This was during my week long stay on the island of Flores in Lago Peten Itza in Guatemala. I was with my friend Rosio, a transplanted Columbian girl I met a few days earlier when I rode up upon a roadblock protest and I chatted up a van full of travelers that were stuck waiting for the protest to end. Rosio was one of those in that van and I later reconnected with her and others when I bumped into them on the island of Flores.
I was riding from Coban to Tikal when I came upon this mess. I had no idea what was going on until I met some new friends.
I made it to the island of Flores that night and met up with a few of the van travelers. The next day or day after I caught up with Rosio at our hostel. I had mentioned that I was dying to drive a tuktuk but that I couldn’t get the nerve up to ask a tuktuk driver to allow me to drive their vehicle. She jumped right in, stopped the next tuktuk driver we saw, offered him up the money to cover many rides around the island and he consented. He showed me how to control the clutch, shift gears with the hand controls and use the brakes. It was a rough ride and I am way too big to drive a tuktuk. But it was an experience I won’t forget.
Following some new friends on my motorcycle. They built these modified big wheels to drift down the mountain into the town of Panajachel on Lago Atitlan, Guatemala.
This is how this event came about. I had checked into a room in Panajachel and was walking around town. Earlier in the day I had been speaking with an Aussie by the name of “Spoons” that I had met at my hostel in another town on Lake Atitlan called San Marcos. We had been discussing the fact that we both wanted to get a tattoo. We were unable to find anyone in San Marcos and Spoons and I parted ways.
I was walking in Panajachel, aka “Pana”, when I saw an advertisement for a tattoo shop in a mini-mall. I walked into the well-kept shop and spotted Benjamin, the tattoo artist, behind his computer. I told him I was interested in getting a tattoo and we discussed some ideas. He waved me over to his computer monitor and told me, “hey, check this out”. He was watching videos of some guys back in the states that were drifting on modified, adult big wheels. He informed me that he and his small squad of friends also drifted here on Lago Atitlan and that they were going out early the next morning to do so drifting. I offered to meet up with them and film them with my helmet GoPro from my bike. Maybe it would make a cool video. He was down. I was down. And we agreed to meet up the next morning.
He sent me off that night telling me that they could be found somewhere the next morning on this particular road, Highway 1, that began at a gas station at the beginning of Panajaehel and terminated at the top of the mountain heading towards Solola. If I couldn’t find them actually drifting down the mountain, they would be found riding the chicken bus up the mountain and I would spot their big wheels stored on the top of the bus.
I woke up a little late that next morning but as I started riding and ascending up the road towards Sololá, I spotted the first big wheeler drifting past me down the mountain. Then, a few seconds later came another. Then another. And another. I followed them down where they stopped at the gas station in Pana, met everyone, and followed them up behind the chicken bus that carried them and their big wheels back up the mountain.
It was an awesome experience and as we called it quits for the day, I saw a familiar face walking up towards me. It was Spoons who had read my post the night before about finding a tattoo shop in Pana. He was here to get his tattoo.
The next week was spent enjoying lazy days hanging out with Benjamin, Spoons, another tattoo artist from Kentucky named Jeff and the other business owners in a common area in the small strip mall courtyard conversing and just enjoying the Pana life. Both Spoons and I got awesome tattoos that week and it was an experience I would never forget.
Short video of Benjamin hitting about 45mph drifting downhill
Living the life of a Guatemalan downhill drifter. Longer video but you can see the interplay between regular traffic and the drifters.
Riding through a Guatemalan roadblock and protest demonstration.
This was an interesting case of serendipity. I was riding that day towards Tikal from Coban with no real plans.
The previous day I had rode the long, dirt, pot-holed road from the city of Coban to the natural pools of Semuc Champey. I had barely made it to the pools before they closed but I did get the chance to sit in these natural wonders and have the little fish bite at my feet before the park closed and I had to leave.
I started to ride back to Coban, where I had planned to stay the night, and all during the ride back I would pass a pickup type truck with tourists standing in the back. They would wave every time I passed them and when I got ahead I would eventually stop to take a rest from riding the rough, dirt road. Eventually the same truck with the tourists would pass me and they would holler and wave again as we, again, made a passing acquaintance. This leap frogging of me passing them and them passing me continued for hours. Eventually I didn’t see them again and I made my way back to a room in Coban.
The next morning I left to head towards Tikal on the other side of Guatemala when I came across this roadblock. The roads were blocked with “people movers”, those vans that serve as public transport between towns, and I had to wind my way towards the front.
At one point I passed a bunch of tourists on the side of the road and they seemed to be the types that spoke English. Not that I don’t speak any Spanish, but my English is much better than my Spanish.
This video is of me meeting up with these tourists and getting some explanation to the traffic jam. Coincidentally, these tourists turned out to be the same ones I played leapfrog with the day prior. And, coincidentally and somewhat serendipitously, once the roadblock allowed us through I continued on my way to Flores whereby I met up with the once again.
I spent the week in Flores hanging out with some of these people including Rosio, a Columbian expat living in Guatemala. She spent the week in Flores looking for an apartment and a storefront for rent to open her restaurant that would eventually become real. The restaurant she opened was named Macondo, after the fictional town in Marquez’s Columbian book, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. I spent the week in Flores hanging with these people, going out with Rosio at night and making new friends.
Sometimes my motel rooms are rough.
I’ve stayed in every type of room this last adventure. From the highest five star room in Puerto Vallarta to thatched roof jungle rooms whereby the walls didn’t reach the ceilings (Palenque). Some rooms didn’t have electrical outlets or electricity and most were just your basic, family-owned rooms that were comfortable enough with wifi, a ventilator (fan) and clean linens. Most rooms I spent less than $25 U.S. on and they were better than any chain, discount Motel 6 or Super 8 in the U.S.
This particular room was a last minute decision as I was in the north of Mexico heading back towards the U.S. It was late November and the temperature in Northern Mexico was dropping. I found myself in this room ruminating about having a room with heat and a television that I could control what I watched.
Not sure if I made it clear in this video but I was stuck watching soccer and some novelas on tv and I checked with the manager about where my remote control was so that I could change the channel. The rooms didn’t have remotes and he explained to me that he controlled, via his manager’s office, what was watched universally in every room. So that night it was soccer, followed by some drug cartel type novella then some type of religious Jerry Baker type show. It was terrible.
And I also froze that night.