Death by Misadventure

This insanity doesn’t stop at the border. I was issued a ticket in Panama for making an illegal U-turn where I saw no sign indicating that I couldn’t. The cop told me that I had to pay the ticket or I would be stopped at the airport and not be permitted to leave the country. Given that the ticket was issued to my passport rather than my driver’s license, I thought this might be a real possibility. I’ll spare you the tedious story, but it took me four hours and visits to five different locations before I was able to pay the $75 ticket and get a stamped receipt.

So many of the people I met throughout Central America were wonderfully kind, helpful, and friendly. I am very fortunate to have met them. However, I can’t shake the feeling that they fully deserve the prevailing living conditions to the extent that they’re able to do something about them yet still willing to put up with the status quo.

Admittedly, these opinions are based on what was essentially little more than an extended road trip through foreign lands.  Others may come away from time spent in Central America with alternate views and opinions based on experiences unique to them.  The route I followed, and the manner in which I did it,  gave me a far greater exposure to Central America than if I’d simply arrived for vacation in some resort via the comparative magic of air travel.  Equally, anyone who has lived, worked, or study in these countries for an extended period of time will have considerably more informed opinions than the ones I’ve shared here.

I also greatly underestimated the isolation and loneliness brought about by being unable to communicate with almost everyone I met. Four weeks and five-thousand miles spent only on the periphery of the world around me was a rough experience that I’d rather not repeat.

In the end, I rode across a beautiful suspension bridge and looked down into a thick green valley to see a muddy brown river filled with – ‘Are those…? Those are…? They’re fuckin’ cargo ships! Those are ocean-going cargo ships? This is the Canal. I made it! I fucking made it!’ I’m screaming inside my helmet, pumping my left fist in the air, and raising both hands as my Triumph and I rolled across the Centennial Bridge to complete a solo month-long, 4,824 mile journey through seven countries. I’m done. I’m going home.

The border crossing between Mexico and Guatemala along Highway 190 proved to be a straightforward nonevent. After a brief hassle with Mexican immigration authorities, I rode another two miles, passed a smoldering open-air garbage dump, and was soon in Guatemala. My first experience with a Guatemalan was a young man in a sharp crisp uniform who informed me that my bike tires would need to be sprayed with pesticides. “Ahh…OK” I watched as he donned a simple respirator, fired up a small spray rig, and lightly misted the bottom half of each tire. I can appreciate that the good people of Guatemala don’t want my bike transmitting whatever this application was supposed to stop, but he only sprayed the bottom half of each tire. Once the bike moves just half the circumference… whatever. Clearly this process was intended more to create a job than to do anything else. Then he billed me! I paid for pest-control… and a half-assed job at that! The border crossing consisted of driving down a narrow street lined on both sides with flimsy stands selling all manner of disposable kitch, stopping first at immigration where I presented my passport, then at customs where I presented the Pennsylvania title document for the bike. Copies were made, small fees were paid, forms were stamped in triplicate, and bureaucrats were spared from joblessness. The only physical barrier to entry into Guatemala was a simple hand-drawn wooden gate like one you’d see exiting a parking garage. They couldn’t even be bothered to lift it. I just ducted low on the bike and rolled under.

Guatemala looks even poorer than Mexico. Town after town appears as little more than a collection of ramshackle buildings and garbage strewn lots. I spent the night in I-Don’t-Know-Where, Guatemala because very few of what passes for a towns here have any signs indicating where you are. Even the route markers appear only every 50 miles or so. I actually spent the night at a junction where three roads, one of them dirt, intersect. Multi-colored ornate buses with every imaginable type of cargo strapped to their roofs stopped in the middle of this intersection to unload and collect more passengers before roaring off again, doors still open, men still climbing the ladders attached to the rear. Other men, whose job is to coordinate this madness, bark destinations and departure times. Stray dogs patrol the crowd in search of dropped food or discarded garbage. Children play soccer in a field edged with trash. In the morning, a young boy, drunk the night before on Tequila, lays passed out in my hotel courtyard.

I’m glad I didn’t leave Guatemala without a brief stay in Antigua. This vibrant and colorful city centered around a beautiful lush park is dotted with art galleries, coffee-shops, old Spanish Baroque architecture, and bookstores selling a rich array of Latin American literature. Antigua also seems to draw a certain type of visitor. Situated pretty far from the beaten path, it plays host more to travellers than to tourists, more to those who come to discover than to confirm.   A guy in dreadlocks passes time before an eco-tour by thumbing through a dog-eared Che Guevara while pretty blonde twenty-somethings in flowing hemp dresses hurry along the black cobblestones en route to Spanish class – Berkley with a bit of dust and better coffee.

Having survived “The Windy” I continued into the Chiapas region in southernmost Mexico.  Chiapas seems like Mexico’s West Virginia.   It’s mountainous, beautiful, sparsely populated, rich in natural resources, and poor in virtually everything else.   Many of its people, accounting for only 3% of Mexico’s population,  live in insular mountain villages where they speak languages derived from Mayan dialects, farm seemingly inarably steep mountainside slopes,  wear  very distinct and colorful dress, suffer from mal-nutrition, and beat their wives and children.  I was told to avoid the section of Highway 190 between Tuxtla and San Cristobal.  “Take the main road.  The road through the mountains is to twisty, too dangerous and isolated, “ someone in Tuxtla told me.  I’m glad I didn’t listen.

This section of road was brilliant.  It rose steadily through the mountains until it reached the ridgeline where it ran below only the blue sky itself.  The air here was cool and crisp. I flipped open my helmet visor and let it wash in.  The purest air I’d ever tasted seemed to flow directly from wherever it is that air is created.    From this vantage point the landscape rose and fell for miles below me.  Clumps of small houses dotted those peaks connected by frail dusty roads.   Women in brilliant colored dresses hauled bundles of four-foot long wooden stakes tied with twine up narrow little trails clinging to the mountain’s edge.  Together with wire, these stakes are used to build acres of trellises attached to amazingly steep slopes .  I have no idea what they grew in their trellises.

Four men sitting at a dirty plastic table on the porch of a concrete block store stocked only with a dented refrigerator of beer and a  small wire rack of chips seemed shocked when I stopped.  They didn’t take their eyes off of me as I walked confidently up to the front door and asked for a beer.  When I told the men in Spanish that I was en route by motorcycle to Panama, they immediately started speaking Japanese.  This was when I noticed slight Asian facial lines and features hiding quietly beneath their dark brown skin.  I wondered what circumstances brought people of Japanese descent so far from home to such a remote place where they still talked in their mother tongue.   I finished my beer and set the empty can on the table in front of them.  “Domo arigato,” I said with a big smile.  They laughed.  Thank you Dennis DeYoung.

Further along the twisty road I found a home sitting on the outside of a wide bend.   Hanging clothes formed a band of rich blues and purples along the second floor faded wooden porch railing.  I stopped for a closer look.  The people who lived here seemed happy to have a visitor and potential customer.  I talked with the husband in broken Spanish enough to learn that he too only spoke a little bit of Spanish.  Fortunately, we seemed to know most of the same words.  His wife, daughter, and two sons soon appeared.  They seemed interested in where I was from and where I was going.  They took down one of the cloaks for me to try on – a bright blue and green piece ornately adorned with tassels.  I’d seen men along the roadside wearing these same garments.  I took it off and thanked them.  I then removed my Joe Rocket motorcycle jacket and offered it to the man.  He smiled and put it on.  I pointed out the protective padding in the shoulders, elbows, and back.  His wife began striking him across the back with a stick, laughing.  One of the little boys liked my bike and climbed onto the seat.  We all clapped as he sat there with a huge grin.  His little brother was too afraid to follow suit.  They took me upstairs to the open deck where they not only made the shirts and cloaks but slowly fabricated by hand the material from which they were made.  I was awestruck by how labor-intensive this whole process must be.  The littlest daughter kept her distance sitting on the deck floor swimming in a black and orange dress a few sizes too large and wearing a plastic bowl on her head.  I bought two garments and later mailed them home. 

Stopping at a fruit stand of meticulously arrayed peaches, apricots, avocados, and watermelons I noticed a pickup truck parked nearby – the bed filled with children.  They watched as I bought a bag of small peaches, sat on my bike, and ate a few.  I waved hello, but they just stared.  I’m sure I looked as strange and foreign to them as they did to me.  Before leaving, I bought two more bags of peaches, approached the driver of the truck, and asked him if I could give the peaches to the kids.  At first the kids were hesitant, but I smiled and spoke softly.  The littlest one went first and soon the others followed suit – pulling a peach out of the bag while I held it and walked around the truck bed.  They smiled and giggled at me and my poor Spanish.  I set the bag and remaining peaches in the truck bed.  I wanted the kids to  remember someone who looked, dressed, and talked nothing like them but did something kind nonetheless.

I spent the night in San Cristobal, a town which seems to be the historical, architectural, and cultural gem of the Chiapas region.  In the morning I rode for the Guatemala border.

Today was by far the worst day of this ride.  There are only a few stretches of road that are indelibly etched into my memory; the Pacific Coast Highway through California’s majestic Big Sur, a torrential and  blinding thunderstorm along Route 183 into Fort Supply, Oklahoma, and Highway 190 into Zanatepec, Mexico – a section of road known locally as El Ventoso, The Windy.  Winds rush out of the southern peaks of the Sierra Madres to sweep uninterrupted across an immense expanse of flat barren land before heading out to the Pacific Ocean.   I learned later that these winds frequently become severe enough that they will actually roll trucks and buses.  I rode through it just as a storm approached.  I’ve ridden over 34,000 miles on my Triumph and under a myriad of conditions; I was, for the first time, barely able to keep the bike under control.

The winds were steady but managable at first – coming directly from the east as I rode north.   When I turned 90 degrees east the winds seemed to follow suit.  Soon, they intensified.  With heavy crosswinds continually pushing the bike to the right, I had to keep it tilted ten degrees left just to stay upright and on the road.  The tank bag holding some small items as well as my maps kept lifting off the tank and blowing into the crook of my right arm.  I looked for someplace to pull over and take shelter but found nothing.  The land was flat and empty; no houses, no garages, no sheds or outbuildings – nothing at all.  Trucks approaching in the oncoming lane created a turbulent wake wherein for a few terrifying seconds the winds seemed to come from everywhere at once.  Thinking I could no longer control the bike I stopped under a bridge which offered no real protection.  This was when I was reminded that the bike was even less stable at slow speeds. 

I continued on hoping to find somewhere to pull over and get out of the approaching storm.  I crept along on the shoulder at a speed fast enough to create enough forward inertia to stay upright but slow enough that I could be “comfortably” blown off the road; 30-40 mph seemed the sweet-spot for this.  The tank bag lifted again and blew into my arm; I couldn’t stop or even slow down to adjust it.  I tucked my arms, chest, and legs into the bike as close as possible to reduce resistance.  The unrelenting winds kept pushing the bike right to the edge of the road before I could lean left hard enough to bring it back.   I knew that even at 30 mph I could be seriously injured if this bike left the pavement.

I rode like this for miles – crumpled up on a shaking motorcycle, all but certain that I was gonna find out what being literally blown off the road feels like.  That’s when the rain started.  It wasn’t  heavy at all but still just enough to coat my windscreen and helmet visor.  My visibility was now cut in half and the thin slip of rode I was on became increasing difficult to see.  This is when the bus showed up.

I heard it coming from behind, braking and gearing down as it approached.  I rolled off the throttle to let the bus pass. It didn’t.  Instead, the driver turned on his hazard lights and slowed to keep pace with me.  I looked up to seeing someone at the front of the bus waving at me.  This is when I realized what they were doing; the driver had positioned the bus alongside me to create a rolling wind-block.  I rode like this for about ten miles and was able to get the tank bag back to where it belonged and wipe my helmet clear of rain. I’m not one to look for or expect to find the hand of Providence in any human endeavors, but I know that a few reading this will make something of the fact that just before the bus showed up, a rich and vibrant rainbow arced beautifully across the road in front of me.  By the time the bus exited, the rains had subsided and I was reaching the mountains.

Highway 190 was about to cross the Continental Divide.  The mountains thankfully blocked much of the wind, but now the road became twisty with steep drop-offs to the right. “Yep Jimbo,” I thought to myself, “This is when you find out what it feels like to drop this bike.” 

None of this was fun. It wasn’t exciting.  It wasn’t thrilling. It wasn’t adventerous.  It was frightening and maddening.

Oh yeah, “Jimbo?” I don’t know either.

Further south in Petatlan, I found what has got to be a personal never-to-be-topped-again best in cheap accommodations.  I found a hotel room for just seven dollars per night, and had to take it if only on principal.  What a glorious shithole the Hotel Bravo was.  The sort of establishment where you could quietly and in peace nurse yourself through the last lonely days of a terminal alcohol dependency.  The Hotel Bravo certainly seemed to be in the midst of its last lonely days.

Imagine a building caught somewhere between a Soviet-era apartment house and a long-ago abandoned mental hospital – minus the charm.  Discarded mattresses lay in a pile on the third floor.  Surprisingly large rooms opened to the wide and quiet hallways through broken interior windows.  One room was mysteriously written off altogether – its doorway boarded over.  Visible through its broken window, and  with its bed, linens, and furniture still intact, it looked like a museum exhibit without its wax figurines.

I was the only guest in the otherwise vacant hotel; I didn’t shower alone though.  Small black bugs scuttled around my feet before being washed back down the drain they’d crawled out of.  The shower floor and bathroom floor were one in the same.  Two five- gallon buckets collected rain water seeping through the blistered ceiling.  The shower itself consisted of a single cold-water valve.  It did, however, have excellent pressure. 

There are a few things a guy can get away with if travelling unescorted by a wife or girlfriend.  My stay at the Hotel Bravo was clearly one of them.  

Oh yeah, the landlady let me park my motorcycle right in the lobby.

Safe secure parking

My room at the Ritz

 

After hours in the saddle, my seat was in dire need of some R & R.  This is the only part of me that gives out; otherwise, I could ride indefinitely.  Fortunately, Mexico 200 is scattered with plenty of dusty little dives selling tacos, quesadillas, and the cheapest, coldest, tastiest bottles of beer you’ve ever been blessed enough to spill down your throat.  I stopped at one.

I can’t remember the specific whistle-stop or the name of the establishment, but Ramon and his family served up two much needed Pacificos and were very welcoming besides.  Ramon, taking a break from simmering an animal (that still included its skull) in a blackened pot over an open fire, was kind enough to give me a tour of his backyard orchard where he grew oranges, guava, coffee, and something he swore had properties akin to Viagra.

 I learned a few things with Ramon.  Coffee beans do not taste very good at all when they are fresh, raw, and “off the bush.”  They are one of the few “fruits” that benefit immensely from being left to dry in the sun, ground to bits, then drenched with scalding water.  Guava is delicious off the tree.  And you can eat oranges before they’re actually orange – a green orange; I ate it if only out of appreciation for the dissonance and contradiction.   

Further south I pass banana and coconut orchards.  They’re planted together to maximize land use.  Each banana tree produced only a single bunch at a time, with each bunch wrapped in a protective cocoon of newspaper and white plastic.  The coconut trees grow much higher than the banana trees, so don’t block their sunlight.  I happen upon a small mountain of coconuts and a dozen or so people working them.  I gotta see what’s going on with this.  I pull over to investigate.

Turns out, these are not coconuts for eating.  George, the foreman, spoke pretty damn good English and explained to me that these coconuts were destined for shampoo, body lotion, and other assorted beauty products.  Barefooted men and women split the husks by hand with axes.  Then young women used a special hand tool to scoop the “meat” from the husks.  The husks were collected in a large truck and carted away for use as fuel.  Nothing went to waste.

Farther down the road, I see a sign denoting Playa de Oro 7km– Gold Beach 4 miles.  I can’t pass this up; I really should have.  The road to Playa de Oro was at first deceivingly navigable.  It soon degraded into a near impasse of deep ruts and rock-strewn  washouts.  My bike bumped and bounced through nine miles of this grind never getting out of first gear, stalling twice, and almost falling once.  I had no business whatsoever taking this motorcycle down a road this hard but was loathe to turn back once I started.  Finally at the end, I found a deserted, pristine beach with waves crashing…. blah, blah, blah.  Yeah whatever, the sun was falling fast, and I still had to get back to the blacktop.  I didn’t like this ride at all and would find out soon enough that my bike liked it even less.

I finally reach Tecoman, immediately south of Manzanillo, after sundown.  Traffic through town is heavy, and I’m forced to slow considerably as I make my way to the first hotel I can find.  I always stay at a hotel situated on the town plaza.  This makes finding my way back and forth much easier.  Parking outside the Hotel Maria Ines, I notice a thin streak of fluid marking the same path in the street I’d just traveled to stop my bike and slowly back into the curb.  A large puddle is growing under my bike.

At this point I have to confess to being wholly without the two primary skills someone riding a motorcycle through Spanish-speaking countries needs to possess.  First, I have no real working knowledge of Spanish.  I know just enough to stumble awkwardly through a few questions or pat phrases.  The replies come back to me as some lightning-quick rhythmic Jabberwocky.    Second, the process whereby my motorcycle converts the energy stored in the bike’s gas tank into mechanical motion propelling it forward mystifies me.  I have even less knowledge of what mechanical parts play a role in this  process, how they interact with one another, and, most importantly, how to fix them whenever they stop doing whatever it is they’d done up to this point to get me this far.  It really is amazing just how far you can get on balls and resolve.

I need someone with at least some amount of mechanical aptitude and who can understand English at least well enough for me to explain to him what happened up to this point – enter Francisco.  Franciso and his family own by what all appearances is a very successful business manufacturing and distributing beauty supplies and cosmetics.  Their storefront is just two doors down from my hotel.  Francisco also loves cars and motorcycles enough that he races cars and wrenches on both.  Finally, thanks largely to three years living in Salt Lake City, he speaks English so well he has almost no accent.  Francisco has a pretty good idea what’s causing the problem but wants a mechanic he knows to look at it to be sure.  First thing the following morning, I follow him to the mechanic where he translates for us both.  The problem is relatively simple and straight forward; my bike is ready later that afternoon.  Francisco’s help proves to be invaluable; he gives me his phone number and says, “call if you need anything.”  I have no doubt I will.  Rain  fortunately keeps me in Tecoman for two more days.

Most towns I’ve seen in Mexico of any size at all are organized around a town square or plaza.  The plaza usually contains a sizable church along with park space, a statue or two, and often a fountain.   It is filled with people throughout the day and serves as a focal meeting point for many town events and festivals. Surrounding the plaza are small businesses selling an array of essentials; bread and pastries, fruits and vegetables, meats, clothing and fabrics, shoes, and medicines – individual proprietors all vested directly in their town’s vitality.  When’s the last time you were in a candy store?  This town has three.  Oh yeah, and not a single chain establishment. No strip malls. No big-box retail. No Sprawl-Mart. 

I’ve never been a fan of suburbia, what it is, what it fails to be, and the devastation it brings to towns and cities. Seeing someplace like Tecoman organized around a centuries-old planning design that still works so well only serves to reinforce my disappointment with what we’ve settled for in America.  All this said, the following morning I would have given more than I should have for a decent cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Continuing south on Mexico 200, I pass acre after acre of lush sugar cane growing tall like thick green grass. Trucks stacked high with dried cane rumble past taking their cargo north.  Small fires burn to clear harvested fields. Their smoke washes on the wind across the road.

Soon I reach Puerto Vallarta.  My earliest memory of this resort town was as a kid when someone guessed the correct price of the Grand Showcase and Bob Barker awarded them with “an all-expense paid trip for two to sunny and beautiful Puerto Vallarta!”  

It was immediately clear that I had left Mexico.  Giant hotels and condominiums surrounded by golf course lagoons stand shoulder to shoulder on the very last edge of developable land – a glass and concrete phalanx blocking Vallarta’s famous beaches. Pasty white Americans and Canadians amble down narrow streets lined with T-shirt and knick-knack kiosks.  U.S. dollars are accepted as readily as pesos and English is spoken as commonly as Spanish. 

My clothes had not been laundered in days and some unmentionables had been called into service more than once.  I purchased a T-shirt for the equivalent of $7 after haggling with a young man who’d promised to, “give a special deal to you my friend.” He did.  I returned to my room where I exchanged my filthy blue-jeans and dusty riding boots for khaki knee-length cargo shorts and Keen sandals.  I peeled off a musky Triumph shirt and replaced it with a fresh cool Corona T-shirt.  With this change of clothes I felt for the first time in two weeks, absolutely invisible.

I stepped out onto the small street fronting my hotel and was immediately indistinguishable from nearly everyone else – just another gringo on a two-week furlough from the suburbs in the North.  Most of the restaurants, with names like “Nacho Daddy,” had the first triple-digit menu prices I’d seen in nearly two thousand miles.  I walked out of one and happily found the nearest taco stand where I was able to order entirely, albeit crudely, in Spanish.  Apparently the dust I’d picked up in Baja wouldn’t wash off with just a shower.  The next morning I was rolling south again on Mexico 200, and soon back in Mexico.

Bienvenido a Agua  Caliente de Garate.  I couldn’t pass up a sign welcoming me to a town whose name translates to “Warm Water,” especially when that sign is inlaid with tile into a thirty-foot high concrete arch over the town’s entrance.   Immediately off Mexico 200, just south of Mazatlan on Mexico’s Pacific coast lies a town that doesn’t appear on the map.  And why would it? 

The residents there seem to have little interest in visitors and certainly belied the invitation on their arch when I rolled into town.   Both the spectators and players at a neighborhood soccer game stopped and stared at me immediately after I turned off the main road.  Making my way along the bumpy and uneven cobblestone streets, I met with similar stares from everyone I passed; old women sweeping the sidewalk, old men in cowboy hats sitting on metal folding chairs outside of a social hall, and everyone sitting on their front porch.  Most of the town seemed to be sitting on their front porch.  Even a dog gave me the stink-eye,  quickly giving chase and running alongside my bike while barking at me in Spanish.    The only welcome I got was from a group of children playing on an old car at the end of a dead-end street.  They seemed particularly amused once I realized it was a dead-end street and was forced to slowly turn my bike around in the dust where the pavement came to an end.  They waved and laughed as I rode past a second time.

It soon became clear why these people felt guarded and suspicious.  Agua Caliente de Garate is an absolute gem.   Small brightly painted concrete houses lining cobblestone streets.  Children playing on the steps outside of an old-folks home unabashedly adorned with a painting of an elderly woman knitting in her rocking-chair while a small white kitten snoozed at her feet.   A magnificent pink and white Catholic church dominating the town plaza.  Inside, amidst ornate icons, rare relics, and softly flickering candles, three women chant quietly in homage before a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Outside, hundreds of small green, blue, yellow, and red flags hanging from lines strung across the streets.   I leave Agua Caliente with no plans to ever return,  but thankful that such a place exists at all.