I must admit, today was a grueling day. It has been raining for the last three days, and nine hours on a bike each day in pouring rain can be tough. If it were not for the amazing views, and constantly climbing up into the clouds, I may have wanted to stop earlier.
Yesterday, we crossed into Guatemala at around 3, and had to deal with checking out of Mexico (both ourselves and our bikes), and then checking both ourselves and our bikes into Guatemala. The entire process took about an hour, and cost around $13. There was a guy at the border that must have been the brother in law of the sheriff, because he ripped off $6 a piece to wash our tires before we could enter into the country. Some scam that the government lets happen. Oh well, nothing we can do about it.
It was raining pretty hard when we crossed, so we were quick to find a hotel. It turned out to be very nice, and cost about $12 a piece. The owner is an old truck driver whom lived in the states for over 10 years driving a semi. i am guessing, with his earnings, he started up this hotel. He had all of his little daughters or nieces working for him, and a guy with a rifle hanging out in front. You would all be surprised in how old wild west this country is, lots of them are packing. Nice guy, and nice place.
We took off the next morning and headed on to a little village outside of Solola on a lake in central Guatemala, just southwest of Guatemala city. Once again, it rained on us all day and we were dripping coming into the hotel tonight. We tried some back roads, which were not really roads, but cattle pathways. Landon got stuck, and Lou´s bike died. I was rocking it out on my R100GS, and loving it, but we ended up turning around and going back to the highway. Lou´s bike started up with a push start, and we are going to work on the wiring tomorrow to see if we can get some more charge to the starter.
We finally made it into Santiago Atitlan on Lago Atitlan, dripping. We had a glass of Pinch and headed on into the town square for Tacos, grilled Pollo, and Papas Fritas. We found a Cyber cafe afterwards to check our meals, which lead me to these young Guatemalan boys.
I saw like 7 of these boys all huddled around a computer, eyes glued to the screen and all of them, laughing and giggling. I was obviously curious, so I took a closer look.
Go figure, these Nacho Libre Lovers were watching wrestling videos from the American WWF film clips. I was interested, so I looked a little closer, and this clip had a chick out in the crowd flashing the wrestlers. They were looking at boobs! Ohh, these Guatemalan boys.