Slept well last night — one of those night where you don’t turn all night. I feel bet­ter — not per­fect but bet­ter. I had some min­utes left on my Cell Phone that I wanted to use, so I made a few calls, but just missed Car­olyn. Sorry about that, if you’re read­ing. Ended up leav­ing later than nor­mal, but pay­ing my tourist exit fee was pretty unevent­fully, but in ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t have paid it. Why? Because I was about to have a crazy day.

So it’s early when I’m on the road. I am head­ing for the bor­der cross­ing at some­thing Jaguar cross­ing. I’d read that there was a river you had to cross, so in my minds eye I had a ferry across the river, in a some­what busy town.

When I got there, it was in the mid­dle of freak­ing nowhere, and the road from the pave­ment to the river was steep, with ruts and rocks. I talked to the first guy to get to me about a boat, and we set­tled on a price (35/us) and after look­ing at his boat from a dis­tance, I agreed.

Now, one thing that weighed in my mind the whole time was my alter­na­tive cross­ing into Guatemala. It would have taken the rest of the day to get to the bor­der at La Mesilla, which is the next “non-primitive” cross­ing. Then I’d have to back­track to get to where I wanted to be in the first place. So we are look­ing at another day and a half worth of driving.

So after grab­bing a soda, I take my bike down to the river, think­ing I’d drop it at some point, but that was OK, since there were a ton of peo­ple around. When I get down to the boat, and think — I don’t have any idea how we are going to do this. This boat is long, skinny and has a high bow. The sav­ing grace of the whole oper­a­tion was the fact we had 10 guys stand­ing around watch­ing, and help­ing. The guy that owns the boat pulls some planks out of his boat, and we use those as a ramp to get on the boat. My bike is about as wide as the boat, which helps keep it sta­ble — yeah for a hor­i­zon­tally opposed twin engine. So the dri­ver, myself and his son get in the boat, and we take off 30 min­utes down the river. After an inter­est­ing ride down the river, we get to Guatemala.

If get­ting on the boat was inter­est­ing, I was pretty damned wor­ried about get­ting off. The depar­ture had a bunch of peo­ple to help, and a gen­tle slope once you’re in the river. The Guatemala side had a lot of poten­tial for tragedy. First, no one was around, except for a woman doing her laun­dry and her three very young chil­dren. Sec­ond, there was a steep road to the river, and a steep drop off in the river. If my bike was to go over, it was going in three feet of water. So there is me, a small but sturdy Mex­i­can guy and his 8 or 9 y.o. son, and steep bank and deep water. Shit.

We’d backed my bike on, which was good. We started push­ing it up the first plank to get it out of the boat, and onto the plank to the shore. These planks were at an angle to each other. About this time, a 50 y.o. guy shows up to get a ride to Mex­ico. I’m push­ing from behind, and every­body else is push­ing from the shore. BUT, since every­body is push­ing from the same direc­tion, they are start­ing to push the bike from an upright posi­tion, and it starts head­ing towards the water. I stopped peo­ple from doing that, but had vision of my water­logged bike not start­ing for a cou­ple of days. But, we get it off, which I view as the mir­a­cle of this trip.

Once we are on the bank, I still have to get my bike up from the river bank. It took three tries, with my rear tires unable to grip once and my killing it once (damned tall first gear.) It took a cou­ple of guys push­ing behind to get enough momen­tum, but even­tu­ally I made it. I found immi­gra­tion, which was about a three minute ordeal — fill out a form and get a stamp, and I’m done. It was as easy as pie. I’m not sure it’s done cor­rectly, since I never brought my bike offi­cially into the coun­try (nor have I off­i­cally exited Mex­ico), but if it’s OK with the guy behind the counter, it’s OK with me. I changed the remain­der of my pesos into what­ever the hell the money is called here. The guy that did it for me had a big stack of money, prob­a­bly three inches worth of a lit­tle bit of every­thing. He had a look like he’s killed a man — a hard bit­ten, chis­eled look that said a lot about him. Given the his­tory of this place, he prob­a­bly has. He scared me, even though he was only about 5’5”.

After leav­ing this tiny lit­tle town, I start head­ing towards Coban, where I hope to spend the night. The road out­side of Bethel is hor­ri­ble. It’s a dirt road for about 60 miles. It was one of the worse roads I’ve been on in a long time. A ton of pot­holes, to the point where I stopped try­ing to avoid them and just went through them. Much time today was spent stand­ing up on my foot pegs. 60 miles of this crap was pretty tir­ing, and I was curs­ing myself, the road, and most any­body else I could think of. Even­tu­ally I hit pave­ment, and it was glo­ri­ous. That is until I got to the next town, where there was a river. There wasn’t a bridge across the river. Nope, it was back on a boat — this time a ferry. Once I fig­ured out what was going on, it wasn’t a big deal. Except for the guy in a deliv­ery truck behind me who tried to cut me off by push­ing me out of the way. I have no idea why he was try­ing to do it — in a hurry I guess? Once you cross the river, there are no signs. Luck­ily I got on the right road, and was told I had about three hours to Coban. The roads were pretty good, with banked curves, and not much traf­fic. Once again the rain came in the after­noon and my rear tire started doing some funky stuff.

Made it to Coban about 6:30 P.M. I had to drive around for 30 min­utes before I could find the hotel I wanted. The Rough Guide map to the city had the one way streets wrong — fun, once I fig­ured that out. The hotel had park­ing, and I was beat. The room was 65 what­ever the hell kind of money they use. My under­stand­ing is that it’s about $6.50. I spent the extra $.50 for a pri­vate bath­room and a TV. The TV has allowed me to see that Ger­man is hav­ing lovely weather — mid 80’s, no rain. Blade II is on too, but it’s in Span­ish. I’ve heard enough Span­ish for today. Luck­ily vio­lence is a uni­ver­sal language.

I’m not sure of what time it is, but I think I’ve gained an hour from Mex­ico. Regard­less, I’m beat – it’s been a very long day. Still haven’t decided if I’ll stay here another day or not. Depends on what Hon­duras has to offer, and how I feel in the morning.