Jeremy's Bike Blog

​Looking at a map, weighing various biking routes, it can be hard to truly realize the magnitude of what you’re committing yourself to. As it was, for me, the previous morning in Tapachula, Mexico, a dozen km from the Guatemalan border, trying to decide between hugging the coast and crossing via the lowlands, or winding my way up into the highlands.  On the one hand, I’ve set a return date of September 16, and I don’t have a lot of time to spare to get from here to Panama City. On the other hand, it’s not a race, and I’d rather have to grab a bus or change my flight than make serious concessions around what I get to see and do for the next 7 weeks. Plus, how bad could it possibly be?

Well let me tell you. Until today, I haven’t had to push my bike because of incline alone. I’ve had to push it through many short and a few medium stretches of water, mud, and/or snow, but I had all but concluded that my bike had gearing sufficiently low to take on any paved grade. If the grade was steep enough to necessitate standing up and hike-pedaling, then that would only ever be found in some village or country back-road, and only for a short stretch.

My day, and ride away from the border and into the interior of Guatemala, starts with a series of steep inclines and declines, too short to show up in the elevation profiles that I’d used to weigh my options. I bomb down the declines, reaching speeds approaching 70 km/h, then cross a bridge or round a bend and almost immediately come to a standstill on the incline. After a half dozen of these I conclude it’s not worth the wear on my already beleaguered drivetrain to shift out and then back into of my lowest gear, over and over again.

I get to Malacatán, my first, not-tiny, Guatemalan town and spot a supermarket within a shopping mall. It’s immaculate and nearly indistinguishable from one that you’d find stateside. I stock up on road calories and a $16, 6oz bottle of sunscreen.  Guatemala is considerably more expensive than Mexico, at least w.r.t. consumables, and evidently just plain expensive for certain imported things.

The yo-yo-ing continues seemingly interminably, and on each ascent I hope that it’s not followed by a descent because I know I have to earn and keep 2500 meters (8200 feet) to get to San Marcos, my destination goal for the day.  The bulk of this is over about 15km.  For perspective for any of my Seattle brethren that have biked it, the climb from Port Angeles to the Hurricane Ridge visitor center is 5380 feet over about 30km.  So this is 50% more climbing, at more than twice as steep a grade.

San Marcos is my goal because Estefania has added me to a WhatsApp group created by another cycle tourist of all of his hosts, and Fernando, a member of the group has offered to host me there.  I tell him that I’ll be there that evening before I really appreciate what the effort this will entail.

When the yo-yo-ing seems to have stopped and the big climb seems to have started, I find a pull out by a idyllic little creek and take the opportunity to cool off with a dip, and to load up on calories. I’ve been hyper vigilant about staying hydrated as I’ve been sweating profusely in the jungly humid heat since I set out a few hours earlier.

At about 1000 meters elevation, a welcome mist rolls in (or do I roll into it?) and mercifully, the heat lets up.  It does, however, heighten my concern over the positively insane chicken busses (brightly painted and ornately decorated school busses converted into regional transit busses), and their ability to see me in time to narrowly avoid clipping me.  While I do sincerely appreciate their artistic splendor, I’ve come to detest these fucking things, many of which couldn’t come closer to running me off the road if they tried, and I’m not entirely sure that they’re not trying.  Whereas in Mexico it was 1 in 20 busses that would come dangerously close in passing, here it’s the converse…1 in 20 chicken busses don’t come dangerously close.  I actually don’t think they’re trying to kill me, rather, I conclude, they have a culture of ridiculously stupid risk taking, as I watch them pass one another, and other vehicles, around blind corners, bellowing black smoke so thick that it in itself is a serious road hazard, as they open up their throttle.

It’s common that drivers of all varieties of vehicles (chicken bus and otherwise) honk just as they’re upon me.  When I’m feeling less than cheerful in general, I’m currently in the practice of honking back, in kind/parody/mock, verbally, just to release the tension that the initial honk invariably injects me with.  All the same, I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of honks are well intentioned, as it’s not uncommon for them to be followed by waves and thumbs ups.  So once I’m in better mood, it feels a bit dickish to mockingly honk back.

Ok, so those are my main gripes.  That, and this hill that is going on for-absolutely-ever.  On the other hand, the scenery is magical, and the beautiful, gold-capped-toothed, diminutive indigenous folks that are all about, walking down the road in the opposite direction, almost always give me the most warm, welcoming, heart melting smiles.

photosphere

My legs are screaming, and in order to maintain a speed where I can stay upright without weaving so much as to make myself too easy a target for the chicken busses, I have to exert a torque that seems unsustainable for my knees.  I’m deeply grateful for them scantly ever complaining.  I know that by the time they start complaining, the damage has started, and I either have to take significant time off the bike to let them properly recover, or risk doing serious and irreparable damage.  At my age, and at who knows how many thousands of miles, I know I am incredibly fortunate to be chronic/acute pain free.  I experience the diffuse pain of muscle fatigue daily, but other than soreness in my achilles tendons the first weeks while I adjusted to long distances without clip-less pedals, a couple of back spasms when I’ve foolishly slung my loaded rig a bit too hastily, and assorted scrapes and scratches from tumbles and pushing through brush and stuff, I’ve been injury free.  So, rather than taking my knees for granted for the sake of my pride, I concede defeat in biking my way up all 2500 meters, and dismount and push.  I’ll cross paths with a kid toting a scale tomorrow morning in San Marcos, and pay him a few cents to use it to weigh my rig, via W(myself + rig) – W(myself), and find that it’s 100lbs, not including water.  Pushing this up a steep grade is non-trivial, but at half the speed of pedaling it up in the lowest possible gear, it’s about half as much exertion.  I take breaks every 30 minutes to stop panting for a bit, pee, chug more water, and try to estimate how much more climbing I have left.

When the slope decreases, I remount, even if it’s only for a few hundred meters.  It seems a shame to forsake the mechanical advantage when indeed it is an advantage.  On one such occasion, a semi with a trailer load that is a standard-semi-container-length open bed, covered by tarp, secured by thick twine wrapped around it, passes me going only about 10% faster than I am.  I seize the opportunity.  The twine runs horizontal across the back of the bed, and when I grab hold of it, it stretches to give me 2-3 feet of distance between my front wheel and his rear end.  He can’t see me at all, which is great, except that if he brakes suddenly for whatever reason, I won’t be able to avoid colliding into the trailer.  My legs are burning having sprinted to catch up and stay caught up long enough to safely approach, so for about 30 seconds I let them recover.  But using my arms alone to pull myself along quickly tires my arms, or at least some very particular muscles in each of my arms and core.  So I shift to my middle crank chain ring, since my left hand is on the bike and that’s the shifter to which I have access, and this puts me in a reasonably good gear to pedal assist my arms at our cruising speed of 15 km/h (up from about 10 when I latched on).  I make note of my trip distance after about a minute.  Cars are routinely passing us, and when I catch a glimpse of the driver, they’re amused and giving thumbs ups.  Even if they were indignant at my parasiticness, I can’t see how they’d alert the driver about his parasite.  It occurs to me that one of them could get in front of him, slam on the brakes, and ruin my day/month, but the odds of this seem too low to give up on this blessed get-out-of-climb-free card.  It’s about 4km later when even with pedal assist, I need to switch the role of my arms if I’m going to continue with the assist.  Doing so without letting go of the rope would in some sense be easiest, but would require a moment of having no hands on my bike, which seems likely to end badly.  I wait until there’s no cars behind me, invariably tailgating while they jockey to pass, and then pedal hard, release, and re-grab.  With my right hand now on the bike, I can fine tune my choice of gear so that the pedal assist requires a minimal amount of effort.  But not more than a couple minutes later, everything is seeming a little less effort, and then a little less, and a glance down at my speedometer indicates that we’re up to 17 km/hour.  My eyes are otherwise peeled on the few feet of road surface I can see in front of my front wheel, on lookout for rocks or potholes that I might need to avoid on very short notice.  The driver shifts gears, and with a firm tug, we’re approaching 20 km/hour.  Not wanting to look a gift truck in the mouth, I release.  Indeed, we’re not quite at the pass, but we’re close enough that the grade is leveling out and cycling this incline is cake compared to what I’ve just gotten pulled out of.  The cars that pass me immediately thereafter seem as delighted for me as I am for myself for what they just watched me do.  I’m not sure about the driver, but as I get into the area of visibility of his side view mirrors, I wave, beam a huge smile, and call a long drawn out “graaaaciaaas”.

I pull over to don my rainshell as it’s starting to drizzle.  Also, I’m about to bomb down a decline and give up much hard won (and some easily cheated) elevation.  Even if it wasn’t drizzling, it’s chilly up here at 8000 misty feet, I’m still drenched with sweat, and with apparent winds of ~60km/hour, I would be chilly enough that it would detract from what is otherwise blissful flying.  As a rule, when the navy blue rainshell goes on, so does the helmet, and on that goes the rear red-blinky.  I eat the rest of my road calories then saddle up.

I actually only give up a few hundred meters of elevation as I descend out of the mist into what feels like a new day, with a low-ish sun casting a golden evening light, but air still cool.  I stop at a bakery, unable to resist the temptation to indulge in something carby and sweet.  The owner all but embraces me the moment I walk in, shakes my hand heartily as he gets my standard trip synopsis, and then orders me a coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich.  He sits with me as I enjoy them, and then I get up and help myself to a slice of chocolate cake.  When I ask him how much it all is, he says that the coffee and sandwich are on him, so I tip 60% on the cake, which goes to the employee that’s been waiting on us.  He takes a couple of photos of me for his facebook page, I give him my info, and I’m on my way.

I get to the location pin that Fernando sent via WhatsApp and message him.  He comes out from what turns out is his motorcycle shop and greets me.  He takes me to a hotel across the street, which is where I’m actually being put up.  The hotel proprietor seems obliging, but not particularly thrilled to have me as a guest staying but not paying (he must owe Fernando a favor), so I resolve that I’ll give him a decent tip when I depart.  Fernando says that his friend is going to provide us dinner in about an hour, and leaves me to go back to close up shop while I shower, change, and generally make myself presentable.

We drive to his friend Pedro’s place, which is actually a cafe, where we use Fernando’s macbook air to aid in our conversation (Google Translate, Google Earth, Google Search, Facebook, in roughly that order).  His friend brings us several platters of appetizers, sandwiches and coffee.  A little while later, a young woman joins us, and this is, it seems, Fernando’s girlfriend (sadly I can’t recall her name) with a six of beers.  She knows enough English to supplant use of the laptop.  Pedro closes up shop, and periodically takes breaks from cleaning to sit down and join the ongoing conversation.  Fernando’s girlfriend’s sister, Paola (Pao, for short) comes by an hour or so later, also with beers.  I’m drinking at a rate of about 1 per hour, but with my day of significant exertion and my metabolism thusly through the roof, I don’t feel any effect, which is fine with me.  Pao is a bundle of delightful energy, and this is key to me staying conscious and engaged when otherwise I would be collapsed into a puddle of exhaustion.  One or two trips are made to a convenience store down the road for more beer, but eventually it’s some time past midnight (my phone’s battery has died and I’ve lost track of time) and it’s closed, and everyone is ready to call it a night.  We pile into Pedro’s car.  He’s abstained from having anything to drink, and the responsibility demonstrated is admirable as Fernando leaves his car in that part of town for the evening.

Pao is an avid photographer and wants to do a photoshoot with me and my bike the following morning.  How can I decline?  We agree to meet at my hotel at 10:30.

Back in my room, I’m so far beyond exhausted that I’m having dream like hallucinations before I have a chance to slip into unconsciousness.  I don’t know if you’ve experienced this or similar, but it can be a little frightening when it happens.  One trick that seems to work for me is to find the energy to shift my body a bit each time a scary thing happens.  Eventually, I assume, sleep comes before dream stuff, and all is well.  Of course I don’t remember falling asleep, I just know that I manage to.

In the morning, I message Fernando, then go out for a couple of breakfasts.  I’m just getting back to the hotel when Fernando is getting there as well to check in on me.  He calls Pao and confirms the plan to meet in 30 minutes.  I spend the time packing and then Pao and I head out for our photoshoot.  I feel pretty goofy and self-conscious, but she gets some nice shots for which I’m vain enough to be grateful.  She walks me back to the hotel, during which we encounter the boy with scale that I mentioned earlier, and says that I should stop by the bakery her family owns, and at which she and her sister work, on my way out of town.

I finish packing, say goodbye to Fernando, who lubes up my bike in front of his motorcycle shop, and then head to the bakery.  I meet and chat with Pao’s brother and then buy a half dozen sweet and savory things.  Just as we’re saying our final goodbyes, Pao’s son is getting out of school, and I get to meet him.  He’s a super sweet 7 year old, and not as shy as most kids his age.

I have a couple of 300 meter climbs ahead of me, and I’m only a few km out of town when I can’t resist stopping and eating some of the pastries I’ve just purchased, and I can’t resist starting back up until they’re all consumed.  The climbs are much shorter than the day before, but just as steep, and I spend about maybe an hour total pushing the bike, which is not bad, but maybe would be a bit easier had I gotten more rest the night before.

I get into Queztaltenango, Guatemala’s largest city, second to its capitol, at about 5pm.  I check into a hostel I in which I reserved a bed on hostel world.  It has a well appointed kitchen, so I walk to a market to get a bunch of veggies and beans to make myself a massive, nutritionally optimal dinner, taking in the sights on the way, and using awnings to avoid the downpour that I’m grateful to have come now rather than while I was still in transit by bike.  I wolf it down and then pass out by 9pm.

In the morning, I make another large, nutritious meal for breakfast, boil a half dozen eggs for the afternoon, and eat them while chatting with one of the hostel staff who is proposing activities that are tempting me to stay another night in town.  But I’m averaging 60km a day, and at this rate perhaps not tracking to make it to Panama City by Sept. 16, so I decide to continue on and preserve precious momentum.

Google maps doesn’t provide bicycling directions in all countries.  Seems Mexico is the last country of this tour where they’re available.  So I have at my disposal driving and walking directions.  I’ve been in this situation before, in Eastern Europe, and walking directions are to cycling directions what cycling directions are to driving directions.  That is, the things they’ll take you down are sometimes definitely not bike-able.  But today, in order to get to my next general destination, Lake Atitlan, there’s a section where I can shave off 10km by taking a walking-route leg of a triangle (where the other two sides of the triangle are driving direction legs), putting the distance at 50km total instead of 60km.  I have to ascend 600 meters to 3000 meter elevation elevation in either case.  If I take the walking direction route, the walking-only leg terminates at the 3000 meter pass.  The driving route looks steep in itself, so if I’m pushing my bike anyways, how much worse can it be on a trail of some sort?

The answer is, much, much worse.  But I don’t find this out until I’m a couple hours committed to the shortcut, which early on takes me through single track trails through cornfields, and up some pretty steep but manageable stuff.  But the last 500 meters of climb (yes, 500 of 600) goes up a road that turns into a trail that grows increasingly narrow.  Then the trail diverges from Google Maps account of it, at which time I get the dreaded “rerouting” message and am proceeding on faith that the trail will meet up with the road.  For longer than I should, I resist the inevitable need to separate bags from bike and carry them individually, in turns, relaying them up the trail, which by the time I do, is a narrow swath of bowling ball sized and larger rocks through dense foliage. 

I see an old indigenous man walking barefoot down the trail at a snail’s pace, carrying a bundle of wood and a machete.  Not a great sign that the trail terminates at the road, but by this time, I can hear the occasional truck at some distance and figure there’s no way it can’t…eventually.  He’s making strange grunting noises, which may or may not be expressions in an indigenous tongue.  He doesn’t seem to speak any spanish, or at least understand my attempts at it.  It takes him a few minutes to go the 20 meters or so between him and I when I first spot him, but I don’t want to try and squeeze by him carrying my bike, which he points to repeatedly with his machete and grunts and/or says something.  Despite the machete, he’s not at all threatening seeming.  To the contrary, and at the risk of coming across as patronizing, I find him adorable

I count off a hundred steps when doing the relays because it seems to help me cope with what I’ve gotten myself into, and because why not.  I do about a half dozen of them, and then, reassured by being able to hear more/smaller passing vehicles, and more clearly, I stop to eat the last of my food, boiled eggs and peanuts, and think of MJ in Tempe and how much I could go for a PB&J and fried egg sandwich.  A bit later, when I’m back at the carrying stuff relay, doubling back for my bicycle, I hear someone tromping downhill, off-trail, from above.  It’s a younger guy, dressed pretty sharply, toting a small valise.  He speaks Spanish, and confirms the road is up the trail, and not too much further ahead.  I’m in no position to take his shortcut, struggling to carry my things up the narrow trail as it is, but very relieved to hear his affirmation.  He chuckles as we get to my bike and he figures out what idiocy I’m engaged in before continuing down the trail with the agility of a mountain goat.

When I finally emerge from the woods to the highway, it’s on the ridge of a crest.  I’m not exactly at the pass, but the grade looks (and turns out to be) blissfully easy relative to what I just did.  It’s 3:30pm, and in the current timezone and location, the sun sets at about 7pm.  So I should have enough time to cover the remaining 35km to San Pedro La Leguna, the town on this side of Lake Atitlan that I’ve decided to get to today, especially considering it’s mostly flat-ish and descent, with only a couple of minor climbs.
I’m bombing down a descent as the sky is threatening to open up an afternoon rain, periodically checking that I’m still on course.  But I let a few minutes and a few hundred meters of elevation gain go by between checks and then realize that I’ve missed a turn.  Instead of heading to the West side of the lake, I’m running parallel to the North edge of it.  Doubling back and climbing those hundreds of meters is a non-starter at this point in the day to my mind, so I plot a course to Panajachel, a similar but slightly less touristy town on the Northeast side of the lake.  Driving directions take me off highway, but that’s fine.  I have to do a couple more non-trivial climbs, and some large descents, but I think I have the energy for it.

The route turns out to be pretty great, winding through tiny hamlets nestled in misty hills.  I’m well off the route taken by other tourists, cycling or otherwise, judging by the level of gawk my presence elicits.  My spirits are high, knowing that I’m at the tail end of a fairly epic day of exertion, so I respond positively and enthusiastically to all the whistles, shouts, and hoots.

The last climb is not long, but is steep and non-trivial, and takes every bit of juice that I have left, and then some, as I have to walk a bit of it.  At the top of it is a town that seems small at first, but turns out to be fairly large as I get to it’s core around a central plaza.  It’s dusk and nearly dark as I crest the terrain and roll into the town center.  I know it’s only a rapid descent into lakeside Panajachel, but I figure that if there’s a hotel in town that’s reasonably priced, it would be nice to call it a night and leave the steep, bombing decent for morning, when with any luck, I can stop and enjoy views of the lake from above.

I find such a room on my first try in a hotel run by a kindly older man.  I check in and don’t even bother washing up before heading out to indulge in a couple of dinners and deserts.  While I’m making my way from dinner #1 to dinner #2, a mob of mostly children descends on the town square.  They’re shouting, running, carrying torches and glowing spheres, and flanked by cars pounding on their horns.  There’s deafening fireworks being set off from all over, while they make a couple of laps around the central plaza.  I have no idea what it was all about, and I don’t really have the energy to ask, but based on their fairly homogenous clothing, I’d venture to guess that it was a sort of pep rally for a local school or some affiliated organization.  It definitely seems celebratory, and not protest-atory, in nature, as onlookers are generally smiling or indifferent.

I watch a guy in a soldier uniform escort a incoherently drunken man into an alcove, help him lie down, and then go back to where he came, his work concerning the drunk apparently complete.

I head back to the room, where there’s a window directly adjoining a main road out of town, and passing trucks make the panes of the window rattle with their deafeningly loud, rumbling engine brakes.  But this is no matter.  I’m out like a light shortly after I’m horizontal, at around 9 and not woken until the same noises resume at 6 the following morning.

I take my time getting going, having a big breakfast and a post breakfast nap.  I’ve had a grueling 3 days, and while momentum is great, my parts are telling me they need a break.  I’ve decided I’m going to descend to Panajachel, find accommodations, and take a day off in a touristic resort town.

And this is what I do, along with working on this blost, using my rapidly decreasingly but still just barely sufficiently functional bluetooth keyboard.  I do so, more or less camped out at a touristy cafe that has the kind of food that is easy to find in Seattle, but quite rare in these parts.  At night I venture around by bike, and the streets are mayhem and the churches have racous revival music bellowing out.  I make myself a big dinner of chopped veggies and pass out.  I have a pretty big day if I’m going to get to Antigua the next day.

I make myself a basic breakfast and then head out to take on the big climb out of the lake valley.  I have a climb of 600 meters, then a descent of about half of that, then another climb of 600 meters and change.  Of course, all of this assumes that there aren’t descents and climbs that are short enough duration that they don’t show up on my elevation profile app, which often there are.  Thankfully, today, it’s largely monotonic.  When I’m about 1/4 the way through the second climb, I encounter a mountain biker.  His name is Francisco, and he and I ride to the top of the climb together while making small talk.  His English is only a bit better than my Spanish, so it’s good practice for us both.  I think I’m not holding him up too much, but it’s hard to tell as he’s a very gracious companion.  He invites me to lunch at his home in Patzun, which turns out to be perched on top of a hill with a beautiful panoramic view of the city and surrounding pastures.  It’s a small compound on which live a couple of his five brothers.  Not long after we settle in, his 6 year old niece, wearing a traditional dress,  entertains us with a non-stop monologue which is great practice for my Spanish comprehension, as the subject matter and vocabluary are well suited for my skill level.  Also, she is positively adorable in her relentless delivery, pausing only, and with strained patience, when I occasionally need Francisco’s assistance translating what she’s saying.

The skies are darkening and Francisco is sympathetic to my desire to get the remaining 45km to Antigua.  I’ve only covered 25km so far, but it was a very challenging 25km, and the rest of the route should be comparatively easy, and take a little less time.

It is, and does, though there is a heavy, albeit breif downpour during one of my big descents into the greater metropolitan area.  The only close call is with a black dog that I’m late to notice, with my rain splattered sunglasses acting as goggles, who’s facing the road, not noticing me, and taking up the entire shoulder to which I’ve been relegated by the traffic that is indifferent to the rain and the associated decreased visibilty and increased stopping distances.   My only option is to yell to get the dog’s attention and hope that he understands the urgency of the situation.  I yell “Oye!” with all my breath, to which the dog casts me a sideways glance and nonchalantly takes a minimal two steps before I whiz by, missing it by inches.  I can pratically visualize the dog’s thought balloon saying “pfff, whatever” as I’m simultaneously shuddering with the adrenaline of the near disasterous collision of canine and cycle and feeling an undeniable awed respect for the complete lack of fucks given by street dogs in general, and this one in particular.

Traffic coming into town is at a standstill, and I and other two wheeled vehicles weave through it.  It seems I’m actually a good deal more nimble than my motored counterparts, able and willing to squeeze through gaps that they’re not.  I’m not much narrower, when taking into account my bags, but at 100 pounds, my bike is considerably lighter than even the lightest motorbike, and I figure this must be the main factor.

I take a walking-directions short cut which actually is a short cut and also spares me a lot of up-down getting into town, shaving probably 30-45 minutes of hard pedaling.  On one of the descents, the road is smooth, steep, and straight enough that I set a personal speed record of 78 km/h.  At anything beyond 65 km/h my gearing maxes out and pedalling makes barely a difference.  It comes down to gravity vs. terminal velocity, and so at those speeds I stop pedalling in favor of positioning myself to minimize drag.

I get into the hostel I reserved that morning, and meet Sebastian, who’s just waking up from a mid-day nap.  He’s just come back from a hike up Acatenango, a volcano adjacent to an active one appropriately named Fuego.  He shows me pictures and videos of the volcano, and they are amazing.  It turns out that the volcano was more active the prior night, during which he was on Acatenango, than it has been in years and possibly decades, so I resolve that I too need to do this trek.  But first, Sebastian has a lead on a nearby hotel where we can make use of pool and sauna for 40 Quetzal ($5.30), so we do.  Then we grab dinner at Samsara, another establishment that is very much like what one can easily find in Seattle (kale, quinoa, veggie swarma, smoothies involving raw cocoa, etc) and then he accompanies me to the hostel where he booked the trek, a few blocks from the one in which we’re staying.  I get booked, and make arrangements to leave my things at that hostel when I’m picked up at 9am the following morning.

I’m up and packing at 7am, and say my farewell to Sebastian before heading out to breakfast, and to stock up on food supplies to augment the fairly meager lunch, dinner and breakfast that are provided on the trek, per Sebastian’s much appreciated advice.  I meet up with a couple of women from Hamburg that I’d met at the hostel the night before, and we chat on the shuttle to the trailhead.  There, I pick up a backpack that I’d rented.  Alfonso, the guide, has a sheet of gear that’s been rented, and it does not reflect the 40Q that I paid for use of the backpack, but we were seated next to each other on the hour ride to the trailhead, and chatted about my trip and his mountain biking and I’m pretty sure it’s because of this that he just shrugs off the accounting discrepancy and gives me the pack without any further inquiry.

There’s about 25 of us in total, along with 2 guides.  I’m the only American in the group, but there’s several Brits, a couple of Canadians, and not surprisingly, English is the default language among the clients.  German runs a close second.  I believe only the Peruvian is a native Spanish speaker.

The hike up the mountain to base camp covers about 2000 meters of elevation gain.  Not surprisingly, I and the guides are in considerably better shape than the majority of the crew, and there are a half dozen breaks to let them catch up.  At base camp, which is blustery, the guides pull out a fifth of whiskey and pass it around, while we huddle around a roaring campfire of machete felled pine trees, also provided by the guides.  There’s a lot of cloud cover as the sun sets, and many people in the group are vocally anxious about whether or not we’re going to see any eruptions at all.  We’re all keenly aware of how active the volcano was two nights prior.

Shortly after I confirm by show of hands that I’m the only American in the crew, and invite and field the disgust and humiliation of Donald Trump, a massive log about a foot thick and 4 feet wide tumbles from the fire.  It’s rolling down the gradual slope that comprises our campsite, with only me standing between it and another camp of volcano watchers about 50 meters down a steep slope just behind me.  It rolls into my rain shell covered legs and is starting to melt the plastic when I hop over it, but also halt it by pressing the sole of my shoe to the top of it as one might do with a soccer ball.  The guides are immediately apologetic and thankful, understanding the catastrophe that’s been avoided as someone in the group calls out, good natured jokingly “america saves the day, again!”

We are to get up at 3:30am to set out for the summit, and by 8:30pm, I’m the only one still up.  I’m brushing my teeth when I see a small plume of bright red lava shoot up and spill down one of the slopes.  There’s a chorus of “wooo”s from other camps on the observation slope, and I instinctively call out “lava! lava! lava!”.  Within seconds, everybody is out of their tents, looking at the now again dark cone in the distance.  I feel a bit crappy for getting them up for nothing, but I’m also ready to go to bed, so this seems like as good as time as any.  I’m getting to use my bivvy and sleeping bag for the first time in some time, and it’s very chilly and windy at our camp at 11,800 feet.  I wish everybody goodnight and crawl in and start to warm up my hands and feet when I hear another exclamation, this time including “woo”s from my crew.  I don’t bother getting up, knowing that the eruption will be done by the time I do, but I feel a lot better having now not gotten them out of bed for nothing.

I’m too excited for our nocturnal ascent to 4000 meters to (hopefully) watch eruptions and the sunrise to sleep all the way through to 3:30.  We set out and it’s a tiring, tricky, and tiny bit terrifying scramble up the pumice pebble cone in the dark.   But we’re rewarded by a couple of giant geysers of magma shooting into the sky as we do, that are much larger than what I’d seen the night before. The wind is frigid and whipping through all of our clothing, none of us particularly suited for sub-freezing, high-speed winds.  About a dozen of us huddle up as we sit down to watch the cone and wait for an explosion, and it’s quite endearing how comfortable everyone is, particularly some guys that I wouldn’t have guessed would be so non-homophobic, pressing into one another to share warmth and windsheild.  Eventually, we’re rewarded with a giant plume at least a kilometer tall, against a dark blue sky, where the light is just right to make out the car sized rocks being sprayed in the air, the thick black smoke, and the red hot magma.  It’s not the constant stream of a couple of nights ago, but we’re all happy that we got to see one of the few currently active volcanos on Earth demonstrate it’s might.  I saw lava a few years ago from a boat off the coast of the big island in Hawaii, and that was also awe inspiring, but this was a distinctly different and in some ways more powerful experience, to see a geyser of earth-guts spray from the top of a cone of the stuff, and hear and feel the gutteral rumble.

None of us is unready to leave the peak when we the guides call for us to descend, as the cold was acutely painful despite our efforts to band together against it.  During our descent, there are a handful more eruptions, though we’re not able to discern the magma against the now bright blue backdrop.

We pack up camp, have coffee and breakfast, then descend back to where the shuttle picks us up.  For each of our rest breaks, and on the ride home, I’m asleep within minutes, and I enjoy having the ability to close my eyes and almost immediately slip into unconsciousness.

Back at the hostel where I booked my place on the trek, the hostel staffer that helped me do so, a delightful young guy from Holland named Jordan (pretty sure), has made my case to the hostel owner for allowing me to stay with them despite being fully booked.  When I wait my turn, among other clients, to chat with her, she tells me that they’re fully booked.  I mention that Jordan and I discussed the possibility of me camping out on the roof, to which she says “Oh, you’re Jeremy!?  Yes, you’re quite welcome to.  Jordan’s told me all about your bike adventures.”  I propose that I pay something, since even though I won’t have a bed, I will be making use of the bathroom and other facilities, but she declines.  It seems having ridden my bike as far as I have is a sort of all-access card.  I try not to take advantage of it, or take it for granted, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t gotten a bit used to (in a good way) the way people, particularly other travellers, light up when they ask where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to, as travellers do with one another.

I pull my bags out of storage, re-organize my gear that became disheveled in my rush to go on the trek, say goodbye to my new Hamburgian friends, and am carrying my bike out to the street to seek out some much needed sustenance when a young english woman named Rebecca calls out “Hey, I heard about you.  I want to hear about your trip.” I tell her I’d be happy to, later, after I grab some food.  Which I do, as I finish this.

Antigua is about half way through Guatemala.  From here, I think I’m going to head out of the highlands towards the Southern costal low lands.  By some local accounts, while this will get me away from grueling gradients, it will lead me to equally grueling heat and humidity, so much so that other bicycle tourists have had to resort to bussing their way away from it.  We’ll see…from my perspectives so far, Guatemala can indeed be punishing, but equally rewarding once endured.  Plus, how bad could it possibly be? ;P