Viva Guatemala!!! Its a gorgeous day as we roll down the road past Honduras customs and into the Guatemalan customs some 20 km down the road. Should be the usual easy crossing...but no...it seems that we must ride the port city of Puerto Barrio to get the bike paperwork completed then return to the border crossing to finish the job. Like they say...in these countries if you can get one meaningful thing done in a day consider it a job accomplished! So this ends up being officially the longest border crossing (and we have crossed 28 borders) to date with a recorded 3.5 hrs. to get into Guatemala legally! (however every one was really nice and Puerto Barrio was not the usual crappy port city!)
For the return leg we are riding up the eastern border of Guatemala towards Tikal and then entering Belize. First stop on the agenda is the pretty village of Rio Dulce...yes this feels like rural Guatemala as vendor stalls crowd the roads while smoking diesel trucks roar in and out of people, vehicles dogs etc. with horns blaring and loud latino music blaring...welcome HOME. We spent our time in Rio exploring Spanish forts (ruins), town itself and took a boat down the Rio Dulce river to the Garifuna village of Livingstone on the Caribbean coast. That was an eye opener...firstly the town is super clean and secondly those rasta types definitely have hustling (dollars out of tourists!) down to a fine art! After falling victim to one such hustler Lori and I smartened up and just ignored them totally!
Our plans were t head into the mountains but non-stop torrential downpours had us changing our mind and we headed north with a really relaxing stay at the Finca (ranch) Ixobel (we had heard of this place as a must visit during our 2000 visit) and it didn`t disappoint!
The roads are easy to ride with little traffic and virtually no speed bumps (topes) so the ride to Tikal was fantastic. We visited the large ancient city of Tikal during our 2000 visit but I have always wanted to camp at Tikal so that is exactly what we did. Although we really both enjoyed our two day stay there is something to be said for leaving great memories alone. A lot has changed at Tikal since our last visit...changes that make sense in terms of protecting this beautiful site...but take away from some of the magic we felt back in 2000. For instance one is not allowed to climb up onto the pyramids...they now have wooden stairs and small platforms where one can view the ruins from up high.
Tikal is rather unique in that it not only contains some of the largest un-earthed Mayan ruins but the site is full of bird and animal species that are all but extirpated from the rest of Guatemala.
So now it is time to head into Belize...a rather interesting road as the road condition steadily deteriorates as we near he border and the last 25 km is a limestone mud (thank god it wasn`t raining or we might still be there!!) mess that is currently under reconstruction. Obviously trade between Belize and Guatemala is non-existent and the border crossing is nice and tranquil. (In fact Guatemalan`s lay claim to Belize saying that it is part of Guatemala)
Guatemala is a really great country...people tend to be rather quiet (probably because a good number of the people in the rural areas we travelled are Indigenous folks) but kind and friendly. The country really seems to be getting its act together economically although aid organizations claim that Guatemala along with Brasil have the greatest disparity between the rich and poor out of all of the latin countries.) This probably does not bode well for this country in the long run but the president is working hard to increase the middle income families in Guatemala. Guatemala is very clean and although we did not run into a single problem with crime, residents and tourists have endless stories of theft and more serious kidnappings (most of which appear to occur in the vicinity of Guatemala City (which we were surprised to learn is the largest city in Central America)
