And Then There Were 3

Throughout the years, Mexico has not treated me well. 4 years ago, I was hitch hiking my way through the country with my girlfriend. Just North of Guatemala we caught a ride with two guys in a Jeep and just as we got up to 140kph the back right tire blew out. We skidded across the oncoming lane, hit the ditch and flipped over 2 and a half times, landing upside down, with gas pouring out. Miraculously the two of us were able to walk away with minimal injury. So after finally getting rid of that pesky Cam, the 3 of us who didn't get smoked by a truck decided to get the hell out of bad-luck Mexico as quickly as possible. But Mexico wasn't about to let us get away without a fight. 20 minutes into the second day of driving, my front tire went completely flat. Super weak. It was about a thousand degrees out and we were pretty much in the middle of no where. Luckily we (by we, I mean mostly Laine) are carrying lots of tools and parts for the bikes. So it was a pain in the ass but not the end of the world.

We finally made it to Alcopoco a day or two later. We spent just enough time there to find out how Jesus did his walk-on-water trick and watch some dudes get paid to jump off a cliff all of us would have done for free. Alcopoco isn't the nicest area but we did stay in a cool place that had a roof top terrace which looked out over the city. Wanting to get out of the stinky, dirty city, we left as quickly as we arrived, bound for Puerto Escondido. This is a world famous surf town known for its quite constant, near-perfect waves. When we rolled into town, stoked about trying our luck at surfing again, we were met by 10 to 12 foot high, hurt-Kori size waves. So because luck had obviously not been on our side lately, we decided to skip the ass kicking and stuck with what we do best... drinking. It worked out great. We had lots of fun at night in the many beach bars, and were able to use our hangovers as our excuse for not surfing. Yeah we're totally core.

We partied in P. Escondido for one last night, Halloween, and hopped on the bikes (hungover as usual) heading to Oaxaca for the Day of the Dead festival. It was a really cool drive, over 2 mountain passes. Late that afternoon we arrived in Oaxaca. It's a super cool city with stone streets and lots of cool architecture. The cool temperature was a nice change from the sweltering heat we had been in for the last 6 weeks. We got settled, bought some chicken and ate the crap out of it on our hotel floor like savages. It was Thursday night, November 1st. We read, and were told, that Nov. 2nd was the true celebration for Day of the Dead. So we went out that evening thinking we were going to take it easy and save ourselves for the big Friday Nov. 2nd party. That night there were parades, bands and lots of people dressed up in sweet costumes. We cruised around and saw lots of cool stuff but then headed home early. The next morning we were off to the market to find ourselves some costumes of our own. As we were walking there, we noticed that a lot of the shops in town were closed. We didn't think anything of it though. We just thought it was a holiday and everyone would surely be out going crazy that night. We each bargained our way into a one piece skeleton outfit and bought face paint as well. As it turns out, our shitty luck just continued to rain down. November 2nd is the true holiday, but the big party is on the 1st. The 2nd is more for staying at home with your family and remembering those who have passed. So we went to bed for the night of the real party and got suckered into buying costumes a day too late. We just don't stop sucking.
By this time, we were truly over Mexico and ready to get to Guatemala. We checked out one cool ruin site and then basically B-lined it to the border. On the way we had the windiest day of the trip so far. It honestly felt like the bike was going to be blown out from under us. It was pretty sketchy. Finally we made it to the border. It was crazy. As soon as we were within a kilometer of the border there were dozens of people running after us. Everyone swarmed us in hopes of being our helper/guide through the complex process of bringing a motorcycle into the country. It was a little nerve racking. There were literally 10 pairs of hands on either us or the bikes all the time. Everyone wanted to touch the motorcycles or our helmets or anything they could get their hands on. Sketchy. After about 40 minutes of some very inefficient paperwork, we were able to get on our way. We decided not to travel on the main route and instead chose San Marcos, which was up in the mountains, as our first stop.
We decided to be pimps for the night and stay at the Fairmont. But as you can see, I don't think our room was quite up to the Fairmonts at home standards. We could barely fit into the bathroom. That night it got fricken cold. We pretty much had on all our layers that we brought for the trip. Hoodies, tuks, everything. We froze our asses off and didn't want to get out of bed in the morning. We woke up and hopped on the bikes headed for Quetzletanango. I must have had the 'special' breakfast that morning because when we arrived that evening I was treated to a night of being doubled over in pain. I had food poisoning. It was the 3rd time I've had it in my life. Once in Turkey, once in Morocco and now here. Awesome. Needless to say I spent most of the night puking and crapping my guts out. Sweet.



The next day we drove out to Lake Atitlan. It was super cool. We took a shortcut to San Pedro, a small town right on the lake. We came over a hill and all of a sudden the road dropped away before us. The lake is deep in the valley at the base of several volcanoes. The road had tons of switchbacks and quickly dropped thousands of feet in elevation. It was super cool. We hung out there for 3 nights exploring the many pathways through and around the city. We ate a ton of good food and drank at many of the little bars around town. I djed in one of the bars on the last night we were there.



Next stop: Atigua. This is a really cool little town surrounded by volcanoes as well. We found out that roughly an hour away, there was an active volcano that you could hike. We signed up for the trip the next morning and went out to the bar that night. What's better than hiking up a volcano you ask? Hiking up a volcano completely hungover of course. Laine and I decided there would be no better time to wear the skeleton costumes so we put em on and climbed up a volcano looking like complete tools. It was really cool. We were able to get within 10 or 15 feet of flowing lava or as doctor evil would say, liquid hot magma. We arrived at the lava around dusk and the sun quickly set which meant we had to hike down through razor sharp lava rock in the black of night. And being that we were probably still drunk when we left for the trip, we of course forgot to bring our head lamps. Oh yes, we continue to suck.

We're now in Atigua and we haven't decided where we're going next. I'll keep ya posted.