The tallest mountain in Honduras.

Sometimes I get it into my head to do something, and no matter happens to suggest that perhaps I have a serious chemical deficiency which prevents sound judgment making, I can’t get it out of my head. I must do it. (No, mother, I am not referring to this trip).

For instance, two days ago I decided to climb the Celaque, the highest mountain in Honduras. I was captivated by its description as a pristine reserve of cloud forest and a habitat for pumas and the ever-illusive quetzal, and only mildly aware of warnings about steep gradients and so on. It appeared that other people had climbed it. So I’ll climb it too, I said.

I packed up the bike and headed out of Gracias for the dirt road that winds five miles to the trailhead. Later, as I was being hauled back in a pick-up-turned-motorcycle-tow-truck, I would be horrified that I had ever attempted to cross such a disaster zone. There wasn’t a single straightaway of flat land; it was all potholes, dirt bulges, boulders, muddy snares, deep water channels, and other things that scream “bad idea!” to low-riding bikes. Right in front of the actual park entrance, there was a steep uphill jog where the dirt looked like it had been freshly tilled; it appeared that someone had decided this “natural reserve” concept was bunk and had decided to do something useful with the road, like plant corn on it. If so, I destroyed their crop when I burned uphill – emphasis on the “burn”. The bike overheated and quit halfway up.

Whenever things like this happen in Central America, I’m always amazed at how people fall out of the woodwork – even when I’m sure that I’ve drug my bike to a solitary death. A man and his four kids appeared on the scene to push me through the soft dirt, despite my voiced concerns about the smoke coming out of the engine. “That always happens with my bike,” the man said, and threw some water on it. He assured me it was fine to continue – and that the road ahead was “really good”.

The real problem was that a few days earlier, coming back through the Belize-Guatemala border after my failed ferry quest, I’d dropped the bike in some of that clay-mud that Guatemala imports straight from Hell. Ever since then, the gears had been acting a little, mmm, funny – as in, every time I shifted the engine would ROAR and not accelerate right away. It definitely didn’t want to go over 50 mph either. (Yes, I drove through two countries in this condition). Now, on the till hill, it seemed that I had mostly lost first gear.

But mostly is not entirely. And since the road was “really good”, I figured I could make it a few more miles.

Not so. A mile later, I’d lost all ability to accelerate. And when I put the kickstand down to inspect the problem (i.e., push and pull on random parts to hope I might accidentally fix whatever was wrong), I put it down right in a huge colony of fire ants. If you’ve ever done this, you know what a fool it makes of you. I tore my shoes off and pounded them against a tree, then pranced around in the dirt road (that was not “really good”) pawing off a million ants that had somehow summited my legs in .78 seconds.

I was thinking, after the ant disaster, that maybe I just had to wait and someone would “fall out of the woodwork”. But instead the sun just started to set. Sometimes the system is inconsistent.

My tent went up by the side of the road, and since my water bottle had jiggled out of my usually trusty bungees (I repeat, sometimes the system is inconsistent), I took a plastic bag through spider web covered thickets (for lack of a better word to describe a lot of dense buses and vines and trees distinctly lacking a trail) and went to the river to get water. The bag, of course, had a million tiny holes from which the water spouted, so instead of re-stocking camp like planned, I stood by the river and sucked out enough until I decided I was properly hydrated. This was, of course, after about 25 seconds.

I usually don’t mind putting my tent down in the middle of nowhere, but something about the woodwork being empty and the guidebook’s insistence on the impressive numbers of pumas on the mountain left me slightly uneasy. Once it was dark – and I mean, completely dark, can’t-see-the-hand-in-front-of-your-face dark – I holed up inside my tent and took out my harmonica (a guy gave me one in Mexico because he told me I was really “musically inclined”) I figured it would drive any curious pumas away – that, or it would drive them mad and they’d eat me to stop the noise. But the odds of the latter happening seemed pretty low. So I played the only three riffs I know, over and over and over, until the Tylenol PM I’d popped (dry) knocked me out cold.

The next day, much to my surprise, the bike still didn’t work. I’d sort of thought a good night’s rest would fix things. (Such are the theories of motorcycle maintenance, as written by Tracy Motz). Even after a group of construction workers tried to push me to get it going, it just kept groaning and smoking; finally, one of them agreed with me that yes, the smoke was bad. This is the part when you might think I’d put off the mountain climbing – instead, with the concurrence of the workers, I decided to leave the bike there. It would be so much of an effort for someone to get it back down the hill that I was satisfied it would not be stolen.

I packed a bag for the mountain summit and grabbed camera equipment and other things of value. The rest – saddlebags, books, clothes, hammocks, etc. – I wrapped in plastic and chucked over the side of the road (into the “thicket”). I’d attached a waterproof note saying “Please do not touch these bags – I am coming back for them.” Some people build lock boxes, I write sticky notes. Whatever, it works.

By the time I’d gotten to the lodge/trailhead (which the workers had assured me was just up the road, but was in reality far away) I was dripping sweat and desperate for water. The guidebook mentioned the crooked wooden shack of Dona Alejandra as a last place to get food. There it was, right up a little path. And out of the house shuffled a very old, toothless Dona Alejandra, who didn’t have water for sale, but did have a whole lot to say on the State of the Mountain.

“The bridge is broken! You can’t cross the river– you’ll kill yourself if you try! You’ll fall into the water!”

I just stood there, wide-eyed. I’d never encountered such a feisty old lady. She let me stand in the yard to consider this new information; in the meantime, she lobbed a stone at the stray dog that was bothering her. He yelped when it his him. Her shoulders shook with glee – and she turned back towards me with a huge toothless grin.

She was raving mad. I was simultaneously terrified and in love.

As I bid her farewell, promising not to cross the bridge if it was broken, she shoved some spiny, aloe-looking leaves off the footpath. “Thorns!” she cried.

“What are the leaves used for?” I asked, feeling like I was supposed to saying something, but hopelessly dumbstruck.

“Used for!? Nothing! They’re useless – they’re just full of thorns!” She shuffled back into her den. I’d run into Dona Alejandra again on the way out of the park, when she was roaming around with a big hooked stick, knocking dead branches out of the trees for the huge satchel of firewood she was carrying on her back. She would give me small orange fruits and bellow out, "You have to peel them first!" when I went to bite in. This is who I want to be when I grow up.

Across the dirt path at the lodge they told me the bridge was not out, and that I could pass without problem. A very fast-paced, hard-to-follow Spanish conversation between the three workers followed – I later realized it was a debate on whether to let me go up the mountain alone. “She’s big and strong! She’ll be fine,” I heard one of them say. Central America always succeeds in painting me as a person of super-natural human proportions. Here, I am enormous.

So off I went. I huffed up through the pines, passing the first rest stop (i.e., slight break in the trees with a handwritten sign indicating “Rest Stop”) and scoffing at it. For weaklings, I thought. By the second one, I dropped my luggage and collapsed, my legs wondering exactly what was going on. I must be about halfway, I thought. I looked at the hand-drawn, taped-together map they’d given me at the lodge. It appeared this spot was only about 1/10 of the way. The scale is probably off. I’m definitely halfway.

But along came a spirited Israeli – the first and the last person I would see on the climb – who told me it was still a long, long to the waterfall he’d gone to, and that was subsequently a long, long way from the top, which he’d not gone to. We probably have different ideas of distance, I thought. He sat down and offered me some of his orange juice. We talked. He was thoroughly amused with the fact that I’d come by motorcycle.

“I’m sorry to laugh, you just don’t look like someone who is traveling alone on a motorcycle and climbing mountains… I mean, Your fingernails are painted.”

Yes, and aren’t they lovely I thought, admiring my new hot pink polish.

“I hear that a lot,” I said. And they’re right -- I don’t look like a traveler. I don’t own anything in khaki, cargo or hemp. I prefer American Apparel to North Face. It’s rare to catch me without eyeliner. Why? Because “travel wear” does not agree with my fashion sensibilities. And who came up with the rule that you have to look granola to travel? I put on a pair of Tivas one time and couldn’t walk – not because I stumbled or they fit improperly, but because my feet actually seceded from the rest of my body and went to Barney’s. So really I don’t have a choice. I mean, I’m not the epitome of high style out here, but I do manage to look awfully cute.

Meir insisted that I take the rest of his food – a bag of toast, some biscuits and a bite-size Snickers bar. I protested – but would later ravage the plastic sack in a ferocious, climb-induced hunger. I had some ham and jalapeno sandwiches, but I’d discover they were not enough to get me to the top. (Once again, I dive in unprepared – once again, a friendly stranger comes along to dig me out of a ditch I don’t even know I’m in. Some people might scoff at this – I called it “leading a charmed life”.)

Before he left he said, “You’re the first American I’ve met who’s really traveling.” The term really traveling jumped out at me. I laughed, probably longer than I should have when trying to maintain the appearance of sanity. Dragging a street bike up a treacherous mountain road to its death, hiking with a “pack” that’s really an Army Surplus duffel bag with shoulder straps, replacing the strongly recommended “sturdy hiking boots” with a pair of green Converse sneakers, plucking a discarded Pepsi plastic bottle off a tree branch and filling it with sort of cloudy stream water. This is really traveling? Because sometimes it just feels like general blind chaos, or bad decision-making.

I gave Meir my email address and loaded back up. From here, the trail roller-coastered along the side of the mountain, dipping down seven or eight times to cross small streams where I would invariably let slip one of my shoes into the mud or water. Every time I’d look back sort of confusedly like, How did that happen again? I squishy-footed my way along the deserted trail, constantly swatting from my face the spider webs that tend to accumulate when passing through places that reasonable people do not pass.

I found the first camping spot – what the map showed as the actual halfway, and what I chose to believe as “really almost the top”. The words “Very Steep – Be careful!” were underlined. I started up the sharper gradient and thought, Wow, they weren’t kidding. It was steeper, it was harder. I was sweating out stream water at an incredible rate.

But when I thought the steep part was almost over, the trail dead-ended in front of some rocks. I looked at the map. I looked at the trail. I looked around for one of the illusive trail markers (i.e., plastic sack or scrap of cloth tied to a tree branch). I was again confused. This didn’t appear to be the top (although it must be very, very close, I reassured myself).

Then, much to my horror, I spotted a marker sticking out from the rocks shooting up above me. I squinted to make sure it wasn’t a dead bird or a bright blue leaf or other eye trickery. They want me to climb up there? Is that even possible? I studied the squiggle lines on my map, which helped nothing. I stood and blinked and stood some more. I was waiting for the path to spontaneously re-arrange itself to take me around instead of up this rocky precipice. I heard myself say out loud, “You’ve got to be kidding me…” as I reached to pull myself up the first ledge.

I can’t tell you what happened here, because I blacked out some otherworldly force intervened to carry me up the mountain. All I know is that when I came out of the rocks, I had a lot of blood on my hands. I’d like to think was from the mosquito orgy I’d wiped out (only after they devoured half the flesh on my face). But it’s possible it was from a small woodland animal or perhaps even a small human whom I’d killed in a deranged delusion. If so, I’m very sorry. But you shouldn’t expect people to perform physical feats of this magnitude without totally losing their minds.

The sun was just starting to set when I made it to the second campground, in the cloud forest proper. I cannot remember another moment of parallel ecstasy in my entire life. The trees sprung up to impressive heights and were more sparsely situated, allowing the fading light to fall through, with mosses of all shades of green melting off the lofty branches; there were swaths that hung down twenty feet or more. Most amazing of all was the silence: gone were the birds, the mosquitoes, the skittering ground critters, the only sound was the steady dripping from the trees overhead, and the rush of the small waterfall nearby. Mostly though, I was happy to not have to climb another step.

I dropped my pack, ripped off my clothes and jumped into the (really, really freezing) stream. That night, I slept.

The next morning I rolled out of the tent back into the misty cloud forest. I was sore, grubby, bug-bitten, funny smelling… And I generally hate mornings. But being so close to the top put me in a weirdly chirpy mood. I laced up my muddy sneakers and got back on the trail, this time to find a slightly less demanding incline. I stumbled over things while straining to see to the tops of the trees. I contemplated the future of mankind, forwards and backwards. I found a slug that was almost a foot long.

And finally, there was the last stretch to the top. I came over the final few steps to see what the ancients had called the window to God. The view at the top… was of clouds. Of course. I was hiking in a cloud forest.

They were the most beautiful clouds I’d ever seen.

I laughed, turned around and walked back down the mountain.

It's raining in Belize.

It’s raining in Belize. It is always raining in Belize. I have been here three separate times, in three separate months, and whenever I ask what month gets the heaviest rainfall, they always say, “This one.” I’m beginning to think there is a direct relationship between my presence here and watershed.

Now I am on the wrong side of a very long, muddy dirt road. When you say “Four-wheel drive” to this road, it chortles. I came down looking for a ferry to Honduras – a car ferry, to be precise, or at least one big enough for my obese motorcycle – with the hopes of bypassing a long detour through Guatemala. Sometimes our dreams are so lofty.

As soon as I crossed the Belizean border, I started asking about the reality of my fantasy ferry. To arrive at an answer that runs any chance of being the truth in Central America, a survey of the largest population cross-section possible is necessary. Thus I questioned customs and immigrations agents while they defiled the pages of my passport; gas station attendants whose eyes were crossed and hands were cupped in a C; society women; a somnambulist who trotted through my dream; trail blazers looking for reward and recognition; bikini models and their estheticians in between a pluck and a wax and a paint; quasi-evolved atheists from whom was borne the idea of IT training; druids looking a little astray; bass fishermen in pixilated form; and people who enjoy strobe lights but will settle for the effect of a ceiling fan. Mascots and children I got together during a group shot outside the stadium. Oh, and there was a lemming (in the human sense, of course, which was a bad idea).

This group (don’t bother yourselves trying to figure it out) spoke with one, unified voice: They all said, “Maybe.”

But one among them, one very self-assured suit man among them, told me that the highway all the way to the possible ferry departure area was paved. My guidebook told me it was dirt. No, he said, it’s all been paved in the last few years – all but a very small section that you won’t have trouble with.

Well that’s something.

So I headed down that way. I stopped off on another dirt road to stay the night at the Jaguar Reserve. Partly because it was a cheap sleep, mostly because jaguars. Put that on a flash card and pull it out of your pocket tomorrow and see what it does. Jaguar. Asa! It’s the only jaguar reserve in the whole wide world.

I checked in and paid my $2.50 camping fee. The ranger took me outside to a crudely painted trail map and suggested a few nice hikes. “What are these?” I asked instead, pointing to the crab-like figures painted into the river. “That’s where you can take a tube down the river,” he told me.

I’d spent the last two days driving through hours of pouring rain. My voice was down to a scratchy whisper and my mental state was sufficiently waterlogged. I wanted to do something that required little thought or physical effort. Sitting and floating on an inflated piece of rubber sounded like a really good idea (albeit one that involved more water, I at least wouldn’t be fighting it). Normally, I would hate this idea. Not every day is normal though.

So he picked out a tube that looked like the right size. “Remember,” he said, “you MUST exit by the second exit. Do not miss it.”

“What happens if you miss it?”

“Then you go into heavy rapids that will take you all the way back to the highway, if you’re lucky.”

The highway was six miles away.

“What if you’re not lucky?”

“Then you’re dead,” he chuckled.

“Oh.”

He added as a side thought, “Do you swim well?”

I love that in Belize, they send you unguided, unvested, on a river tubing trip where you not only need to know how to swim, but it’s pretty important you’re a strong swimmer. And they only ask you about that last part if they happen to think of it.

I got out onto the Lazy River, except that it was a real river surrounded by a real jungle, and felt like I should feel alarmed by the swifter-than-expected rapids and maybe the whole situation in general, but I didn’t have the energy required for alarm. (Anyway, my mom says I’m missing that chemical that alerts people when danger is near. Could be that most things aren’t as dangerous as people give them credit for.) The tube was dropped into the water and I squirmed into the donut-hole middle.

If you’ve ever craved surrealism, float down a jungle river in a rubber inner tube, alone. They’ll write a song about it one day.

It’s pretty predictable what’s coming here… I got ten minutes down the river, and that pretty blue sky that always shows a little leg then runs away giggling did just that. And along came the greyer older brother with a big one-two pop for the whole lot. Raindrops started to fall. Then it poured. I couldn’t really do anything. Probably wouldn’t have in any case. I just sat in my tube in the river and watched the mist rise off the water.

If you don’t know, the one thing that will make a fast river even faster is more water. Which was actually a good time, except when it came to the whole exit business. I thought about skipping it to see whether I’d make it to the highway or die, but I decided if I did make it to the highway I didn’t want to walk six miles back with an inner tube. So, with no small effort, I got to the riverbank and got out of the river, then walked back through the muddy jungle in flip flops.

That was just a short but kind of long interlude to underscore the fact that no matter what I do here, it rains on me.

But back to this ferry business, which is the real reason why I’m sitting at a bar with a mysterious wireless connection, on the wrong side of a very long, muddy dirt road.

I was shooting for Placencia, the docking point of the fantasy ferry, only because the roads were paved and I could turn right back around if the boat couldn’t take me or didn’t exist. I got onto the Southern Highway and found it smooth and covered, as promised. And when the signs pointed to Placencia and the road turned to good ol’ Belizean red dirt, I thought that this too was as promised. It’s the short patch that I “won’t have trouble with”. Onward.

Turns out, the “short patch” extends for 25 miles. I kept going because I thought the pavement would reappear at any moment. By the time I realized otherwise, it was too late to turn around. It was a fight through thick, muddy construction truck treads and poorly graded dips where water swelled at amazing depths. Had the sun not been shining, I wouldn’t have made it through.

I got to Placencia and went straight to the dock. There I found, in plastic lawn chairs, and old man and an old woman and a big rubber tub filled with enchiladas. This, apparently, was the official ferry information center. I got off the bike.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a ferry to Honduras.”

“Ferry’s broke,” the old man replied. “It’s not running tomorrow.”

Slap.

“Do you know when it will be running?”

“They’re waiting for a part.”

“So after the weekend?”

“Nah. Probably a good two weeks or so.”

Sock, elbow to the rib.

“Oh.” I let it simmer for a minute. Maybe the boat would be fixed sooner. “Do you think it would take my bike?”

“Dunnow.”

“Does it usually take vehicles.”

“Nah, might take a motorcycle – might – but that one’s pretty big.”

“Is the boat pretty big?”

“Average.”

“Do you know I’d talk to about getting it on?”

“Yeah, the capn’d be able to tell you.”

“Yeah? Where can I find the captain?”

“Can’t. He’s in Guatemala right now. Took a little trip with his family while the boat’s being repaired”

Please, someone just hog tie me and throw me into the ocean.

“You want an enchilada?” the woman asked. “They’re real cheap.”

Just then, it started to rain. In the time it would take me to get back out to the road, it would be impassable. I didn’t want an enchilada.

So here I sit, a day later, and it’s still raining. I’ll eventually have to bribe a large truck to take me back out, or wait for the sun to re-appear.

And after all this, the answer to the question of whether you can get a motorcycle on a ferry from Belize to Honduras is still Maybe.

The Great Guatemalan Wallet Caper

After abandoning the bike in Coban, I moved through the Guatemalan tourist ring with the rest of the backpacker's crowd and dipped my toes into the open waters of Chicken Bussing. It was a change, and I'd sometimes find myself mentally planning out the heist of a dirt bike, but little by little I was adapting to the crowded, clamorous glory of the system. Nonetheless, when I moved eastward to the less-visited Pacific Slope and found a bus that in a former life was a charter, as opposed the usual re-imagined school buses, I was thrilled. I’d finally found a break.

Onboard, I marveled at the cushioned bucket seats and spacious aisle; this was my first time on a Guatemalan bus not packed ten to a row. The cushions were stained and torn, the windows held shut with twine, and the blinking Christmas lights around the portrait of Virgin Mary bright enough to make a blind man wince – but it didn't matter. It was un-crowded and there was generous leg room. I settled in and assumed the breezy demeanor of someone flying first class. Off to Santa Lucia…

The two-hour trek southward was dyed in Guatemalan green. The bus whirred past a continuous panorama of cane fields and velvety, emerald mountainsides, interspersed occasionally with tiny, wooden-shack villages peeking out from behind palms and banana trees. The roadside was peppered with wandering horses and cattle; an occasional donkey loaded with corn leaves (for tamales) ambled alongside a sun-beaten paysano. It was mesmerizing. Hypnotizing, even.


Earlier, the ticket-taker said he’d let me know when we were nearing my stop, but we’d apparently mis-communicated on the “near” part: When the bus was at a complete stop, I was jolted out of my reverie by urgent shouts of “Santa Lucia! Santa Lucia! Gringa! Santa Lucia!” The driver was not waiting; I hugged my luggage to my body, bolted out of my seat, and charged down the aisle… Sailing down the steps, I had a mental image of the bus inhaling deeply and then SPITTING me out as hard onto the asphalt in Santa Lucia. “Glad I didn’t end up further down the road,” I thought.

Rain was starting to fall so I ducked under the awning of the nearby gas station and dropped my bags onto the ground, unloading the burden of awkwardly positioned weight. I stared out at the watery road and remembered I was thirsty. My hand reached down to grab my pink wallet from the top of my made-for-a-motorcycle-and-not-a-Guatemalan-bus bag … but it wasn’t there. I looked again. Not there. The bag’s contents were hurriedly dumped out, a growing panic peeking its ugly head over the horizon. Oh dear. The wallet was lost. It was on the bus. Full-blown panic vaulted itself over the horizon and landed feet-first on my doorstep (with a mocking “Ta-da!”). Trouble.

Almost without thinking, I scooped up my luggage and ran it inside to the station attendant (who must have had a very trustworthy face). “I’ll be back in a few hours!” I shouted, sure that if I went after the bus I’d be able to reclaim my wallet. I sprinted out to the road (empty-handed) to intercept the wildly painted chicken bus that had just squealed to a halt in the wet gravel. I jumped onto the stairs and rattled off some garbled, high-speed explanation of the lost wallet and the bus I needed to chase down – adding a pity piece about not having any money for a ticket. “Get in, step up, STEP UP!!” the ticket man shot back – indifferent to my plight or financial situation, concerned only with maintaining a tornado-like pace (even in the pelting rain.) And so began the Great Guatemalan Wallet Caper.

The chase continued along the bumpy highway until a loud CLANK, grrrrr, POP brought us to a complete stop, and the driver and his minions piled out to inspect some mechanical malfunction. My fingers dug their way into the pleathery seat cover; this was not the high-speed pursuit I’d hoped for. But my brooding impatience was interrupted only minutes later when a piece of paper with the name of the bus line I was supposedly looking for was shoved into my hand. “Get off here and take the next bus all the way to Guatemala City! You’ll find your bus there,” they assured me. I jumped down the stairs into the streets of an unknown locale and watched them sputter off, “Guatemala City” ringing in my ears...

These were the two words I did not want to hear. Guatemala City. The guidebooks warn you. Other travelers warn you. Guatemalans warn you. The capital is a den of corruption, wickedness, depravity, lechery, sordidness, filth, muck, smut, crime, sleaze, sin… But, then again, people are always over-exaggerating. I’d been once before and didn’t think it was nearly the inferno it was likened to. And this time my pockets were empty – I literally had nothing anyone could steal.*

So two hours later, courtesy of another charitable chicken bus, I pulled into Just-Like-They-Say Guatemala City (slightly different from the I’m-Here-With-My-Savvy-Friend Guatemala City I’d visited before). Streets were clogged with agitated pedestrians and angry honking cars, the air visibly gray with exhaust fumes and the haze of general dissatisfaction. Food carts and vendors’ aluminum stalls leaned into each other on the sidewalk, stray dogs picking their way through the confusion. People were moving with purpose but couldn’t get far without stumbling into the chaos – It reminded me of what would happen if you mashed a bunch of ant colonies together and let them untangle themselves.


As soon as my sneakers hit the sidewalk, a taxi mob piled on top of one another to offer me their services in broken English. With a little insistence and a lot of attitude, I broke free of the hagglers’ snare and found directions to the office, then shuffled a few blocks down the street to match the company name on the paper with the corresponding painted sign. A door-less entryway led into a stark white room with a single reception desk. It was empty.

I stood inside for a minute inspecting the deserted workspace, then turned around to see if someone outside might help me. That’s when I first saw him: Bad Man. He’d come in behind me and stood there blinking – his dark, beady eyes were set into a wide, round face, this a rugged terrain full of warty moles extending down his neck and disappearing under a sweat-stained shirt. A bulbous gut stuck so far over his waistline that it looked like he might topple over from being too off-balance. Luckily the office space was open-faced; I might have otherwise bolted away to escape a boiled death in a giant iron cauldron, Bad Man sucking the last scraps of meat off my broken bones and smacking his greasy lips.

He took his place behind the desk and I started to recite my reason for standing in his bare bus office. But he stopped me short to offer me a chair on his side of the desk. I sat down. Then he asked for the whole story. I told him.

“Well,” he said leaning back in his swivel chair, “there’s nothing we can do tonight. Any bus that arrived here today has turned back around and won’t be back to its home station until late.”

Dread. The buses were supposed to be there, in Guatemala City, not on the way back to wherever they started from. I knew the question forming on my lips about a CV system was irrelevant. My mind flipped through a million different scenarios, but intuition told me that Bad Man was not likely to go along with any zany schemes of getting in touch with someone before the day was over. “So is there a way to call around in the morning to see if anyone found anything?” I asked, with the tiniest tinge of desperation.

“Of course. I can call to all the offices first thing in the morning.”

My chances of success were crashing like the stock market in a Bush administration (yes, a cheap hit). The longer the wallet was gone, the less likely I seemed to get it back.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh of resignation. “Can I get a phone number here, and I’ll call you from Santa Lucia?”

“Santa Lucia? You’re not thinking of going back there tonight, are you?”

Silly, silly Bad Man. Of course I’m going back.

“All my luggage is there…” I started in, but was cut off by Bad Man’s urgent cry: “It’ll be dark there by the time you get back!”

Oh, right. Better to be penniless and alone in Guatemala City when night falls.

Again, I tried with “It will be fine – my things are there…” Again, cut off: “That’s too dangerous!”

This is going to get annoying really fast, I thought. And why couldn’t you have showed this degree of concern over, perhaps, getting my wallet back?

He shifted in his seat a bit and continued. “Here’s what I’ll do – I’ll pay for food and a hotel room for you tonight, then we’ll call around in the morning. If someone has it, you can wait here for it, and if not, you can go back to Santa Lucia in the afternoon.”

Ha! Please, I thought, I know the adage about free lunches. And sleazy men.

“Thank you,” I said with poorly faked gratitude, “but I prefer to go back tonight.”

He put his hand on my knee. “I don’t live in the city either, so I’m staying at the hotel too. We can share a room,” his hand suddenly starting its way up my thigh.

I slapped his wrist away and shot up out of my seat, knocking the chair hard into the desk behind it. I was furious (and revolted). I shot him an icy “No thank you,” eyes narrowed. I paused for a minute, gears churning to come up with a verbal stone-in-the-slingshot to take this Goliath down, to teach Bad Man not to make advances on women in search of their leather-bound identities. But anger was fogging things up. (Having to think in Spanish – also not helping). I turned and walked out, ready to rack the wallet up as a loss and get out of Guatemala City. No looking back (for fear I might turn into a pillar of salt).

I hurried back down the street, past spray-painted cinderblock walls and vacant storefronts, the insides choked with rubble and garbage. For a third time that afternoon, I climbed a set of chicken bus stairs and was shuffled through as a pro-bono case. I settled in for the long bus ride back to Santa Lucia, still angry that I’d come so far and gotten so little cooperation, but ready to turn attention to my current plight.

A wedding in Michigan was taking me back to the States in two days, so I knew my stint as a vagabond would be relegated to 48 hours. With a well thought-out plan of action, I said to myself, this will be a breeze. My priority was getting to the airport on Thursday, and maybe as a secondary goal, not sleeping in the rain. Though I’d just puppy dog-eyed my way to and from Guatemala City, my floating logic dictated that it would be much harder to actually get to the airport in Guatemala City. This would require money, I decided. (Certainly it couldn’t be as easy as just asking for a ride on the buses again). And how do you get money without a tin cup, a musical instrument or chips for the slot machine? A job, I said. Yes, I’ll get a job.

Next question: Who will give a bumbling Spanish-speaker with an American passport a job for one day? Again, I flipped through the possibilities, but I envisioned my rejection rate something akin to that of a door-to-door vacuum salesman. Then it dawned on me: The church! The church will give me a job and a place to sleep. Why? Because they help people who need help. That’s their job. It was settled. I’d go to the church, ring the bell and wait for one of the nuns to come to the door (because of course all Catholic churches have nuns inside, all day every day), ask for a pew to sleep on, and maybe some work cleaning the floors (or something equally Cinderalla-ish) the next day. That would get me some food and bus money for the airport. I breathed a sigh of relief, happy with my ingenious, “well thought-out” plan.

Halfway through the trip, the youngish man squished in next to me struck up a conversation. “Where are you headed?” he asked. Before I could answer he continued, “I’m sorry to be nosey, it’s just that I’ve never seen someone like you on this bus before.” I mulled over what like you must mean – tall and white, or bedraggled and desperately confused-looking. I feared it was the latter.

I told him I was headed back to Santa Lucia, and he’d soon garnered the details of my unfortunate day. As the bus started to slow for his stop, he turned to me with a going-out-on-a-limb sort of expression. “I’m going to do something to help you,” he said. “There is someone I know in Santa Lucia…” My hopes jumped: I’m saved! He’s going to point me to someone who will give me a place to sleep (and a job?). I mean, the church was a nice plan, but really…

He took out a business card and scrawled some contact information on the back. “Here,” he said, and I held my hand out for the card like it was the Golden Ticket. “I used to sing in a choir with a youth pastor, and he used to work at the church in Santa Lucia. Take this to the priest and tell that a friend of Fernando Leon sent you – make sure you mention the name of the singing group too.”

Now, I’m not usually one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but last I knew, references weren’t necessary to throw yourself at the mercy of the church. And even in the non-charitable real world where name-dropping is more readily practiced, I’m not sure how far the recommendation of a sort-of acquaintance of an ex-employee will get you. (I envisioned a spoof wherein I stood before the stern entrance of a church, pounding on the thick wooden doors and pleading to be let in, a cloaked, solemn-faced abbot looking down at me through a small hinged eyehole, shaking his head no until I wail, “But I know Rigoberto Vasquez Arana from the singing group “Dia D!” And him then growing chipper and saying, “Well why didn’t you say so earlier?”, throwing open the doors to welcome me in [then offering porridge in a wooden bowl]). (Hollywood really does rot our brains). Nonetheless I took the card, thanked him, and assured him I would email to let him know I’d made it safely.

I got off at the same gas station in Santa Elena, picked up my bags in the office, and headed for the long boulevard towards town and the church, ready to put my plan into action. But I must have been inadvertently flashing the SOS signal (or perhaps it was the I’ve-never-seen-someone-like-you-on-this-bus-before effect) because it took all of three minutes before a twenty-something Guatemalan girl in heels stopped me on the street. “Are you looking for something?” she asked.

I paused. This is going to sound ridiculous, I thought. “Yes. I’m looking for the church”

She raised an eyebrow. “The church? Right now?” It was around 10. “Why?”

“Mmm…” I stalled, trying to come up with a better explanation than “to sleep there.”

“To sleep there.”

She looked at me as if to say, I am not standing in the rain in heels to hear such absurdity. She waited for more; I gave as brief a recap of the day as possible and asked if she could just point me in the right direction… I added some weak supplement about having a card to show to the priest.

The girl gave a sort of half-amused sigh and said, “I’ll walk you there. You shouldn’t be walking around here by yourself.”

But you are by yourself, I thought. (My, people are a little backwards in this country).

As it happened, her father soon pulled up in his taxicab and once the girl told him my tragic tale, the father insisted that I stay at their house overnight. So in went the wet luggage, out went the church, on went the story.

Next thing I knew I was sitting in a spacious Guatemalan casa, alone at the dining room table, a heaping plate of eggs, beans and tortillas in front of me. “Eat!” The girl’s determined mother called out. “You must be hungry!” She and four of the daughters crowded together in the kitchen, where they had a good vantage point of the starving, destitute American orphan they’d found on the street. I suddenly felt like I fallen on the wrong side of the bars at the zoo. I picked up a tortilla and started nibbling, under their watchful eye.

“Pauvrecita!” I heard them say to each other (as if I couldn’t perfectly hear and understand them). You’d have thought I lost both my legs instead of just a wallet.

But even with the volcano of pity that was spewing down on me, the family was a model of hospitality: They gave me a cup of tea and sat me on a cushy couch in the living room. They pointed out different extended family members hanging in gold-colored frames on the wall (alongside an out-of-place collection of faded portraits of Japanese geishas). They showed me an illegal collection of Olmec artifacts. And then they asked about my plans for the next day. Gulp. Here we go, I thought…

“I’m going to get a job,” I said definitively.

“For one day?” they countered. “Who will give you a job for only one day?”

This sounds more and more preposterous every time I say it. “The church, maybe.”

Again, the eyebrow went up, this time en masse. A rapid-fire Spanish pow-wow delivered a quick family verdict to my predicament: Instead of going to the church, I should go with Oneyda (my heeled rescuer) to Guatemala City (where she worked). I could stay with her there. Oneyda added, “There might be a place where I can get you a job for a day…” as if to appease my hunger to make this a self-sufficient mission. I was in that awkward position where you don’t want to inconvenience anyone by making them go out of their way, but at the same time you think it might inconvenience them even more if you don’t accept their help, so in the end you just smile like a weakling and say yes to whatever they ask. I was on a bus to Guatemala City early the next morning.

We arrived in the same spot I’d arrive the day before, and transferred to another local bus bound for my friend’s apartment. This was when she turned to me and said, “Listen, I think it’s best if I drop you off at my apartment and you can just hang out there for the day. I’ll give you money to get to the airport tomorrow.” I’d sort of assumed this was coming; my puppety head bobbled a compliant “Okay”. Lost were my dreams of earning gainful employment.

As I settled into my new (or continued, rather) leechiness, I noticed out the bus windows that the landscape was changing drastically from the rat hole I’d visited the day before; the roads widened into boulevards, the median greenery was manicured, the skyline shot drastically upwards and sleek, modern high-rises towered over the streets. Glass-encased luxury car dealerships gave light to the slew of Lexus and Audi-branded vehicles (that had replaced the Toyota pick-up trucks) in traffic around us, and the flawlessly groomed women on the sidewalk were toting Louis Vuitton and other logo-ed handbags. Bright, shiny new cafes, movie theaters and shopping malls filled the spaces in-between buildings. It was like I’d entered make-believe world. I turned to Oneyda. “Are we still in Guatemala City?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “C’mon, we’re getting off.”

We got off the bus and walked across the street to a gated fortress where a guard stepped out of a booth to let us pass through into Condolandia. My jaw dropped as we stepped in; I was unaware that anything of this magnificence existed in Guatemala City. My grungy luggage was put on a wheeled cart and taken up four floors to Oneyda’s shared three-bedroom condo, where, instead of manual labor, I spent the day enjoying hot water, flipping through cable channels, chatting with the security guards downstairs and surfing the Internet. I was a Kept Woman.

So in keeping with that spirit, when Oneyda got home from work she invited me out for dinner. “My friend works at the restaurant,” she explained. “It’s where I was thinking of getting you a job.” We took a cab back through the polished neighborhood. And we stepped out in front of (you guessed it)… Hooters, Guatemala City.

By this point, there was nothing that could seem unbelievable. We went inside and ate chicken wings and looked at autographed pictures of American celebrities, like David Spade. And Oneyda’s waitress friend assured me that if ever I wanted to return, she could get me a job. I told her I’d keep it in mind the next time I lost my wallet.


So that’s the story of how I went from sleeping on a pew and mopping floors in a church, to an all-inclusive stay in a GC condo with a meal served by chesty ladies in roller-skates. (It’s not all bad being an orphan). Surprisingly, the family has even invited me back for Christmas – though it’s possible it’s because they think I’ll otherwise be lined up on the “hungry” side of a soup kitchen.

* Minus my physical self. To that point, I recalled research (or perhaps some vague statistics I made up on the spot) showing that kidnapping/abduction victims are usually a) children of vulgarly wealthy people, or b) very small. The obvious conclusion: I’ll most likely not be kidnapped, neither in Guatemala City or anywhere else.

Back in the Saddle: A recap of the last four months

A long list of bullet points with highlights from the past few months. (For greater accuracy, feel free to insert “it rained” at the end of each paragraph).

➢ After a wild stint in the jungle at Palenque, Anna and I spent our last days wandering around the Gulf Coast, through deceptively named towns like Paraiso (“Paradise”) and Villahermosa (“Pretty town”), searching for an idyllic beach setting that in fact does not exist on the Gulf Coast. Finally, we conceded that the grey cities and more-ferocious-than-usual speed bumps were dampening our spirits, and there was little choice but to go our separate ways – she back to Mexico City to catch her plane, and I to the Yucatan to ride some more.

➢ I arrived on the peninsula. A likeable German girl in Campeche wondered if she could catch a ride to Merida, an assumedly easy ride three hours to the northeast. En route, we detoured away from the main road to investigate a crazy underground cave (with a tropical oasis growing in its center), and emerged just in time for a monsoon. When we sloshed into the streets of Merida, it was to find the city transformed into a veritable Venice. The pipes were completely submerged, our luggage was dragging through the water, and the "waves" lapped over my seat in some streets (not an exaggeration – it is/was somewhat unclear how/why my motorcycle still runs.) We spent the night blow-drying passports, socks and most everything else in our luggage, and I vowed to warn future passengers about the wiles of the Rainy Season.

➢ High-end hammocks became a new obsession. I bought two out of the garage of a Mayan family who insisted that I stay the night at their house (in a hammock) to watch DVDs of local bullfighters. Another was purchased at a maximum-security prison, with a bewildered hitchhiker in tow. This is a funny story if you hear the whole thing.

➢ Marisa visited. We went to a free, all-day reggae concert on the beach where, with only a handful of Spanish at her disposal, Marisa took on the swarm of Rasta-fied Mexican men who lingered at our tent to woo her in their foreign tongue. She was a champ. We moved down the beach to Playa del Carmen and perfected the art of Caribbean hammocking.

➢ Jason visited – and perched his entire six feet, five inches on the miniature seat behind me. We camped on the beach in laid-back Tulum, a lazy walk to the turquoise ocean, and swam in crystal-clear cenotes down the road. A sand crab took over our tent, and giant palm branches fell on us in our hammocked exile. We drove through alternating bouts of hammering rain and blazing sun, with short pause for a Vogue photo shoot, to reach the ferry bound for paradisiacal Isla Holbox. We walked for miles on a sand bar chasing down a flock of flamingoes, skirting minefields of horseshoe crabs and a tragically dead sea turtle. We were invited to a quinceanera in the town square, and while I got free dance lessons from the locals, Jason journeyed to buy after-hours beer from a man in a black silk kimono with odd animal skins on his wall. The Reality Bites soundtrack played on repeat.

➢ I got to the end of Mexico and found Belize. The immigrations agent on the Belize side of the border looked at me for a long time and finally said, “Do you know where you are?” “Yes,” I said (and in my mind added, “Belize? Right? Is this a trick question?”). He handed my passport back with a slight grin. “Okay then, just checking. Enjoy your stay.”

➢ I took a “shortcut” from the road outside of Belize City that led me over several hours of partly submerged red dirt road, past grasslands speckled with solitary palms, and through rainforest-covered mountains where giant cohune palms towered forebodingly over the diminished track. When I eventually arrived in seaside Dangriga, the grey-haired owner of the guesthouse scooped a handful of red clay from under the fender and exclaimed (in his buoyant Belizean accent), “This must be from the Coastal Highway!” I paused from scraping the red mud off my jeans with a broken board. “That… is a highway?” He belly-laughed. “We may not have a lot in this country, but we’ve certainly got an imagination – and a sense of humor.” Well put.

➢ A handwritten “Rustic Camping” sign at mile 29 ½ of the Hummingbird Highway (on the way back from Dangriga) lured me down a dirt path ornamented with blossoming Birds-of-Paradise into an abandoned eco-community, manned by a lone 17-year-old named Patrick. “This is sort of like The Shining” I mused, as the dark rain clouds swelled overhead and silence was drowned out by the drone of insects, birds, frogs and an occasional unknown from the dense jungle wrapped around the lodge. We talked at length about Easy Rider, poisonous snakes, and the acid he once made from a flower named Angel Trumpet. By the end of the three rainy days, we were joined by the official caretakers – an American-Belizean couple – and four lost-ish American backpackers. Patrick turned 18. We feasted on homemade tortillas, beans, rice and sugar out of plastic fruit.

➢ Made it to the end of Belize (or to the side of, anyway) and found Guatemala. I crossed the border several dollars poorer after an “unofficial” Guatemalan border fee, and another for an obligatory fumigation of my bike. But my shame at being swindled dissipated as the dirt road into the country edged past glistening green fields catching the last light of a melting sun, teams of barefoot kids kicking around soccer balls, some running towards the road with hands waving excitedly at the foreign oddity passing by… Sigh.

➢ I went pre-dawn to the jungle-enshrouded, mist-covered ruins at Tikal. A wrong turn on an unmarked path put me in the middle of a huge camp of howler monkeys, bellowing out deafening guttural cries from the towering branches above. Once back on track, I joined the tourist pack in the climb to the top of Temple IV, from which point the entire jungle appeared like a luxurious, green carpet – from which two other lofty temples peaked out of the treetops. Amazing, really.

➢ I met up with Andy, formerly of Rustic Camping, to explore Guatemala. Over the course of some days, we rambled through dusty, pot-holed roads and across rickety bridges to waterfall-ish natural wonders. We rode down mountains at night with the engine off and felt like we were flying. We bought black market gasoline, and chatted with the friendly purveyors while they fixed the bike chain at no extra charge. Andy jumped on and off the back seat to recite our favorite, “Excuse me, we’re looking for…” plea at least a hundred times – only to receive the standard Guatemalan, “Straight ahead, then turn” response almost without fail. Throwing rocks in mud puddles became a really fun game.

➢ On an expedition alongside a mountainous cloud forest, hopeful to see what Lonely Planet called “one of Guatemala’s most scenic roads”, Andy and I ran into a muddy construction site closed off temporarily to everyone but those on two wheels. “What luck…” we triumphed between ourselves, and chugged on ahead through bulldozers and other machinery of the big yellow sort. After some time though, we met up with a new mud – a stickier, more slippery kind that seemed to disagree with my tires, the soles of my boots, and most anything designed with traction in mind. This new man-eating mud took the bike down… again, and again, and again… until finally the rear brake pedal punctured a hole through the oil tank. We silently watched oil bleed all over the gooey road, and knew that our driving was done... To make quite a long story short, we packed the bike in the back of an S10-size pickup (not at all easy to track down), the tailgate just barely clasping shut, and with three other passengers thrown in beside me, the bike and all of our luggage, we rode the wounded passenger back to Coban. “You won’t find parts for this anywhere in Guatemala,” mechanic Pablo told me. So I walked away from a very good friend, promising to return with parts from the States. Thus began the bike-less chapter of the trip…

➢ Enter Guatemalan chicken buses, named for – you guessed it – the baskets full of live, feathery birds people stuff into the overhead luggage racks of the converted BlueBird school buses. We crammed in with the chickens, the kids and the vendors selling popcorn, chewing gum, toothbrushes and special pens, and our Guatemala journey continued. We trekked up a volcano and stood right next to the oozing, red-hot lava for as long as we could before it seemed like our shoes would start to melt or our clothes catch on fire. We found a packed bar in Antigua and rooted for Italy during the World Cup final. We drank sick amounts of juice. And at some point, we completely understood George Thorogood.

➢ Andy returned to Xela to master Spanish and I went to Lago Atitlan (via three buses and a transfer to the back of a pick-up truck shared by – I counted -- 21 other people). The first night, I was befriended by a crazy, curly-haired Mexican who proposed we find a empty fishing boat to go out on the lake… Instead we found an occupied fishing boat, navigated by a kindly Mayan man wrapped in a plastic tarp. He invited me into the hull of a tiny canoe-sized vessel, tossing a few stray dead fish to the back to clear a space, and rowed out into the lake – a brilliant, rippling pool of mercury under the near-full moon. Lighting somewhere off in the distance flashed on and off to silhouette the volcanoes towering over the water. It was something incredible…

➢ On the other side of the lake, several days later, a motley-crew of travelers from England, Italy and Israel organized a group to rent dirt bikes for a tour of neighboring villages. Little did I know, cruisers and dirt bikes are very different creatures. A combination of rough road, a sharp turn and an overconfident driver left me with an impressive gash in my right knee, a banged up rental bike and a seriously damaged ego. I putted back to our budget hospedaje, where all-knowing Rudy (the owner’s brother) cleaned my wounds with vodka, covered them with the seeping gel from an aloe leaf, and assured me that we all have rough days. Miraculously, the monetary damages to cover a bent rim and broken brake handle amounted to a whopping US $3.

➢ I left Atitlan to explore the little-visited ruins on the western edge of the country. During this time, my status as a wallet-holder changed from “with” to “without”. See “The Great Guatemalan Wallet Caper” for entire story.

➢ I flew from Guatemala City back to the Midwest for the Elyssa’s wedding, with an unplanned 36-hour trip to New York added on to replace my driver’s license (Can’t cross international borders on a motorcycle without it). Thus it went: Guatemala City – Chicago – Michigan – Chicago – New York – Chicago – Guatemala City. Yeah… Lesson learned: Don’t lose things.

➢ With some help, I jumped a bus from Guatemala City to Coban to deliver my backpack full of bike parts. In an astonishing, this-would-never-happen-in-the-US act of heroism, Pablo and his team of giggly mechanics replaced the oil tank and seal, the chain, the chain cover, the air filter, the rear-view mirror, the license plate holder, the front headlight, the rear brake pads and the oil – all in less than a day. I was out of Coban by the evening, and made it to southern Guatemala that night, where I slept in my broken tent behind a gas station, with the permission of the owner's wife who was making kick balls out of cow stomachs.

➢ I crossed into El Salvador for a whirlwind tour of the small country. A helpful lawyer on the street in San Salvador arranged an unnecessary police escort to help me find the road out of the city, complete with flashing lights and no-stops at red traffic signals. I drove along the Pan-American Highway. I took a boat to relax on what I assumed was a populated beach for a day, and was dropped off on a peninsula where I had to cross through cow fields for 30 minutes until they met a row of palms and a totally deserted strip of sand on the open ocean. (Every local on the way there and back kept asking if I was looking for Kristy, their Peace Corps volunteer. They could not fathom of me being in their dusty, unpaved "village" – i.e., collection of several houses – just to go to the beach.) I stayed at the hostel of a giant she-man who terrified me and we made plans to go to Argentina together.

➢ From Cancun I flew to Seattle for Jo’s wedding. Originally, the plan was to return to Cancun to a job as a motorcycle tour guide, but with that opportunity coming loose at the seams, and my general disposition not being that of a chatty, amiable tourist wrangler, I decided to stay in Seattle to tackle the unruly bamboo choking Alison’s back yard. This led to some light work with the contractor who was building a new deck… First staining, then drilling, then sawing, and in the end I was working for days at a time on my own, building the deck. Sometime mid-September, I flew back to Cancun.

➢ The thing about motorcycling in Latin America on a large-ish cruiser is that sometimes (all the time) parts are hard to find. Tires are really hard to find, which is why I had to fly back from Seattle with one in hand… And as it turns out, checking in a tire at the airport has the potential to invite a good number of comic remarks… sometimes from a fun pair of brothers headed to The-Island-Whose-Name-We-Cannot-Mention. So perhaps it happened that when I arrived in Cancun, instead of starting the (still undesirable) job as a motorcycle tour guide, I went to a forbidden island. Perhaps. Perhaps you should also look at the pictures before I take them off the Internet…

➢ Once returned from TIWNWCM, I booked it out of Cancun, headed for Honduras. I'm currently still in Belize and can now start blogging in Real Time.