Honduras to Guatemala
Added on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Honduras to Guatemala
I want to relax but I can’t. We’re in Honduras; still have to ride across Guatemala and Mexico before the final big distance rides across North America. Last night the police pulled everything out of the back-up vehicle looking for an excuse to fine us, and they found it. I had forgotten to pack a red warning triangle, which I could place ahead of the car to forewarn other road users that we were broken down. As he looked at me, a car went past billowing smoke and so over laden, its exhaust was creating sparks as it scraped along the ground. “Look at him,” I said?
“Triangle,” he said, “infraction.” He said he would take my license off me whereby the following morning I could retrieve it on payment of 1800 Honduras Liberones. I just gibbered on and smiled and sort of lived in my own little world making a show of looking for a red triangle I thought I had but knew the fire extinguisher he had also asked for was a fantasy. I offered them oil and an old tyre, but that wasn’t acceptable especially as one of the blokes only had a moped. Act dumb, be the stupid foreigner and I started to hear them talk about money, someone mentioned bienty dollars and the younger officer pulled me to one side and I told him I’d give him the twenty he wanted and he made a face suggesting it wasn’t enough and so I raised the bribe to thirty and he smiled.
It was dark and a few minutes later I was in Choluteca trying to cross the main bridge out of town. The hotel was just on the other side of the river but a truck had hit a jeep and ripped off the front wheel on the drivers side so we all, buses, taxi’s, trucks and me had to wait until the road was cleared. Normally as soon as I get to the hotel I go straight to the restaurant and talk to the riders in their small groups at their tables. It’s
like a doctor going around his wards. Jonny was being rude to the waitress, as he was earlier to the lady customs officer at the border. Steve was ebullient and complaining how easy he was to maintain (food and sex) whilst Nadine was realistic about the distances that still needed to be covered. The Bullimores said very little but pottered about having achieved such a lot whilst Mr Willett had decided to leave early as had Rob on his KTM and Clive on his Honda. They were not alone in thinking that there was an easier voyage though life and that presently they were not on it. Soon it was time to go to our rooms. The riders were extremely disciplined and knew that without sufficient sleep they would ride badly the next day. Caroline still had more hotels to find and I had to finish off and send my blog. There was a universe of people maybe reading what I was writing and maybe there wasn’t, but it still had to be done.
The next day I woke at six and sent emails off to the freighters beginning the discussion about tail-ending the journey from the Port of Newark to home. Once we left with all the riders I hung back slightly waiting for Irishman Martin, Richard on his GS and Nigel on his KTM to pass me. I also needed to be close to Roy because both the pick-up and my bike were in my name and whilst Nicaragua forbade this, I had no knowledge to think Honduras might feel otherwise. The road out of Choluteca began to climb and that calmed down the oppressive heat. Once in Tegulchiculpa, a city that should have been surprisingly easy to cross, proved intractable and hogged us for as long as it could when Rob texted Caroline saying his KTM had developed a fuel problem and had broken down somewhere on the ring road south of Tamara. By the time we got there his riding companion Clive, who fell off on the run in to the city, had left him to deal with it and to Rob’s credit he had stopped by a car mechanics small garage. So deeply are we into such a long trip that the embarrassment attached to such things goes over the rider’s heads. As long as they are not hurt it doesn’t matter. What does matter is any perceived lack of team spirit in the group. The riders themselves acknowledge this and what few pep talks I have briefed the riders with don’t seem to always resonate. When Tim punctured, Rob and Clive, so said Tim, just rode off. It had to be assumed they knew that Tim actually had a problem but likewise Jonny accused Tim of not waiting for him and on a daily basis. There was a classroom feel to some days and the microcosm of our world had in a very large landscape very small boundaries. Several riders seem to be isolated. I feel for them all because we are far from the familiar. Families and friends can only imagine what these people are doing on a daily basis and should be in awe. Here it is more normal but everything is magnified and distilled into something very different. The heat is crushing and the distances baffling to most motorcyclists. The reasons for doing such an extreme adventure in such a short time goes off the scale of most peoples understandings, so in that sense, these riders were childlike occasionally, a little self centred but unquestionably rare. We were two weeks before the rains after which the project would stand still. Time was just on our side.
Still on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, Roy comes into the bar where I’m sitting writing and tells me he’s striped the bike back down to the pump and that it will no longer start. He says the bike is finished until we get to a dealer. I am immediately mobilised and ask him to help me take my bike off the pick-up and put Rob’s on. Rob Oliphant is a knowledgeable mechanic, ex services, and he reckoned it’s dirty fuel. He said he was warned in Panama about the possibility that this might be widespread. I take no pleasure whatsoever in saying that KTM call one of their brand leading motorcycles ‘Adventure’ when it should be capable of going on one. Now I have to carry Rob’s bike across Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico before we have a dealership in Tucson with the time to repair it.
Roy the mechanic is riding my R1 and I am sweeping up any mess that occurs from the back. The route to Copan Ruinas was beautiful in the dark. Shadows of trees made real against a bright moon hung in the air. Whenever I stopped and killed the engine there was only the sound of bullfrogs calling out for girlfriends. By one in the morning we arrived at the hotel and once parked and showered we set to researching hotels for Mexico and checking the status of freighting the bikes from Newark to the UK. It was that time in the project when home had to be thought about. That delicate reckoning which gently reminds us how even great adventures like these have an end.
I slept well for three hours and got up to greet the riders at breakfast. They were up and comfortable and ready to go. They were indefatigable in their efforts and worthy of being called professional drivers. All I expected from each of them was to be able to ride their bikes safely and find the destination of the day and my God did they do that well.
Graeme Willett had decided not to ride to New York early. He said his wife would be worrying and when he phoned her that proved not to be the case. Why should she care, what difference did a week make? Martin Lonergan was tempted to stay on but asked me to make arrangements for his bike to be given a service in San Antonio and I emailed Greg Reich, boss of Continental Tyres in the USA to sort out a press call in Salt Lake City. The rest of us would have our bikes fettled there. Meanwhile we’d found a KTM dealer for Rob in Guadalajara, good hotels and a great route along the western coast of Mexico. Everything was going to plan, the schedule was shifting along nicely and I wondered what little administrative cock-up was waiting to kick me in the guts.
The border post at La Florida, a short drive from Copan, was similar to the Honduran frontier at La Espinoza, calm and respectful. Most frontiers treat you like cattle but here the breeze was cooling and butterflies flipped about the warm air. In their other life they fry on the front of truck radiator grills but in this patch of frontier paradise there was a quite harmony.
