Guate City
Hey,
First off my highschool buddy, and XC Ski rival Dan Roycroft is racing in the Olympics this week. Give ‘em shit buddy.
Secondly, Kim thanks for updating that other post, leave it to me to think up a plan as backassward as this. Write on a piece of paper, mail it by ship to Vermont from Mexico, for a friend to type up, in her ‘free’ time. LOL. Kim rocks.
I am in Guatemala City today, I got busted with $70 in taxes in Belize, and then crossing the boarder, found that the road was rough dirt.
The first thing we noticed in Guatemala is that most everyone caries a pistol, but 40 years of civil war, and 200 000 people being ‘disappeared’ could do that to you.
Tikal was amazing, I poached on the back of a tour group, and actually got to appreciate the place a little.
Internet has been hard to find, today I am stuck in Guatemala City, and had to get a hotel for the first time since leaving the States. At 2 million people *mostly living in corrugated tin shacks stacked on top of each other* it is the largest city in central america. Motoring along with a tail wind at 5000 feet elevation I checked the GPS which showed that where I was, and the road I was wanting to be on where not in the same place. Ah well.
Average Kilometers will be upped to 124 a day, but I should get to watch Classen race in Panama City.
Recent odd things, taking a route lesser traveled, as opposed to the other one we’re on…, for a 40 km stretch every time children, and women would see us coming they would run. Little girls would scream before running off to hide behind something. Really really weird. Finding a camping spot was a little tough that night near Coban, and as things were starting to get dark we ended up staying with a really cool family, to seemed to be the ones who own the valley.
Of course with coffee bean prices so low, many people are un employed because it is not even worth harvesting the beans (but I though Starbucks ‘paid a fair market price’ — Right).
In a country where most people can not read, one of the few girls we met who DID go to school, was 11, and working on her alphabet. They only go to grade six anyhow. One family of 7 not one person could even write their name. ‘My children do not want to learn to read’ declared the father. Why is there newspaper in the bathroom? To wipe their butt with.
Of course, when the kid at the grocery store is pestering me to buy the paper, I do not even know the word for read, to tell him why I do not need the thing. Ha.
There was some drizzled the other day, which I had to wear the most clothing of the trip: Knee warmers, undershirt, Action Sports Long Sleeve, and wind jacket, and that was at 4500 feet.
OK the asian people who run the hotel want me to get off line. Off to boil another two pots of drinking water in the hotel bathroom, so that I can drink tomorrow without getting sick.
OK next up an imploded Volcano which is ‘beautiful’ and good for swimming, and then a straight, but doubtless eventful run down the pacific to Panama
Cheers - Nat out
