Southern Exposure

Tuesday, December 16 – Thursday December 18

We arose early and made the short trip to the Guatemala border. We had done our research and this border was supposed to be the best, but we were still expecting the worst. It was a pleasant surprise. We returned our vehicle permit at Banjercito in Mexico to ensure we would not lose our $400 deposits. The immigration official in Guatemala at first questioned our lack of an exit stamp from Mexico, but I told him Americans don’t get stamped entering Mexico and he dropped it. There was no line at the aduana (customs) and it was really painless. They didn’t even charge for the photocopies. All in all it took about 1.5 hours and we even got our boots shined by a young boy while we waited.

The first miles in Guatemala were quite different. CA-1 followed a river down a valley framed by steep mountainsides of thick green vegetation. The hills were sometimes so steep the GPS would lose its signal. The first 10 miles had no topes (speed humps), and I dreamed that we had entered a land free of incessant topes. The first topes appeared shortly thereafter, but generally there are far less than in Mexico.

CA-1 doesn’t waste too much time before it starts to climb. It was an adjustment to start using the Guatemala map after using the Mexico map for so long. I could fold a small panel of the Mexico map into my tank bag and use it all day. Guatemala is so much smaller than Mexico I would have to fold a new panel on the map every hour. Progress seemed amazingly quick and it’s a testament to great size of Mexico. Shortly after our stop for lunch we found ourselves climbing over 9000 ft passes. Rain clouds appeared over the peaks so we stopped to put on our rain gear. This staved off the rain with the added benefit of keeping us warmer at altitude.

[Photo from Google Images]

I had seen so many pictures of the infamous, brightly painted, gaudily chromed Guatemala buses. I had always thought they would be cool to actually see in person. I must have missed the descriptions that said the drivers of said buses were lunatics. Apparently for each minute they drive they lose money because I’ve never seen buses take corners so fast. The buses leaned heavily to the outside of the corner as the drive railed through the curves. They seemed moments from tipping over. To top it off, on one occasion someone opened the rear door of the bus as it sped through the mountains. He climbed onto the door, swung through one arc, and then climbed the ladder to the roof. The man actually fell as the bus changed direction, but managed to fall flat on the roof and hold on. Madness. The buses also tend to smoke terribly, some seem to be smoke generators that came with free buses.

We arrived in Atitlan near sunset in the town of Panajachel. As the road wound down towards Lake Atitlan, we were rewarded for our day’s efforts with breathtaking views of the sunset over the lake. The lake sits in an ancient volcanic crater, bordered on the south by three beautiful younger volcanoes. It’s so beautiful it didn’t seem real but more of a creation for a movie set. We road through the town towards the beach, where a man came up to us and told us we should stay at his family hotel. He ran ahead of us to show us the way, and it turned out to be a nice quiet spot with covered parking for the bikes.

The only other person staying at the hotel was an American from Kentucky. Ross had previously ridden through Guatemala and Mexico on a KTM, but for this journey he was traveling solo in his 1971 (?) Volkswagen Beetle. Ross was a photographer at the beginning of a trip around the world in his beetle, photographing “the most exotic, secluded, awe inspiring entities and cultural events that remain on earth”. He had bought some proper, gigantic Mexican fireworks that day and gave us a great show before joining us for dinner in town.

The next morning we toured the main part of town, browsing the shops, as we made our way to a renowned coffee shop Inna had read about in our guide book, the Crossroads Cafe. We were greeted by the owner, Michael, an extremely jovial American expat who had quit the rat race in SF to make great coffee in Panajachel. His coffee was the best we had had yet, and we were treated to seeing the “secret” room where he did his roasting. He was building a new guest house with his family nearby and really seemed to have figured the best way to live his life doing what he loves to do. You can see it on his face that he has found his niche.

That afternoon we rented a two person kayak and spent an hour on the lake. It took some practice, but we did eventually learn to paddle in a straight line together (no rudder on these). We had planned to paddle down the shore to some other villages, but the strong winds discouraged us from roaming too far. We instead went to the hotel and took a short ride down to the villages. The lakesides villas were pretty, but these were definitely places people lived rather than tourist destinations so we took a few photos and headed back to the hotel.

We ate dinner that night with Ross from the street vendors on the main street. I ate the same tacos as Ross, but Inna ate roasted chicken from a different vendor. Since this one was of the few meals Inna & I did not share, and it’s my best guess for the source of my misery. After escaping unscathed from Mexico, I finally got my Montezuma’s revenge (food poisoning) which would haunt me for the following days. I need to contact Ross to see how he fared and if it really was the tacos.

It was a long night for me, but Inna and I got up at 5:30 am to see the sunrise over the lake. It’s hard to adequately describe the sunrise over Lake Atitlan. The sky gradually lightened from black to blue, and the dark pyramids in the sky lightened to the dark green volcanoes to the south. As we sat on the docks the tips of the volcanoes received their first golden beams of sunlight. The light slowly marched down the side of the volcanoes as the lake water gradually shifted to lighter shades of blue. Make it a point to see this at some point in your life.

We slept for another hour after sunrise that morning, handled some business in town, including visiting the Crossroads Cafe for the best cup of java South side of Seattle, and packed for the brief ride to our evening’s new destination, Antigua.

Here’s a quick movie of the lake at sunrise:

[qt:/southernexposure/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/atitlansunrise.mov 320 240]