#He's happily chilling in my heated room atm

[ms-hells-bells]

His name is squilliam. Say hi squilliam.

[transcendingsky]

From March 27, 2018. Our second day of the bike tour. Today’s goal was to make it down to the Pacific coast, to the small port town of Champerico. We awoke in our minuscule tent quite early, ready to tackle the day. Knowing we still had quite a ways to go until reaching the next pueblo, we focused our morning energy to get out of the jungle. The locals had told us the night before about a couple bridges that lay ahead and that one was collapsed. Not knowing if we could make it through that way, we went on ahead regardless as the sight us of the bridges intrigued us to much to pass them up.

Not soon after packing up and getting on our way, we reached the first bridge of the trip. This was something we had been anticipating for a while, trying to figure out how to cross them with our bikes, given the state of disrepair most of them were in. We approached them cautiously. Although we had experience walking across many of them, we weren’t too sure about the best way to get the bikes across. We tried balancing them on the rail and walking on the outer beams next to them, as you can see in the first photo. This made the walk across extra slow and made it so that we spent more time than we’d liked staring down at the jungly abyss beneath us.

After getting across, we encountered two guys coming to cross going the other way. We asked them about the bridge coming up ahead and they said there should be a path we could take around it. Sarah asked if they could take a photo of us with the bikes and in the second photo you can see her showing him how to use the camera. We watched as they walked along the bridge we just crossed, one of them with a bike in hand and both of them waling much faster than we just had. The journey continued as we made our way back into the jungle.

Finally we saw another clearing up ahead, knowing it must have been the collapsed bridge we were anticipating. Slowly we made our way up to the edge and the next sight took our breath away. The landscape opened up into a huge canyon, which we were standing atop looking over. Beneath our feet was the cement foundation where the edge of the bridge had once connected. Way in the distance, on the other side of the valley, we could see the remains of the massive structure that used to stand between the two points. In the third picture are the pieces of metal that were still laying at the bottom of the ravine. It was truly a powerfully magnificent sight. We took the view in for a few moments longer and then made our way towards the trail that we had to take to get around the bridge. We had to track through the jungle a bit, until reaching a dirt road that went fairly steeply downhill. Flying down the road was one of the first times we picked up that level of speed on the trip. The fun lasts for quite a while until you realize you’re gonna have to go back uphill once it’s over. I clambered around on the bridge ruins for a few minutes before we had to get going, as it was getting fairly hot out and we still hadn’t reached a town yet for food and water. 

I remember reaching the pueblo that day called Genova. It was fairly smaller than Coatepeque and we got to the town center pretty quickly, where we found a super chill comedor for breakfast. That place was one of my favorites we ate at on the whole trip, the family working there were some of the nicest people we encountered among many. The food was crazy cheap for the quality and amount also! We hid from the heat there for a while and rehydrated before continuing on. Already we were getting pretty used to the habit of buying water bottles and filling up our 2 liter camel backs. 

The rest of the day was spent riding through the desert heat on our way towards Champerico. We rode through the town of Caballo Blanco where I laid on the sidewalk for twenty minutes trying not to die of exhaustion. My shirt got permanently stained from rust that day I think. One road we tried to ride through, after getting extensively covered in dust, was filled with massive rocks that we eventually couldn’t really ride through. We managed to hitchhike in the back of a pickup truck with two guys who delivered water to the area, entirely in the middle of nowhere. They kindly drove us back to the main highway where we pedaled on to the coast.

After what seemed like forever, we finally made it to Champerico. Eventually we met a guy who was eager to show us around the train tracks in the area once he heard about our trip. He showed us the old train station which had been turned into makeshift houses. We followed him on his tiny BMX bike to the old port, where the trains used to pick up cargo to transport. It cost like 2Q to get in, and we got to ride our bikes around the massive, empty cement platform overlooking the ocean, imagining the business this place must have contained in the past only to be essentially abandoned now. 

Finally, he showed us where the dock used to be, which was now a massive rusted out structure still standing in the ocean. It was quite a melancholy sight, as you can see in the last couple of photos. It’s sort of crazy how the town is super tiny and dilapidated but still served as a sort of cheaper vacation area for some Guatemalans. Totally a reality check for what a different world exists down there. We checked out the structure for a while, I contemplated climbing around on it but decided it was fairly sketchy. Sarah took a bunch of photos and we soaked in our accomplishment of making the journey there, holding each other and feeling the strength of the other’s support. 

The rest of the evening consisted of trying coco-viche (ceviche made with coconut instead of shrimp, super yum), me standing in line for nearly an hour to use the only ATM in the whole town (I barely made it, was probably one of the last people to be in line before the closed the door to the supermarket for the evening), checking out the tiny fair and eating baledos (I think that’s what they were called, massive burritos basically) and smoothies, and sleeping in a overly priced room lacking much needed air conditioning for the coastal heat. We fell asleep utterly exhausted but happily content with our journey for the day and having each other’s support and companionship. 

*Oh and I just remembered a crazy story I had to share.. a little graphic but I couldn’t forget it. The coco-viche guy had recognized Sarah’s accent and had guessed that she was half Swiss. He told her in Spanish about another Swiss girl he had met who was traveling and living in Guatemala. She had a ton of money and basically ended up dating a guy involved with drug dealing. Hanging out with him, she turned from a nice young, 19 year old into getting involved and hooked on various drugs. Eventually things caught up with her and she ended up getting killed by some gang members, her parents had to come to Guatemala and were understandably super pissed. Stories like these really made you stop and think, and sink in the reality of keeping a straight mind in a place where anything goes.