Saturday, July 9, 2011

The road to nowhere;part II

   I was awakened to the infernal sounds of dueling roosters at around 4:30 in the morning, the fowl were persistent in their calls and after an hour of attempting to ignore them I gave up and emerged from my room to welcome sunshine (the sun rises early here), the ground looking pretty dry considering the rain which had fallen the previous evening. I removed the tarp and repacked my bike while slowly surveying the damage incurred to the BMW from it's repeated meetings with terra firma. Though the Jesse panniers had gained a few scratches as well as the engine guards. I was happy to find that the bike itself was virtually unscathed.
  The owner of the house approached as I sat on the porch contemplating my next move and told me that a bus was was to pass at 6, strangely coming from the direction that he said was impassible the night before(I knew there was something fishy about that).A quick glance at my clock relieved that it was 5:58 and I hurriedly prepared to leave. At 5 minutes past six a brightly painted multicolored International school bus emerged from the Jungle. It was amazing, how the hell did they get that up here, I thought. Even equipped with aggressive tires, I couldn't fathom how the massive Detroit iron could pull the grades which were around 35 to 40 degrees in places.
   I quickly departed, shouting gracias and adios to my host as I tailed the bus out of the village.I kept plenty of space between myself and the giant leader. The big International did remarkably well in straight line ascents, however, when attempting to turn tightly and climb the rocky surface simultaneously it would often become stuck. When this happened a group of men would file off the bus and push till it had traction once again. During one of these instances, I was climbing a particularly steep grade and came across the stalled bus and was forced to stop. Upon coming to a halt the rocks gave way and and the bike and I slid backwards till we met the ground in what certainly the most violent spill yet. A couple of the guys helping push the bus came to help me lift the bike and then advised me with sign language to bypass the bus, which backed up to allow me to do so. After reaching the point I'd turned off the GPS recommended route the night before I stopped and awaited the arrival of the bus. It took a small road off to the right which mercifully intersected another wide and relatively smooth road that just happened to be heading in the direction I needed to go. Honduras here I come.
               After following the colorful bus down the mountain for around 30 kilometers, the tires of my steed once again met pavement and I quickly made my way to what was to be a painfully slow and frustrating border crossing into Honduras.                  
                                                                                     till later -Israel

2 comments:

  1. No picture of the colorful bus? :) Glad you made it into Honduras. Maybe these folks didn't want you to get soaking wet the night before and/or to travel alone in the dark??? Daylight is better. Sounds like it was a good place to spend the night.

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  2. Glad to hear that you are making progress. I found in Guatemala that it was against their culture to admit that they didn't know something. They would make something up and send you in the wrong direction if they had no clue. Good luck!

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