever seen next to mexico city. Which is the next reason guatemala city sucks.
Some brainchild at some point thought…hey why don’t we buy a million old school buses from the states, paint them in multiple ugly colors, stick some loud speakers blaring shitty music or something else noone wants to hear and flood this high altitude city with black diesel smoke. If I don’t get cancer from all those years of smoking, surely I will from the amount of toxins I sucked in thru my helmet today!
Next reason is the experience at the bmw dealer. Service… No such word here. Slow, not unless you consider a 20 minute computer check taking 5 hours and an extra 30 minutes just to get the ticket with a grand total bill of $30 slow. Keep in mind there was hardly anyone else at the dealer and they started with our bikes. Im not even gonna go into the tire changing experience.
I didn’t take too many pictures as I consider today to be my least favorite in the month I have been traveling and would prefer to not remember it….but here’s the bike next to the SC and guat cities pathetic attempt to emulate the eiffle tower.
Im ready for another up day….

flores to antigua

yep. its the rainy season.

The last two days have been more of those 'ride of a lifetime' experiences as I rode thru the pages of November, 1985 Vol.12 National Geographic magazine!! Unbelievable landscape, up and down steep but short pointy mountains the first day and then on to larger mountains, in and out of local towns/ trading posts that are 100 years behind the times.
It was fantastic!!! If you ride motorcycle you are well aware of how the rear tire generally wears a patch right down the center from riding upright and straight most of the time,….not here. I was on the sides the entire time twisting up, down, around and thru the mountains..45, 90, and 180, 270 degrees all day long on perfect single lane blacktop roads.
Every now and then there would be a town, more like a trading post right in the middle of the road that was jam packed with food and clothes and whatever else they are selling and swarms of people, dogs, cows, donkeys, children, turkeys, roosters….etc. its fun riding thru them with the looks you receive. I cant help but think they must look at me like and alien, all geared up in my motorcycle spaceship outfit riding this giant machine (by their standards……. my bike is bigger than most of the cars, not to mention the bikes they ride which are more like mopeds). I am already at least a foot taller than everyone and the bike itself is taller than most of the women. On it, i feel like a semi driver does looking down at cars. A lot of times I stand up on the pegs thru towns to stretch, which makes me taller than most of the buildings too. The look on peoples faces is priceless.
I am riding now with a group of people. 4 bikes, one from france, one from mex city, and one from Cancun.
They are all very nice and it’s fun riding with them. The language barrier is there a bit which adds to the adventure. Two of them are going all the way to Ushuaia and the couple from france have been riding all over the world.
Yesterday we rode thru Guatemala city and like all the cities here I would have preferred to skip it but it was necessity to get to Antigua,(Bermuda, come on pretty momma to key largo…..) every time I say the name I sing the bb song in my head?

the road was taken over by a river so we ha to jump a ferry to get across

you know youre a long way from home when farmers use the road to dry out their beans. one guy laid them out right in the middle for about 100ft and was raking them right on the road!

families use the ditch water to bathe and laundry

side to side

all day long
with the occasional stop for gas (they make full use of their trucks here)

town slow down here and there

maybe some cows on the road

mud slide clean-up or two

for two great days in a row

with view up top almost as good as the ride getting there