From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

Gringos … Gringa … "Mi Amor" … "Come here baby" … "Fuck me baby" … Gringo … kisses sent from the window of a car … whistles … looks on my breast or my buttocks … movements of pelvis full of sense …

These are noises, words and gesture that we have to cope with since we entered El Salvador from Guatemala... These words can make smile, as well as these gestures, you could laugh at them, but coping with them the whole day becomes more and more difficult. Too much for me, I could not cope anymore. It is hard to endure this heavy looks and this animal insults. Even Sébastien is tired of all that.

When we crossed the border to enter Honduras (where we had to pay US$3 per person, we do not know why), we really thought these things would get better. We had lunch next to a house that looked abandoned. But after 5 minutes, while making our sandwiches, 6 children from 5 to 10 years old came to see us, asked questions. Sébastien answered, patiently. I was more on my guard. But they never asked for money or food, they just wanted to see what the 2 foreigners were doing. They even lent us a chair and some water! When we left, we remembered that we had pens that Microfinance Institutions gave us and so we gave them to them. We saw some wonderful smiled on their faces! They ran to their parents to show them to them! It was really nice! A bit later, we stopped in a little shop on the side of the road for a cold drink. The owner came out (in Honduras, as well as in El Salvador, the owners of these little shops never get out, the command is done from outside and everything is given through a grid for safety) and we talked all together for almost one hour!

With such a start, we really thought that the “insults” would stop... We were wrong: all kind of insults went on and on and we had to endure and cope with them until we went out of Honduras, this morning. In El Salvador and in Honduras, the men think that the women from developed countries have less principle and so, everything is possible, even with their (the women's) husbands next to them. Even if Sébastien was pedaling just next to me, I had the same reactions.

We stopped in Choluteca for groceries. In a bodega (little shop where they sell everything), they refused to serve me because I was the “gringa”. We tried to explain them that we are from France, nothing changes: for them, people traveling and not speaking good Spanish, are automatically from the USA. Even the children were coming out to throw us “gringos”... We preferred to keep ourselves calm outside but we were boiling inside.

This morning we entered Nicaragua. I did all the administrative things at the border, while Sébastien was looking after the bikes, with all these men who can change the money for you, with a bad rate, of course! The custom officer from El Salvador called mi “Mi Amor” at the end of each sentence he made... Then he sent me with our 2 passports, to the custom for Nicaragua... just 30 centimeters from him, in the same room. There, the Nicaragua custom officer told me that we had to pay US$7 per person. I asked for explanations: as well as for Honduras, the website of the French embassy says that the visa and entering Nicaragua is free. The custom officer became upset, threw everything at me and told me: “if you do not pay, you do not enter”. Well, ok.

Nicaragua, after its grumpy custom officers and 20 km of dirt road, finally welcomed us nicely: people on bikes stopped to ask us where we were going and even offered us to sleep at their place. The children smile and say “hola”. There are still some men whistling on our way, but it is less aggressive than in El Salvador and in Honduras.

We also had our first sight of poverty here. We did not see it in El Salvador and in Honduras (maybe too busy to cool down). In Nicaragua, it is the first thing that strikes us: children do not go to school. There is not school here, life is their education. The houses are bit and pieces, cardboard, around 4 poles that are trunks big enough to support kind of a roof.

We now are in a very hot environment (more than 35°C for the hottest time of the day). We get up early (5.30am) and leave early on the morning (7.30am), but the heat is quickly here. We drink more than 8 liters of liquid each and it is still not enough: our bodies ask more and more!

Crossing so many countries is very interesting, but we kind of get lost: new money, new prices... We have troubles with changes between Euros (our reference money), US dollars (money used everywhere for tourists… but also in El Salvador), Lempiras (money for Honduras) and Cordobas (Money for Nicaragua). It can get tricky very fast!

PS:

We had a good surprise today, when checking our e-mails (the working connections in El Salvador and Honduras were not easy to find).

We found out that the school of Saint Laurent en Grandvaux, who is following us, made an interview about them and us.

It touched us very much and gives us energy to keep going! Thank you very much!

If you want to watch the video, click HERE

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It was a surprise: there was no border crossing between Guatemala and El Salvador! It should be the same between El Salvador and Honduras, then between Honduras and Nicaragua. In fact, these 4 countries organized a kind of area where goods and people can freely circulate, a bit like Schengen in Europe. So Guatemala has given us a visa, and this visa is valid until we get to Costa Rica. We only have to show our passport at these 4 borders and that’s all. Sara was a bit disappointed for not having a stamp of El Salvador on her passport!

With all what we heard about this country, we were anxious about crossing it by bike. But, for the moment, we had only nice encounters, or almost! The landscape and the climate did not change: it is still very hot, with garbage all over on the side of the road, but also around the houses, still palm trees, still sugar cane trucks, still chicken buses. But we are watched more carefully by the inhabitants and are sent many “gringo, gringo!”. Sometimes, we answered them: “We are not gringos, we are from France, it is different!”. Most of them seem not to understand. Whatever, at least we can exchange some words and smiles!

We pushed hard to get to the town where we stopped for the night, Acajutla, only 30 minutes before the sunset, after 109km... Impossible to find even one hotel... We became very anxious... We asked people in the street where to find one. One of them, an elderly man, told us he would lead us to the only 2 hotels of the town. We took his “carrito” (bicycle with 3 wheels) and we followed him. The first hotel was not very clean and the owners were nice but drunk... The second one had a view on the ocean, but it seemed there was not any available room. It was going to be available “very soon”... Strangely, the price was US$15 (the money of El Salvador is the US Dollars) for 12 hours... Most of the time, such a price is for hotels where you do not usually sleep, if you see what we mean … They made us wait and our guide was sure we would get a room. In fact, the owners accommodated us in a room in the 1st floor of their house. I visited and said it was ok, without noticing that there was no window at the windows, just holes! So we had to share this room with lizards and mosquitoes the whole night!

While waiting for me, a man asked Sara: “how much do you cost for the night?”. Most of the time, when she is alone, people whistle her, more than in the other countries. Nothing really bad, only machismo, but she had trouble with that, and I can understand it.

We do not feel unsafe and we even decided to have a day off here, in La Libertad, for resting on the middle of long biking day.

Sebastien

After some days in Quezaltenango, an interview with a Microfinance Institution (all in Spanish) and 3 days of tourism by bus, we took back our bikes. We went down to a lower elevation and we could feel the heat: turn after turn, we were losing only some meters in elevation and the heat became more and more oppressing and the humidity more and more present. Now it is hot and humid and we appreciate very much the fan that we have in every hotel along the “Carretera al Pacifico”. When going downhill, Sébastien “killed” our speed record that is now 85,3km/h.

So now, the landscapes are full of palm trees, banana trees, café trees, mango groves and field of sugar canes. We share the road with a lot of trucks, including sugar cane trucks, with chicken buses and pick-up trucks. It is hot and humid.

We also witnessed a heavy rain, during our second day (yesterday): we stopped underneath little shelters on the side of the road, where usually they sell coconuts (we tried it: first, they make a hole in the coco that was in a “freezer” and drink the juice. Then, they open it and dip into it with a spoon to eat the inside). We really surprised the locals who were looking at us as if we were from another planet! When the rain stopped we biked again! Bad idea! Two minutes later, it was pouring rain again! We arrived in Santa Lucia (our goal of the day) completely soaked!

We noticed it for the food and we now notice it for the hotels and other touristy infrastructures: life in Guatemala is expensive, compared to Mexico! The price of the food is twice more expensive, the price for a hotel (bargain is impossible and the price depends of the customer) is high for no services and even no hot water. We now understand why people do not eat out in restaurant (big differences with Mexico where eating out is less expensive than cooking ourselves!). At hotels, the staff is not patient at all and not welcome: we are having some trouble to understand with the Guatemalan accent and nobody wants to repeat or if he/she does, it is definitely not happily... It is a big change from what we have known so far...

We do not feel very safe and we choose carefully the places where we spend the night depending of the light in the street, preferring a open street with visibility. We follow our feelings a lot and if we do not feel comfortable in a place, we do not stay. We have with us, when going out, only what we need, no extras, preferring leaving at the hotel what could be stolen at night (which is not always safer...). We have with us our little defense spray. We also always walk on the middle of the street so nobody can hide in a shade on the side of the street and reach us. We do not take a lot of pictures and videos, as we hesitate to take our equipment out. Maybe we see bad things everywhere, but after having travelled for 9 months, we developed kind of a sixth sense and we can feel things: if a place does not inspire us or if we do not feel safe, we keep going or stay on our guards (which is a lot of stress and tiring).

Anyway, we have good contact with the population and we have a nice encounter yesterday morning. My rear wheel showed some weaknesses: the free wheel was not working anymore, which means that the pedals always turn... We stopped on the side of the road, just at the entrance of a little village to try to fix it, maybe some dust. After trying hard and nothing worked, a Guatemalan man by bike came to see us and asked if we needed some help. We explained him the problem (he thought at a flat tire) and immediately told us to follow him to the closest “tienda de biciclettas”. He helped me to load my bike and we followed him. He took some little road and little paths, we still followed him with fear: “where is he leading us?”. Even Sébastien was nervous! We finally arrived to a little house, lost in a large field, that we would never have found by ourselves. The technician came to see what was wrong and left with my wheel, Sébastien followed him to check. I watched the panniers and the bikes. 15 minutes later, Sébastien and the technician came back: he could not do anything. The man with the bike asked us if we wanted him to take us back to the town we left on the morning to fix the wheel: 20km back...We finally decided to get to Santa Lucia. I just needed to pedal all the time! The technician gave us the name and phone number of a bigger “tienda de biciclettas” and even tried to phone, but nobody answered. We hit the road back: 50km to go. 10 km after, we stopped for a cold drink. I pushed my bike and the pedals did not turn anymore. I biked around the car park and everything worked out really good! The dust must have moved!! Hopefully it will stay where it is!

Ps: we should be in El Salvador tomorrow afternoon!

It was with a certain amount of hesitation that we decided to once again leave the context of the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire for three days. Given the precarious security situation in Guatemala we didn’t want to spend too long biking through, but Atitlan Lake, Panajachel and Antigua had been so recommended that we felt we couldn’t leave the country without seeing them.

So we decided take a three day bus trip to get there, naturally being very careful.

Antigua is a small city, very tidy compared to the other towns and villages that we’d passed. The city is surrounded by three volcanoes: Agua, Fuego and Acatenango. Magnificant!

We also went on a guided tour of the Pacaya volcano. It is still active and the guided tours take visitors right up to a lava stream still reddish from the heat. (Unfortunately in the past there have been a number of tourists attacked on the sides of the volcano. It is safer now, but still highly recommended to go in groups). The sight was amazing, and what was chilling – despite the heat still emanating from the rock – was how small we felt compared to the raw and naked power of the earth. Pacaya could wake up at any moment and it would useless to try to run.

After that we went to Panajachel on the shores of Lake Atitlan. All the boats leave from there going to the other villages beside the lake. It was a small town, nothing spectacular: since it is so touristy it attracts many locals trying to sell their wares (weaving, sculptures) to tourists looking for a little authenticity. So we couldn’t walk anywhere without being accosted by all sorts of Mayan vendors.

We ran into a family of four (kids aged 10 and 12) traveling by bike. The Venhages left Los Angeles and we headed towards Santiago, Chili, on two tandem bicycles.

During these three days, we also encountered our worst enemy (after the wind, of course) in Central America: the chicken bus. In this local transportation, it is all too common to find oneself traveling with chickens (hence the name). The buses are old school buses from either Canada or the US, given a new life in Central America. So we were able to infiltrate, and study the enemy from the inside: we traveled on a 1987 bus from Brantford (Ontario, Canada). The buses rule the road: they pass on blind corners (if there’s an oncoming car, it has to know its place and get out of the way!). These fearless drivers have mastered the arts of tailgating and weaving through traffic. A number of the bikers that we’ve been following told us about them: if a chicken bus comes through, it honks its horn and you’d better get out of the way since sharing the road is a totally alien concept…

Sara

This bus trip was separate from our work within the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire. But we continued to post updates on the website in order to share all our adventures with you.

• Goodbye Mexico!

We spent more than three months biking through Mexico. We have seen and experienced a lot, and we have told you a lot, but not everything. In Mexico, you’ll find:

* The sides of the road just covered in garbage

* Policemen with a little cash in hand to help smooth things along

* Six people travelling in a Clio or a Polo, and a pickup truck being used as a bus

* Buses stopping on the highways to pick up passengers

* People changing tires right in the middle of an intersection

* A little “jostling” on the side walk if a women passes by a man

* Teenagers with their young children in toe

* Abortions are illegal – except in the Federal District (Mexico City)

* Light bulbs are such a rarity that there are empty sockets everywhere

* You can never count on there being toilet paper… ever!

* Garbage bins beside the toilets for used toilet paper since the Mexican plumbing system can’t handle the blockage

* You buy eggs by weight

* A hotel room doesn’t necessarily mean hot water

* And even if the room comes with everything… it still doesn’t mean it works!

• Leaving Mexico

Like we said, so many people had warned us about Guatemala, and especially area near Mexico, that we decided to take a bus. When we bought the tickets, we were told that we would have to change buses at the border and would most likely have to pay extra for the bikes – 100 pesos per bike. As we got on the bus – really just a van – the driver reminded us again. Well, we’ll see.

We found ourselves squeezed into this van with 4 Americans, 2 Brits, 2 Japanese, 1 French women, 1 German and 1 guy from the Czech Republic. It was great to talk to each of them.

A little before the border we stopped at the Mexican customs to sort out our leaving the country. The driver called (or pretended to call) his Guatemalan colleague about the bikes. After he hung up he told us that he had arranged things with his colleague and that we would have to pay him 200 pesos up front and he would give it to Guatemalan driver. We were a little taken aback and we hesitated a bit, but in the end we decided to trust him since he had been so friendly and helpful during the trip.

A few kilometers later, at the border, he asked for our passports and 30 pesos each. Everyone else paid without thinking, but we weren’t sure since we’d been told that it was free for French citizens to enter the country. Also we could see the customs office on the other side of the road, and we felt quite capable of going over there ourselves to get our passports stamped! But since we had already taken out all our luggage and had to keep an eye on our bikes and 12 bags, we didn’t want to split up so we paid him the 60 pesos… we still don’t know whose pockets it ended up lining…

After bringing back our passports, the Mexican driver said loud and clear in front of the Guatemalan driver and all the other passengers that we had paid for the bikes and that everything was squared away, and the Guatemalan driver agreed.

Only a few hundred meters into Guatemala we had to stop because the emergency tire was flat. The Guatemalan driver turned out to be an even more reckless driver than the Mexican one… another break to pump more air into the back left tire, which badly needed it.

Then, about an hour before arriving, the driver shouted out: “Those traveling with bikes have to pay an extra 200 pesos!” We refused saying that we had already paid at the border, and that everything had been arranged. He was reluctant to let it go, and seemed annoyed. 15 minutes before we arrived he said that we were fine and didn’t have to pay anything… except maybe a tip! Then we stopped at a service station, apparently for a 10 minute break. The minutes ticked by and then another van drove up and parked beside ours. Our driver announced that we had to unload our bikes and put them on the roof of this third van. We did that, and then the two drivers had a long and involved discussion about the bikes and especially about the 200 pesos. We heard them call into the office and say that we didn’t want to pay.

We finally left, and our third driver assured us that we didn’t have to pay anything more. He got a call from the office and someone wanted to speak to us to ask us what happened in terms of this payment situation.
Little by little, and with the help of the driver, we started to understand what had happened. The Mexican and Guatemalan drivers must have made a deal: the Mexican would ask for 200 pesos,  keep half, and give the other half to the Guatemalan driver. He knew that his office needed to get 200 pesos (since they knew there were two bikes) and so he needed to get at least another 100 pesos from us, which is why he asked us for 200 again. Since he saw that we weren’t going to pay them, he asked for a tip hoping that it would cover the 100 pesos that he was missing.

Welcome to Guatemala!

Despite our little adventure, our first impression was generally good. The city of Quetzaltenango seems pretty nice. Our hosts, Sara and Miguel, helped us pick out a place to eat and so for my birthday we went to a “French” restaurant, although we didn’t really eat anything French. It didn’t matter though – I was already so happy to have received so many nice birthday wishes. Thank you so much!

Sébastie