Copan Ruins to Tegucigalpa 4-18-08 – 4-25-08

We took a day off from the bikes in Copan Ruins, a tourist town just inside the Honduran border.   The ruins at Copan were impressive – 15 to 20 large stalae (sandstone columns carved into figures of past kings, 3′ x 3′ x 12′ tall – very beautiful), several large temples, a ball court and a large stairway with hieroglyphic inscriptions depicting the lives of kings of the city.  We had complete cloud cover, perfect to combat the jungle heat.  While in Copan we also toured a bird sanctuary with very large, colorful parrots and macaws, and rounded off the day with a tour of a butterfly sanctuary that had brilliantly colored butterflies of all sizes (up to 5” wingspans!). 

 

The locals were obviously fried on tourists, so were very unfriendly toward us.  We found ourselves getting nickel-and-dimed by shopkeepers who would shortchange us or add a “tax”.  It was annoying, but only amounted to a few cents up to a dollar each time.  It seems odd to us that a shopkeeper would risk losing repeat business or get a bad reputation over a few cents.  We saw an Australian tourist argue for 15 minutes for an overcharge of 50 cents for internet time.  We decided it would be more productive to cut our losses and work an extra 5 minutes when we get back home to make up the difference.  So far, Honduras is a strange place!

 

We gladly left Copan bright and early after a killer cup of coffee.  Honduras has GREAT coffee – it is shade-grown all over the valley here.  We rolled along a high mountain river valley where pastures (lots of cattle in this country) and cornfields checker-boarded the steep green hillsides above – absolutely gorgeous!  The local people appear poorer than in Guatemala, with most living in 10′x15′ adobe huts with dirt floors, no doors or windows, and dirt yards full of chickens and pigs.  They are also very reserved – typically staring with dropped jaws at us aliens pedaling by.  We have to initiate any conversation, and most times the people will not respond, or will possibly give a weak “buenos dias” and continue their slack-jawed stare.    We are in country rarely traveled by bikers.

 

We ended the day with a relentless climb into the clouds and the cool mountain town of Santa Rosa, where we got a room in an immaculate B&B for $27 US.  We met Linda in the plaza, a traveler that had biked China and Southeast Asia for 6 months on a previous trip.  Inspiring information, maybe our next trip!?! 

 

The next day’s riding was short with a very long drop, followed by a short gradual climb to Gracias, where we found another wonderfully clean hotel overlooking the town.  We ran into Jan and Jay from Colorado whom we had met in Copan briefly, and Max, whom we had met in Santa Rosa.  We had a great dinner and lots of talk with our newfound friends about all sorts of wonderful places we had all seen.

 

We kicked back a day in Gracias, paying a visit to the local hot springs, making Ralph realize how much he misses his daily soak in the hot tub back home! 

 

The next day we had another bright and early start (lots of them these days – riding at 6 am to beat the heat).  9:00 found us in San Jose, best described as an undesirable south-facing piece of the Honduran anatomy, where we waited 1 hour for a meal, only to get served really bad deep-fried tacos!  We had asked for an egg breakfast, and even though she was standing in front of a 3′ tall stack of eggs, the waitress told us we couldn’t have eggs!  After we got our meal, that by the way tasted as if they had found a way to get rid of at least one stray dog, she served eggs to a local lady sitting at the table next to us!  Typical Honduran hospitality so far – wish they’d take lessons from the Guatemalans!  After San Jose, the road turned to hard-packed dirt.  It was under construction with most of it ready for paving.  It was pleasant riding  with little traffic.  We steadily and gradually climbed the remainder of the day through rolling hills, then mountains of ponderosas that reminded us of the Black Hills.  The road cuts were of bright gold, yellow, orange and red dirt, which looked gorgeous against the dark green hills.  When we finally reached La Esperanza, we ran into Jan and Jay.  We took their advice and got a room in the hotel they and Max were staying at.  We had more great conversation with them over dinner.

 

The following morning while climbing out of town, we got dished up some more Honduran hospitality – a rock thrown from a passing truck full of farm workers.  This marks the first time anyone has thrown anything at us while driving by.  The rock hit Ralph in the leg.  He promptly gave them the mile-high salute and motioned them to come back.  They of course were way too cowardly for that and continued on their way. 

 

We topped out the climb into the clouds and super green forest, and did a screaming 15 mile descent through beautiful forested mountains and eventually ended up in  the toxic heat of a parched lowland river valley.  After lots of conflicting directions from a host of locals, we wandered several dirt roads in search of the back way to La Paz, our supposed destination for the day.  After 25 miles of a route that would have looked like etch-a-sketch scribbles on a GPS, we gave up, went back to the highway and took the longer, but more obvious route.  We climbed in the then mid-day heat to Siguatepeque, where we found a very large, beautiful hotel.  After taking forever to show us several rooms, the clerk informed us that the hotel was full.  Thanks a lot!  So we ended up at a hotel where they were surprised we wanted a room for the whole night (a “no-tell” hotel – lots of them in Latin America – complete with garages to hide your car in for the hour you are there!).  Needless to say, we slept on our sleeping bags again and had nightmares about rolling off them!

 

We had a gradual climb the next morning followed by a long drop into yet another toxic, hot valley.  We stayed the night in Camayagua, where we first tried to get a room at another really nice hotel.  They were also mysteriously booked!  I guess we are the wrong type of clients.  We ate at a great BBQ restaurant, and across the street was a mall straight out of the US, complete with Dominoes and Wendy’s.  Now in the states we are definitely not fast food chain folks, but I must admit a baked potato and a GREEN Caesar salad sure tasted great – and we got our meal right away, from someone that was smiling, and didn’t have to ask for the bill!  The restrooms were spotless too, complete with toilet seats!  And, get this – the next morning on the way out of town, we stopped there to really test them.  We got there at exactly 6:30 (the opening time posted on the door), went in (THEY WERE OPEN WHEN THEIR SIGN SAID THEY WOULD BE!!!), and ordered a cup of coffee (you NEVER get coffee before 8:30 or 9:00 in Latin America – NEVER!!!).  They actually had coffee brewed – great tasting Honduran coffee!  Maybe fast food restaurants aren’t a bad thing in Latin America – maybe.

 

We rode through more parched plains, climbed into pretty forested mountains, then plunged into smog-choked Tegucigalpa, which is a very undesirable-looking city surrounded by mountains you can’t actually see.  We kept trying to find a hotel as we rode the busy highway skirting the city, but saw, and quickly passed up 2 seedy-looking “no-tell” hotels.  It was close to sunset and everyone we asked had no clue where we could find a hotel, until finally a friendly man named Daniel (he was pulling a block-long wheelie on his downhill bike when we spotted him!) offered to ride with us to one he knew of.  The blood red sun was just setting as we started following him for what ended up being several miles down into the city.  After taking us to the hotel, which turned out to be very nice, he chatted with us for a few minutes about our trip and about the local downhill biking scene.  There are apparently a number downhill courses that locals have made in the hills around the city.  Before he left, we nearly shook his hand off with gratitude! 

 

We kicked back and rested 2 days in a city we initially tried to avoid and never envisioned  ourselves being in.  I always wondered and somewhat doubted if places with wild names like Timbuktu, Lake Titicaca and, yes, Tegucigalpa actually exist.  The city is pretty good to stay in – the people were very open and friendly – the exact opposite of what we expected.  Finally some warm folks in Honduras!

 

A note about riding in Central America:  The riding has been much more pleasant than we expected.  The roads are in far better shape than Mexico, all with 4′ wide shoulders.  The traffic is lighter, the cars and trucks are smaller and quieter, the drivers much more courteous.  We typically still ride almost 60 miles a day, but the riding is far more strenuous than the Alaska and Canada riding we started the trip with.  On a typical day we get up at 5 AM, have bread, peanut butter and fruit in our room and start riding by 6 AM to beat the heat.  We will usually climb steadily for the first 10 to 20 miles into pleasantly warm forested mountains (we can’t call it COOL!), then dropping for 10 or 20 miles into toxic hot, parched river valleys and only to climb back up again!  Challenging riding, but the high country makes it all worthwhile.  The temperature is similar to riding in Colorado on a hot summer day, with low valleys being toxic hot and mountainous areas being pleasantly warm.  We end the day by finding a hotel, finding a restaurant, finding a grocery store for the next days breakfast and snacks, washing out our bike clothes in the sink, and finally collapsing into bed looking forward to a 5 AM alarm to do it all over again! Crazy – We don’t think so – maybe just “LOCO”, as they say down here!

 

 

Antiqua, Guatemala to Copan Ruins, Honduras 4/11/08-4/17/08

After several days in Antiqua, we caught a bus to Santa Cruz del Quiche, then rode back north to Sacapulas to continue where we left off a week earlier on our easterly journey.

After getting a 6 AM start (to beat the heat) we climbed up through mountains covered with pines and checkerboard cornfields, then plunged 2000′ to Cunen for a fabulous Guatemalan breakfast: two meals of coffee, roll with fried bananas and sour cream, beans, corn tortillas, eggs, salsa and toast for $6 U.S. including tip!

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After breakfast we coasted downhill for a 1000′ drop, followed by a not-so-steep 2000′ climb, then finally descended into Uspantan, of course we made our daily stop to visit the man pushing his ice cream cart along the road. We had homemade coconut ice cream in homemade cones for 14 cents apiece! We were able to find a really nice hotel room for 100 Quetsals ($14 US). The rooms here almost always have an electric shower head, that heats the water from a 110V heating element and work quite well as long as you keep the water flow low enough to sufficiently heat the water, making it almost on position OFF! Consequently, showers can be very frustrating and if you are lucky enough to forget about all the exposed electric wires above your head and reach too high, you get an electrical shock, so it is never a relaxing time at the end of a long hot day!

We woke up the next morning to intermittent rainstorms and decided to forge ahead anyway, since we were eager to see more of the beautiful countryside, besides, it was not chilly rain! Everything kept getting much greener and the country more remote as we traveled east into some of the highest mountains in Guatemala! We had a long, pleasant descent right away. Ralph likes to conserve his brake pads and get a thrilling, fast ride out of it, riding no-handed at 30mph with his arms outstretched to make him feel like he is flying! You really need to try it sometime, (Pat says “NOT”)! And for a real thrill, lean forward until your chest almost touches the handlebars – now that’s flying!!!! That morning, with the rain-soaked roads he had both hands on the wheel. A curva peligrosa (dangerous curve) came up fast, Ralph was going a little bit too fas, and was braking when his tire slid out on the wet asphalt and did a power slide hitting the concrete curb and flipped landing in the sand/gravel bank of the road cut. Thankfully, he had just a few small scratches and a slightly jammed shoulder, and no damage to the bike. Thanks Mom, we knew you were praying for us that day because it could have been a lot worse!

We descended the road to the river below, then after a short climb the pavement ended and (you guessed it!) the road became dirt/mud!! Needless to say the rest of the day consisted of a few long waits for construction crews who were redoing the steep road, pushing bikes up half-built switchbacks thru 3 – 6 inches of mud, and stopping to clean the bikes so we could push them again! In the middle of all this mess we saw a man on a motorcycle swerving and sliding toward us down the muddy road and it turned out to be David, our friend we had met in Steamboat and who is also riding to the tip of South America! Another chance encounter out in the middle of nowhere!!! We continued on to the town of Santa Cruz de Verapuz making it right at sunset and flopped into bed after washing all the mud off of us and the bikes!

Leaving there we pedaled thru beautiful forests of pine trees alongside palm trees and lush green fields of corn and coffee on vertical hillsides! The end of the day brought us down into the hot, dry flatlands at El Rancho Junction with only one hotel to choose from – which was not the most pleasant place to be! We paid the $7 U.S. for a room, locked the bikes in the room, very quickly took a cold shower with our eyes mostly closed and hung out at the restaurant next door the rest of the evening where it was clean, cool and comfortable! The restaurant was so spotlessly clean you could have eaten off the floors and the hotel so dirty you would not want to admit you slept there! It has been by far the most disgusting place we have yet to stay on our trip! We layed on top our sleeping bags and were very careful not to roll around and not turn on the lights (need I say more?)!!

The next 2 days took us thru river bottom agricultural land, followed by gradual climbing back up into the pine forests until we reached the Honduran border, then rode the 6 miles into Copan Ruines, a touristy town just across the border.

Oh Guatemala we will miss your colorful, friendly people with ladies dressed in long skirts, hand-embroidered aprons, colorful blouses, a child slung from a colorful wrap across your shoulder, while 1 – 3 children walk alongside you and a load of the days goods to sell stacked high on your head and perfectly balanced in a wicker basket! We will miss your lush green mountains waterfalls, clean highways (always with a shoulder to ride on), courteous drivers (for the most part), children in school yards running to the fence to greet us, mud hut houses with pigs tied up to trees while teenagers talk on their cell phones on the front porch! And men in long striped colorful trousers, a colorful skirt over that, long-sleeve shirt and a straw wide-brimmed hat! Ladies sitting in their dirt-only front yard weaving very, very colorful pieces of cloth and their baskets of colorful yarn beside them! Men with oxen and plow, colorful chicken buses with goods for market stacked high above with one man climbing up and down the outside the bus as it speeds down the highway spewing black smoke back at us! Oh Guatemala, we will certainly miss you and thank you for giving us reason to return for another visit someday!

Bikin’ On, Ralph and Pat

Guatemalan border to Antiqua, Guatemala 3/3/08 to 4/10/08

After a 12 hour bus ride, we spent a week on the beautiful Yucatan coast with our daughters and more of Pat’s family than she ever dreamed of (We surprised her for her annual 21ST celebration of her 29th birthday – she thought only our daughters were coming, but we ended up with 9 of her family members, most of which she hadn’t seen in over a year!!!!) It was a great time!

Then, after two bus rides (a 15 hour followed by a 3 hour bus ride) we were back where we left off (when Pat was a whole year younger) at the Guatemalan border. After an uncomfortably hot night in Ciudad Cuatuhemoc, we breezed through Mexican and Guatemalan immigration and found ourselves in the insanely busy border town, La Mesilla, complete with three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, heckling shop owners, and the incredibly colorful and famous chicken buses. The chicken buses typically have huge polished chrome grills and bumpers, flame decals on all windows (including the front window), and Technicolor paint jobs – I mean Technicolor!! They always have a huge roof rack stacked two or three feet high with huge baskets of produce, bushel sacks of freshly harvested coffee, cages of live turkeys and chickens (although they usually ride inside – pretty valuable!), and, of course a bike or three. We’ve actually seen the driver’s assistant climb up onto the roof and re-secure the load while the bus is rocketing down the always winding, hairpin-infested road. Oh, and have we mentioned the HORN? How could have we forgotten? They will always give a good honk that means, “Coming through, in a hurry, Oh and nice to see you!” As they pass you at Mach Schnell!!! they spew a warm , choking .“Welcome to Guatemala!!!” cloud of thick black diesel smoke. Gracias amigo!!!

We rode from the border to Huehuetenango (Way Way Tanango) the first day along a beautiful new road, with light traffic, an easy gradual uphill climb, winding along a clear running stream with small waterfalls coming off the steep rock faces next to the road. We went through numerous small villages where the locals were very friendly. The children would run alongside us. 2 Guatemalan boys even biked a couple miles with us until we decided we all needed a break. We took them to the local store and told them to pick out whatever they wanted to drink. Their eyes and smiles got so big – they couldn’t believe we were buying! (A moment like this makes even the toughest day seem like small potatoes, It’s easy to complain and feel like you have it rough until you realize you are in a country where 40% of the population lives in poverty, and 44% of the people are age 15 or younger! Tough statistics to be a part of as a kid, we’re sure!)

Also after the border, the terrain was markedly different – much greener and much more vertical! And! AND!!! MUCH CLEANER than Mexico!!! A pleasant shock indeed! The Guatemalans seem somewhat discreet about trash dumping. They seem to prefer to dump it in out-of-sight ravines instead of wherever the vehicle stops rolling!. It is at least more pleasant to the casual observer than Mexico’s refuse. The people seem to keep their property and vehicles, including mufflers, in much tidier shape, making for a much more peaceful country. We didn’t hear a single firework until our second night in the country! Yes, we agree, truly amazing. We must mention at the risk of being repulsive, the dead animal count along the road has markedly diminished – 1 per day as opposed to 1 per 5 kilometers in Mexico. Now we know you are itching to join us!

The steep-sided, once forest-covered mountainsides are a patchwork of small, steeply pitched corn fields with some forested ares remaining. Along the road we passed numerous coffee warehouses. Toyota pickups (the almost-exclusive pickup make in the region – we’ve never seen so many Toyotas at one time!) piled high, bring the gunny sacks of coffee from the Pacific slope to the warehouses to await shipment to Europe. Coffee beans were spread out on plastic tarps along the roadside to dry in the sun.

After a comfortable night in Wayway, we climbed up a gorgeous stretch of brand new deserted highway into ponderosa forests mixed with rolling farm land, consisting of small cornfields cultivated mostly by hand with hoes, or occasionally by ox-drawn plow. We rolled along the high country for a number of miles, past numerous small villages, then did a long screaming downhill with lots of switchbacks. Ralph had fun passing cars with his runaway locomotive, better known as a 100 lb bike. We ended up in a hot river valley with the occasional palm tree and rows of cactus for fences. We had fun explaining our trip to a local family walking down the road. They thought we were nuts to bike in Alaska. “Isn’t it really cold in Alaska?” they asked. When we told them about warm Alaska summers and 24 hour per day sunlight, they wrote us off as total nut cases!

We spent the night in a brand new hotel situated above a restaurant along the river at Sacapulas. There was a rickety and very noisy highway bridge several blocks upstream. It had a metal deck, but the sections of metal weren’t fully attached, so we were able to contemplate the stupidity of the attachment system every single time a vehicle clattered over it. And we can tell you – there were a lot of vehicles that night!

The next day we headed south steeply and relentlessly uphill through forests and farm country to Chichicastenango (no, we aren’t making these names up – get out a map and see!), a bustling little mountain town with one of the most colorful graveyards we’ve seen (yes, you could say”to die for!”) and one of the best markets in all of Central America. It was certainly the most colorful and interesting one of our journey so far. We stayed a block from the plaza and early in the morning we got up and wandered the plaza – the core of the market – as it was getting rolling. People were carrying unbelievably heavy loads of produce, woven and leather goods, and fresh flowers up steep hills in baskets balanced on their heads and bundles on their backs with straps around their foreheads. We saw one 5′ tall man carry a 2′x2′x3′ crate of bananas on his back with a forehead strap up a 15% rock-cobblestone street. Try that at home! The cathedral steps were filled with huge bundles of flowers of every color imaginable. What a sight! When we returned to the street our hotel was on we could barely recognize it – it was filled with vendor booths! We could barely get through the throng! After leaving the hotel with our fully loaded bikes it was even more of a challenge. We eventually pushed our way through the madness. Being an alien being towering at least a foot above everyone else, dressed like a spandex circus clown, and wielding the strangest looking bike anyone has ever seen sometimes has it’s crowd-parting advantages.

We headed south out of town, immediately rocketing down a steep, switchback-cluttered ravine. Yes, once again Ralph had a great time passing cars, trucks and chicken buses until ,of course, the uphill. It was small-chain-ring-stand-up-and-pump steep. STEEP! And to add salt to the wound, the multitude of combis (small VW-type vans used as people buses) passing us would belch out enough black diesel smoke while chugging up the hills to totally obliterate them from view. What about our lungs? We ended up having a few such hills before bombing down a huge hill with incredible views of gorgeous Lake Atitlan below and to our right. We came to rest in the lakeside tourist trap, Panajacal, and got a third floor room with a kickin’ view of the 3 volcanoes across the lake.

We spent an extra day at the lake, visiting the small village of Santa Catarina, where local ladies weave and sell colorful fabrics, garments, purses, table runners, etc along the streets. The young girls of the village go to school for 1⁄2 the day and sell woven stuff on the streets the other 1/2. A half dozen of them took time out from work to climb up on Pat’s bike (3 at a time) and ask us a multitude of questions. It was a wonderful sight to see them in their traditional colorful long skirts and blouses crawling around on the bike, fully forgetting their tourist sales pitches for a while and just being the kids they are.

The day we planned to leave, Ralph woke up with a bad case of Guatemalan weight loss program. No, you don’t want to eat when you feel like this or even ride your bike! So we decided to catch a combi to Antigua. Please note – this is not cheating, for we plan to bus back to the noisy bridge at Sacapulas to continue east. Ralph has strict trip rules – Pat thinks he’s slightly crazy. We got a room at the Black Cat Hostel, where we met some folks from southwest Colorado on a break after an epic snow year (news that’s really hard for Ralph to handle!) We wandered the beautiful colonial city, complete with a multitude of ruined cathedrals (victims of many earthquakes over the centuries), ate at several good restaurants. and climbed one of the three volcanoes near town to the flowing lava field near it’s summit – spectacular! The town is unfortunately quite the tourist trap, with hoards of young backpackers whose main interest seems to be bar-hopping. Prices are quite high and lots of folks are out to separate you from your money, as it is in most tourist traps, but the town is still great to see. And the three volcanoes make for an incredible backdrop.

We ran into Tector, a Japanese friend we met in Creel, Mexico. He is taking a break from his Alaska-to-Argentina bike trip to study Spanish for 6 weeks in Antigua. It was great to see him again and catch up on his adventure.

We also ran into our Swiss friends, Katherine and Philip once again. They had just gotten into town and poor Philip was very sick with some sort of bug. We helped them get a room and get the bike and gear in the room which is always a chore even if you feel good. We plan to bus to Sacapulas tomorrow morning to continue our trip east through the mountains. We hope we can bid another farewell to them in good health.

Bike on, Pat and Ralph

Mexico/Guatemala Border

Oaxaca to Guatemalan border – 9,000 miles later!!!!!

Yes folks – you read it right! We have just completed the first ½ of our journey – we’ve knocked off an entire CONTINENT!!!! It doesn’t really hit us until we look at the map. That’s when Ralph says “Right On! Sweet ride!!!” and Pat says “What have I gotten myself into?”

We look back on the trip thus far (nearly 9,000 miles to date) and marvel at the incredible diversity a ¼ chunk of our planet has to offer (yes, we’ve ridden ¼ of the way around the globe – kinda). It has been the trip of extremes!

 

We started in sparsely inhabited Alaska, where there was very little population and pollution, where people thought we were crazy for filtering our water (just drink it straight from the creek like we do – we’ve never gotten sick”), and the big threat was getting eaten alive by a polar bear, to the mid-point of our journey in heavily populated Mexico, where most towns have a brown cloud over them and roadsides are littered with plastic bottles, dead animals and dirty pampers, where you would be crazy to even filter water out of the very septic-smelling streams and the big threat was black-masked Zapatista bandits robbing you just because you are an American. (We took the bus to the ruins at Palenque for this reason – the main area of Zapatista activity.)

 

This point in the journey also concludes our love-hate relationship with Mexico – the land of open and friendly people, most of whom will feed you and give you a place to stay, expecting no payment in return, to Sayulita, Cuernavaca and Mexico City bike enthusiasts that offered tons of information, help, bike stuff and encouragement, to people who take great pride and value in family and church, who would never think of taking anything from you, who don’t even know where Copper Canyon is let alone Alaska, who meticulously sweep the dirt from the street in front of their houses and stores, to people that have lived in Carbondale – YES Carbondale – for five years and know some of the same people we do, to the jail-cell like bars on all house and hotel room windows, to mountains of rotting, stinking trash along the roadside piled underneath and around signs that say “NO TRASH DUMPING HERE”, (the Mexican governments social-consciousness- to-littering campaign hasn’t really caught on yet!), to people who will charge you double, triple, quadruple just because you are a gringo, to hawkers, panhandlers and beggars who stick to you like flies and expect you to give them money or buy whatever they are trying to sell, just because you are a white tourist and must be loaded, to tour guides that sell you a trip to hot springs that are actually cold, to loud music (I mean LOUD!!) and fireworks at any time of day or night where usually the only quiet place is in the back of your mind. I’m sure every culture has these aspects and contrasts, but nowhere else have we seen it so dramatically.

 

Enough of that. After several days in Oaxaca filled with all different types of music and performances in the plazas, good food and an unplanned reunion with our Swiss friends Kathrin and Philip whom we met in Haines, Alaska and are riding a tandem to the tip of South America, we rode east toward the windy Istmo de Tehuatepec, the narrowest part of Mexico. We stopped at Mitla to see some ruins with amazing geometric rock mosaics as cornices, had some big uphills and incredibly long downhills thru mostly farmland, but also several pases where we were in Colorado-like Ponderosa forests. We crossed the Isthmus early in the morning to avoid the notorious winds, stopped to take a scenic boat ride thru Sumidero Canyon with crocodiles swimming near the boat (the sheer vertical walls were really impressive = the canyon is more than 5000′ deep), and climbed nearly 6000′ in a 25 mile stretch to lofty and cool San Cristobal, where colorfully dressed indigenous people from neighboring villages sold beautiful woven goods in the plazas, then south to the Guatamalan border including a big, long downhill! The whole way we kept leapfrogging with Katherin and Philip. From the border we bussed back north to Ocosingo and the amazing but little visited ruins of Tonina and on to hot, humid Palenque to see the incredible ruins there (visited by thousands of people daily). Here we had another unplanned reunion, this time with Damien from Argentina whom we had met in Lake Luise, Canada last summer and who is also riding to the tip of South America! We met his friend, Japhy, from Nepal, who is biking with him. From Palenque we took a 12 hour night bus ride to Cancun, where we met our daughters and will celebrate Pat’s 21^st annual 29^th birthday! We’ll then bus back to the border where we stopped biking and pedal south into Central America. After nearly 4 months and 3,000 miles in Mexico, we are looking forward to seeing new countries and what lies ahead!

 

Bikin’ On, Ralph & Pat