GREAT SPOT FOR A RANT

QUERETARO, MEXICO: MARCH 6
I return from Teotihuacan in a reasonable state of exhaustion. This is my last evening in Queretaro. Queretaro has been good to me. It is my favourite city in Mexico – not for beauty, Oaxca wins out, but for quality of life. I buy a coffee ice cream cone and walk over to Jardin del Armas. I must write of pyramids and the cloister coffee shop is a fine spot in which to compose a rant.

SERVICE WITH A SMILE AND A CAMERA

QUERETARO, MEXICO: MARCH 5
I rode the bike uptown to the Honda outlet for a 3000 K service. Rodrigo King is the man, speaks perfect English. He calls me to collect the bike around 5 pm. He has a couple of newspapers and a TV channel keen to do a story. Is that OK?
It is certainly OK. I have become accustomed to speaking in Spanish on camera. The questions don't change much. I wear my Alpinestars boots and top shirt and Honda give me a free service. Nice people...

RACIAL PREDJUDICE?

mini pyramid

COPAN RUINUS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 3
I remark to an middleaged Englishman from Leeds on how many flies there would have been on the pyramid in the days of human sacrifice. He replies that I am wrong to judge the Maya according to modern standards. Why are the Spanish conquistadors condemened according to modern standards?

TRESPASSING

COPAN RUINAS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 3
The Copan archaeological park contains magnificent Maya ceremonial buildings. I ride out to the ruins this morning. I require permission to photograph inside the museum and reproduce photographs in the second volume of the travel trilogy. Oscar Cruz is the Professor of archaeology at the ruins. Certainly I can photograph. “Please mention the source in your book.”

So easy...I imagine attempting to obtain a similar permission in the British Museum.

I meet with a Honduran family home visiting from the US

The grandmother hugs me. The little girl adds her own hug. She reaches my knees. She then holds my hand for a group photograph.

Later I photograph a bilingual notice at the foot of a pyramid. The Spanish version is an apology for prohibiting tourists from mounting the pyramid. The English version is typically stark: NO TRESPASSING.
Entrance to the park is US$20.
Lawn-short grass surrounds the ruins
A Maya gardener rakes fallen leaves. He has four children of school age. He earns US$5 a day.
I ask can he live on $5. Barely.
His children have no interest in education.

THE KIKUYU

the kikuyu


DANLI, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 2
I save money by staying at the hotel beside the Esso station. My guidebook recomends it as clean, with TV and parking. The parking is true.
I find an internet cafe and am recomended to a Mexican restaurant. The food is OK.
The Kikuyu serviced my bike in 2006. My editor asked why I called him the Kikuyu. I know him by no other name. I rise early and ride to his shop. He embraces me, checks my bike, tightens the chain an unecessary milimetre.
Brave, I ask, "Why do people call you the Kikuyu?"
He shrugs: "It is a bad habit people have."
A pickup arrives towing a trailer loaded with trail bikes. The Kikuyu is their support.
He and I embrace again, wish each other good fortune and head our separate ways.

MADMAN SEEKING ADVENTURE

view across cathedral square


GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 31
Staying with Gillian and Joe for ever isn't an option. The bike waits. Joe would enjoy riding the bike. He rode a Vespa all round Europe and the Middle East. He would garage the Vespa for a few years where ever his journeying took him, return when the bug next struck.
Gillian met Joe in Kenya. He was flying tourists over the game reserve in a hot air baloon. He retired from professional balooning aged 65. A couple of years ago he canoed down the San Juan river. Now he needs a new adventure. He would make great company for Ming and I when we ride across China. And he is younger than me by six months.

PERFECT URBAN ARCHITECTURE

GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 30

I am a very privledged guest in Gillian's and Joe's home in Granada. No need for corridors, no need for air conditioning. All rooms open to patios or the road. Through-drafts keep the air moving and cooled by water in the patios. A big room on the first floor between the two patios is open front and rear to stupendou views of the cathedral and volcano. That New World meld of Islamic and Hispanic architecture has never been equalled, let alone surpassed.

SYBARITE

GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 29
I am staying a few days in luxury. Gillian and Joe are my hosts. Gillian is a Brit. Joe is from Texas. They have resurected a colonial house a block from the Cathedral. The house has two patios. The rear patio has a pool. I swim sedate lengths between sips on a gin and tonic.

BYE-BYE COSTA RICA

NICARAGUA: JANUARY 28
The gale forced me off the road into La Cruz yesterday evening. This morning I suffer both the gale and continual rain. Great. I arrive soaked at the Nicaraguan frontier. No shelter for the bike. The rain becomes a downpour.
Costa Rican officials are self important and understaffed. Nicaraguan officials are pleasant and understaffed. Transiting a truck across the border wastes twelve hours.
My photocopies go to the man in charge of issuing vehicle import permits. I explain the loss of the originals in Argentina. Lunch hour and two of his staff take a break. The boss processes my paperwork himself, moving from desk to desk. A thirteen-year-old boy carries my briefcase and laptop and crash helmet. An elderly cop behind teases the boy in a kindly manner. Ninety minutes and I have my papers.
I chat with a US biker on a 650 trail bike. He and a band of brothers took the wrong road yesterday, more of a river bed than a track. He came off seven times. Heartening this further confirmation that I am not the only biker who ends on his butt.

THEY DONT TALK WITH PEOPLE WHO RIDE 125s

PAN AM NORTH THRU COSTA RICA: JANUARY 27
I loathe having trucks on my butt. The wind strengthens all day, finally threatening to shove me off the road, or, worse, under the wheels of oncoming traffic. I stop for coffee in Liberia. A pose of Panamanian bikers on Harleys pulls in. The bikers say Hi in that distant manner rich guys on Harleys reserve for old men riding pizza delivery bikes.
I ride on into the wind.
The wind becomes a gale.
Tomorrow will be better. Why am I persecuting myself. Sensible to turn off prior to the Nicaraguan border at La Cruz.

OLD MEN CAN'T WAIT

hers and his, little and big


QUEPES, COSTA RICA: JANUARY 27
Quepes by day is OK. I load the bike, visit the ATM machine, eat breakfast. 8:30 AM and my fellow biker remains in bed. She joined me for dinner last night. She is from Denver, Colorado, and deals in eco power such as commercial wind farms. She is a sportswoman and suffers from too many falls on mountain bikes and skis and whatever. She and my mountainboarder son, Jed, could compare scars. Probably her knee played up in the night and she didn't sleep. What ever, I can't wait. Sad. I want to wish her well. I hope to learn whether she took the Limon/Almirante road out of Costa Rica into Panama. If so, how did she find the United Fruit rail bridges?

BIKERESS OR TIGERESS?

hers and his

QUEPES, COSTA RICA: JANUARY 26
Dusk as I enter Quepes. My eyes are bunged up with dust. I can´t see much. I do spot a small hotel with a courtyard protected by iron gates. The receptionist resembles a late middle-age frog in a straw hat. He hails from the US. He supplies information while entering my details in the guest book. Gringos frequent the bar one block to the left on the sea front: the working girls are safe. Best fish is across the bridge and a further two blocks. The fish interests me.
My room is clean. Towels are big. The shower has hot water. I rinse off sufficient dirt to construct a beach in the shower tray.
Down in the courtyard a woman dismounts from a 650 KTM trail bike. She is fair, late thirties, my height, green eyes, long hair. The KTM dwarfs the Honda. It has aluminium side panniers and a proper biker bag on top of the gas tank. The woman has a proper helmet. She is dressed in a proper biker suit, proper boots (though not Alpinestars).
I feel somewhat inadequate.
"Hi," I say.
She says, "Hi..." A real biker conversation.
She took a fall yesterday and limps a little.
She declines my offer of help in carrying her bag.
Maybe she will catch me later at the fish restaurant two blocks up from the bridge. Or maybe not...

DUST AND WORKING GIRLS

TO QUEPES, COSTA RICA: JANUARY 26
The Pan American Highway follows the coast. Flat land is given over to oil palms and billboards. Hillsides are forest interlaced with billboards and subdivisions. Glimpses of the ocean are small compensation for such cross-cultural horror. I intend sleeping the night in Quepes. The final 47 Ks are dirt. Massive trucks drag dust clouds. Construction machinery looms out of the dust. Rocks kick the front wheel and the rear wheel. Gritt fills my eyes. My butt is numb. My thighs cramp. More dust. A sign appears out of the dust. The sign warns of a bypass round an uncompleted bridge. Miss the sign and you hit a dead drop of twenty feet. This is not fun...

COSTA RICA IS FOR SALE

TO QUEPES, COSTA RICA: JANUARY 26
Costa Rica is for sale. The country would be beautiful minus the billboards advertising subdivisions and condominiums, spas and country clubs, serpent farms and butterfly farms, horse ridding, surfing and canopy trails, plus every other type of crap that might gull a tourist into an investment.
I head into the hills a way in hope of escaping. No such luck- and I switch off the engine to make certain that I haven´t run a bearing. The screaching is cicadas protesting at billboard encroachment.

BRITAIN - A US SATELLITE

ROAD TO CORO: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
I stop to take on gas and coffee thirty Ks short of Coro. A big Yes for Chavez poster is affixed to the wall of the service station cafeteria. The man behind the bar doesn't like foreigners. He isn't rude - merely stone-face resistant. I encounter this instant rejection two or three times a day. I have ridden the length of Hispanic America and Brazil. It is a reaction unique to Venezuela. It isn't common. But it happens. Foreigners are the enemy (unless Cuban). Chavez says so - particularly citizens of the US...And Chavez condemns Britain as a US satellite. George W Bush is the devil; Blair was his acolyte...

COMPARATIVE SAFETY

ROAD TO CORO: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
Rain clouds cool a pleasant cattle country of rolling hills. I have escaped the oil fields. Fewer trucks menace. Drivers of pickups and cars are more humane. Midday and I seek shelter from a shower in a small restaurant beside a gas station. Colour lithographs of soulful saints and the Virgin Mary decorate the walls. A rosary hangs behind the bar. The owner is first generation Venezuelan. His parents emigrated from Portugal.
Why Venezuela rather than Brazil?
He grins and says, "A mistake. They weren't good at geography."
Orange juice and big bowl of mutton soup cost a dollar.

GOD SAVE ME FROM VENEZUELA

TO CORO: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2
I ride through my last city in Venezuela. I am on a six-lane thruway. A small Chevrolet whips across from the outside lane to the hard shoulder and overtakes a truck on the inside before swerving back out to the fast lane. A truck pulling a trailer loaded with steel girders sits on my arse. I slow a second and he hits his klaxon. I am scared. I am so scared I want to weep. I don't know which exit I should take. The overhead signs mean nothing. I look up for more than a moment and a maniac will kill me. I want to give up, pull in to a gas station, hire a truck to transport me out of this hell. A pickup shoots from the fast lane to an exit. The driver misses me by inches. Please God save me. What am I doing here?

FEAR AND FATIGUE

BARCELONA: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30
I have been away from home since mid-June. I travel on a Honda 125 designed for city transport (my record is 800 Ks in a single day - that was Brazil). I am old and tired. Being run down in Tierra del Fuego has made me nervous. Venezuelan drivers scare me. I am scared for most of each day. Add that everyone I meet warns that Venezuelan cities are dangerous and I have a strong desire to be somewhere else. I tour the historic quarter of Barcelona: no glorious churches, no glorious buildings, neither a cloister nor a beautiful square - and no sidewalk cafes. Disappointment is an understatement. I am out of here...

KILL HIM IF YOU CAN

FEAR: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28
I was scared last night. I never ride in the dark yet there I was, car and truck drivers attempting to commit me to oblivion.
I have ridden the length of the Americas. I am on my way back north. Drivers in other countries merely terrified me. An Argentine truck driver smashed my leg.
I have the experience to judge.
Believe me, Venezuelan drivers are the worst.
A police advertisement on television announces 35 000 road deaths in the previous twelve months. The cops show film of squashed cars and mashed trucks, decimated trees and steel-draped concrete pillars, lots of blood.
Was I sacred last night riding in the dark?
Too damn right!
Did I sleep soundly?
No.
I wake and ease tired joints outdoors to be blessed by morning sunshine.

EX-FUTURE NOVIO

RIO GRANDE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 9
Graciela’s ex-future novio, Fernando, has been out to the frontier in his 4X4 pickup to collect the bike – the road was ice free. The back end of the bike is a mess. Xavier advises trucking the bike to the Honda Agency in Buenos Aires. The future is taking shape. I can take the bus to Puerto Natales in Chile and the ferry north to Rio Montt and bus north to Santiago. From Santiago I get the bus across northern Argentine, visit Paraguay, then bus south to collect the bike in BA and continue up through Uruguay into Brazil. Meanwhile Pepe has brought crutches. I am not good on crutches. My balance is uncertain. Maybe the painkillers are to blame. Hopefully I will improve.