Day 45 - Marko Round The World

Day 45 12/10/2021

Odometer 29,090 – 29,390 —– 300 Miles (6690 Miles Total)

Flores, Guatemala – Lake Atitlan, Panajachel, Guatemala

I slept great last night which was surprising since I thought I was going to be way too hot sleeping outdoors. I got bit by a few fire ants in the middle of the night I’m pretty sure. The clocks rolled back an hour since I crossed the border into Belize to the same time as NY time. I’ve been waking up at 6am the last two mornings which has been nice since I have a bit more time in the day to catch up on the website and a few things I can do on my computer. I laid in bed at 6am and pulled out google maps. I literally had no idea where I was going today. I poked around a bit at my saved pins on google maps and some of the stuff I saved a while ago looked boring so I picked a small village in the mountains halfway to Lake Atitlan and it said 6.5 hours the long way. Great, let’s go! I went downstairs and finished off my dinner from last night as my breakfast, loaded up the bike, brushed my teeth and off I was already riding the wrong way down a one way street. It’s 6:30am and I can make mistakes.

I can already tell I’m going to love Guatemala. there’s just a certain vibe here. I might like it more than Mexico. On my ride I realized I didn’t get Insurance last night. But I got some contacts from a motorcycle group on Facebook. These guys always come in handy. I sent the company an email while I was riding so I can show the cops if I got pulled over that I was in the process of getting it. The ride was lovely. I feel like this is what Costa Rica and Nicaragua will feel like. Lots of speed bumps still unfortunately. A light fog in the morning with smoke from people burning things. A man on a horse with a backhoe over his shoulder riding in the fields to work. Kids running on the side of the road playing with smiles on their faces. It was cool out this morning, 68 degrees. I hope it stays this way but it was very humid. Lots of people ride to work in the morning on motorcycles today. I saw about ten guys with sawed off shotguns hanging around their neck on the motorcycles. Off they go to work as security guards at stores and banks. Pretty wild to see. No one bothers them, it’s completely legal. Maybe I should get one so no one will mess with me.I took a few peeks at the shotguns while passing them and they’re riding with the guns empty.

Women in the rivers washing clothes like my grandmother used to do in Europe. Refreshing to watch that. I like it. I passed a few rivers and they were all crystal clear. “Board ferry” my GPS says in 5 Km’s. Weird. I guess I’m about to cross a big river and I hope the line isn’t long. As I pull up to the dirt road there’s about 15 cars waiting. I sneak past them all and the boat is about to take off from shore. The man on the back of the boat waves me on and I gun it! I made it on with seconds to spare. I park it and pay the 5 Q’s. That’s what we’re calling the money here. It was about $1 USD. It takes about 2 minutes to get across the river and already people are driving off. The temps are still nice and cool. I was thinking about stopping for a swim but I might actually get cold from being wet.

Somewhere along the drive I decided to change my mind. I’ve been to too many small mountain villages for there to only be nothing. I was going mainly for a cute hostel and a river but sometimes the river isn’t what it shows on google maps. I bail on the small mountain village. I’m not sure what time I changed my mind but I hit Lake Atitlan on google maps and it says 5:45 arrival time with a 9.5 hour ride to go. Shit i’ll be there in the dark. Game on google I will beat your time. I got up into the mountains and there was a ton of road work where we had to wait for traffic to pass. It was hot here and we waited about 15 minutes 2 separate times. The roads were shit since there was gravel in the turns and I almost ate it a few times with the back end washing out. One part of the road went from dirty asphalt to light gravel which I didn’t notice until a turn was coming up. I locked my rear wheel up for maybe 80-100 feet and I thought that it was going to eat this mountain granite wall in a few seconds. I let off the brakes and downshifted into first and got back on the brakes lightly since my ABS isn’t working and started to steer to the right a bit and I made it. Luck or skill…who cares!

I stopped for lunch and got half a roasted chicken with potatoes and a coke. I stopped a few minutes later for an ice cream at which a few people surrounded my bike staring at it mind blown. Onwards. GPS now says 4:45. The day is going well. Music is blasting in my helmet, life is good, weather is lovely, the views are lovely. People keep waving and throwing up the peace sign and thumbs up. Man Guatemala is good. Then the messages start coming in. Everyone knows I’m in Guatemala now. A few people are telling me to be careful in South America. Cool guys, I’m not in South America, I’m in Central America. Oh and you’re going to give me advice about being careful in a country that you don’t even know what continent it’s in? Oh and let me guess you have never even been to Guatemala. Correct.

I’m getting sick of people telling me to be careful in a country they have never stepped foot in. They just watch the news and make up their own minds about what’s going on. It’s getting quite annoying. Stop believing what you see on tv and get out there and experience it yourself. Until you break down in front of a house in Mexico for an hour and the owner comes out with free food and offering any sort of help while he doesn’t even have a front door on his clay house don’t tell me im gonna be murdered here. The people are so helpful everywhere. Sure there’s some bad people here and there but we have them in Brooklyn too.

Anyway as I was about 1:30 away from Lake Atitlan I was in a little town and there was some traffic. I stopped in it and decided to creep up on one side of the road to get past it. I got as far as I could before I couldn’t move anymore and then I decided to turn my bike off since it looks like no one moved for a while. Something felt weird and smelled weird. I looked down and noticed coolant was shooting out of my reservoir about a foot in the air getting all over my bike and tank bag. FUCK. I turned my bike back on and the fan finally kicked on cooling the coolant temp from 225 to 200. I have a feeling I have an issue with the coolant because it’s never done this before I brought it to the mechanic in the Bronx to get the coolant changed before the trip. About ten minutes later the same thing happened. Coolant started to boil and the fan kicked on too late and another geyser moment. Now we’re in trouble. My temps skyrocketed past 200 to 225 in an instant the second time which is not normal. I made my way through traffic as best as I could and luckily the ride to the lake was all downhill from here so my bike wouldn’t overheat again. But coolant boiling is a really really bad sign. I’ll have to deal with that asap once I get to my hostel. I got to the lake about 45 minutes later and checked in. I parked the bike in a parking lot that cost me $6 USD for the night.

I’ll do my research on it later on. I’m too stressed out by it and I don’t want it to ruin my arrival at this beautiful lake. I go for a walk down to the lake and give Grandpa Yak a call. We chatted for a bit about the lake and the bike and I feel better now. I go for a walk around the small town and get some ice cream, exchange money and get an incredible dinner I got lucky finding. I talked to a few paragliding places about renting gear to go flying but no one has their own gear or it’s a bit too sporty for me. Yak told me he met some friends here on his trip 5 years ago so he connected me with them and I went over to their house to meet them a few blocks away. They have been traveling on bikes for a long long time and own a website where they sell dog products. They wanted to take their German Shepard on trips and no one sold dog baskets big enough for her so they started to design cages for motorcycles for people to take their dogs with them. They’ve sold over 100 in the last few years to people all over the world.

Their next trip is going to be from Guatemala to Alaska and then Toronto. Then they will ship the bikes to Europe and ride to Morocco where they will head to Cape Town on the western coast of Africa and then they will ride the eastern coast of Africa all the way to Egypt. Then they will cross back over to Europe and ride to Asai, ship to Brazil from there and ride back to Guatemala. They already did the US to Argentina a while ago. And this is all with their dog. I can’t wait to ride Africa and the Middle East to Asia as well. Their trip sounds incredible and it will take a few years, they assume. I can’t wait to follow their adventure.

I got asked a certain question last night. How did I like Mexico. I paused for a moment, they made a funny face and I said it was phenomenal. I passed. Every person they meet has been asked that question and whoever says they didn’t like it usually has a bad trip on their way to Argentina, their trip just plain old sucks or they give up and go back home. That makes sense. Mexico is a good break in period for this trip. If you can’t have fun in Mexico then go back home and don’t travel because you have no idea what you’re doing. We both agreed on that. I can’t wait to go back to Mexico and really see every corner of it for months another winter. There’s so much to see! We chatted nonstop for three hours about so much. I’m pretty sure I just cost them about 2 grand in new gear since they showed me their camping gear and it was quite old, large and bulky. But my new gear recommendations should make their trips way easier since it will all pack up smaller. I seem to do that to everyone I meet on the road. I got lucky with my gear selection!

We called it a night at 10pm and I went back to my hostel. I did some research on the overheating issue and it seems like the mechanic that did the coolant flush in the Bronx didn’t bleed the system properly and there might be air in the lines. Hopefully that is the issue because if not then I have some really really big issues to worry about. I’ll rip the bike apart in the morning and see what I can do!

Bart who I met up with at the Hostel last night.