Guns, guns, and a few more eeer.... Guns

Well as far as I am concerned I have reached Central America for sure. I am offered numerous clues to support this fact, mainly for the simple reason that every dodgy looking person has a grin on his face due to the large pump action shotgun over his shoulder and the revolver stuffed into his yellowing Y-fronts. Good example... Lui was on a bus the other day when she told me a man sat next to her and proceeded to get a hand gun out of his bag and sat it on his lap looking very proud of himself. I think after Lui did nothing but look concerned, he decided to shove the Berretta back into his stained Y's and go to sleep. What a country!
Anyhow, I think the last time I wrote was in Mexico. Puerto Escondido was at last a pretty nice place in Mexico which wasn't stupidly expensive. We stayed a few days there watching a surfing competition. The waves were huge so I decided I preferred living than trying to surf them (badly) After Puerto Esc. We carried on to San Cristobal, which is a colonial city in the mountains, and once again rather easy on the eye. The ride there was very long so I ended up sleeping in my tent in a petrol station rubbish dump, and was forced to waste away the hours drinking with a local policeman and his machine gun. Meanwhile Lui took the night bus.... what luxury!
During our stay we took a tour down a big old gorge on a speed boat. This was all very nice apart from the fact the river was choked with tonnes of.. well crap and rubbish oh, and vultures. I must admit it slightly spoiled the beauty of the place, and just sums up how the locals really cant be arsed to clean anything at all! (see pic). Southern Mexico was a vast improvement than the North. Finally the time came to leave Mexico and hit Guatemala. The border was actually a breeze. Not even a mention of a bribe. I firstly got stopped and some odd individual decided he wanted to fumigate me and the bike. So there I was standing there with me and my bottle of coca-cola getting covered in what I'm sure was some nasty stuff. After that I did all the other bits and moved on.
Straight away the atmosphere of Guatemala seemed much nicer. The scenery was great and the dead dog count was ever increasing. Other sure sign of being in CA is the amount of landslides covering the road. In true CA style they couldn't be bothered to clear them up so they just put a large twig 20 metros ahead of the pile of boulders in the road, and the answer is simply to drive round it. This is fine until you go round blind corners and suddenly notice there is no longer a road, and instead there is a large chicken bus on your side hurtling towards you. You soon get used to it though.
After a brief stop in some town not even a master speller like me can spell correctly, we moved on to Lake Atitlan. This was rather nice. Basically a big old lake in a collapsed crater with volcanoes and towns around the shore. We stayed in several places, but I had to ride round the lake on its pretty crappy road as the small passenger boats would not take the bike. This was fine, and I shrugged off all the locals telling me one stretch of the road was full of bandits. I rode round without incident, but on arriving at the last town we met a Scottish man who lived there. Without knowing I had a bike he starting telling us about the roads round the area, basically saying, 'do not, whatever you do, ride down a certain road as 75 percent of people get robbed at gun point on it' I proceeded to tell him that that was the road I had just been on. (whoops) But clearly I must have either looked to poor to bother robbing, or more likely I smelt too bad*
Anyway, after I drunk myself through the thought of almost having a 9mm stuck up my left nostril and fleeced of the one pound fifty I have left to live on, I felt fine. During our stay in Lake Atitlan I also did a bastard long zip line thing through the trees, that was pretty fun, but of course being the man I am I didn't scream like a girl, seriously, I didn't!

So Lui and I left the lake and headed to yet another bloody Colonial City. Antigua. All very nice, I must admit, but there really is only so many language students and cobbled streets a man can stand, and to rub it in there was a direct flight from L.A to here, so it was full of blimps in Bermuda shorts throwing money at any child with a bit of dirt on their face. I was well up for rubbing a bit of donkey turd round my chops to make a fast buck, but Lui wasn't having any of it, so instead we found a Burger king, of all places, and I got my chops round a whopper instead (talk about eating local)
The weather in this part of the world is pretty wet as its around 2500 metres up in the highlands, so we had finally had enough of cold wet weather and we decided to head for Honduras and a spot of sun.
Off Lui went on her bus, through Guat. City, me on the other hand headed off on the bike trying to avoid the capital city. This would be easy in a developed country, but really is very tricky here. I managed to find a round about route down some back roads, but my map is quite frankly crap. It marks local roads exactly the same whether they are the best laid tarmac (which some actually are) or just a track littered with dead dogs and vultures. So off I went over the top of a volcano to head to the coast. The road started off very nice, but after going through an utter dump of a town the situation got steadily worse. I found myself on a dirt track, riding through fairly thick jungle. Basically I had just ridden right into every muggers dream. Great. I carried on very keen not to stop, passing lots of wrinkly locals with large machetes, and after about an hour popped out where I was supposed to. A slightly worrying moment, made worse by the fact my map suggested similar roads for another 100 miles to the border. Anyhow, it turned out there was no need to worry, as I have typically found my map was totally wrong, I came out on a brand new dual carriageway. Oh I love the Guatemalan President, and his road building scheme. I think I very well may have gone mad without it that day. Finally after a few more hours I arrived at the border of Honduras near the ruins of Copan.

The border was a bit of a pain but nothing like African ones. after they said they were on a 5 minute lunch break, they started to process my documents one hour later. I thought this would be the case, so I started buttering up the local border policeman the best way I know how, basically you compliment the massive machine gun he is holding, ask him what it is and where its from, then ask if he shoots people with it. After these few questions you will normally find you are their best friend, and the rest goes smoothly.
After paying $30. (not happy, but I think it was legit) I was allowed into the country. Copan was a nice little place apart from the old muddy faced child trick being totally over-acted by some small weazely faced child. He even went to the length of putting on some worn out old sandals and tugging at my shorts for effect. Clearly after no sympathy from me (the tightest whitey in Central America) he left.... In fact I'm sure I saw him with the latest Reebok Pumps on later on that day, little bugger.
Next stop was the Bay Islands which is where me and Lui find ourselves right now. The trip here was uneventful apart from I have never seen a lorry full of coca-cola being guarded by two men with machine guns and shotguns before. Only in C.A! (or maybe the best coke in the world) A few miles from La Ceiba which is the hopping off point for the islands I actually witnessed the demise of yet another leathery, spaced eyed pooch on the road. The culprit of said crime was only going about 10 mph, and clearly thought he was doing Mutley a favour, he didn't appreciate that at the time I was alongside him, trying to overtake, and for such an malnourished pooch it didn't half make a squelching noise.
At La Ceiba I met an utter tosser at the port. Basically he was the boss, and he wanted me to give him $88 to put my bike on the boat to the islands. The crossing is only 1 hr, and the right price is about $30, but because he was such a tosser he would have none of it, so for the past four days I have been like a father who has lost his child. The bike has been parked in La Ceiba, being guarded by a man who quite frankly I would not trust to guard my old toe nail clippings let alone my bike, so if in the next post i am riding a donkey to Tierra Del Fuego it will be his fault!
Lui is off in two days to teach small children how to rub dirt into their faces and look sweet so as they can make a good living in this country from overweight tourists, so I shall find myself alone once more (letters of sympathy to e-mail address, and any cash deposits to my bank account please) In the mean time we are having good fun on the islands, I dabbled in Scuba diving and we are off white water rafting on Sunday. If only I could kill every mosquito here I may, just may stop moaning for a bit. Oh and they love the English here, the only problem is they keep assuming we are American. Bugger.
p.s I am also in the process of trying to find passage from Panama to Colombia. This is proving very tricky indeed. If only I could trace Captain Ludwig with the sea sick cat..... If you're reading this captain, leave the cat alone and e-mail me!
p.p.s Would you believe it!.... I got back to my bike on the mainland and the man who was supposed to be taking care of my bike went and cut my lock in half! (pic) I was not impressed to say the least, and he made some wet excuse up about the bike being too close to an exhaust pipe of their generator, anyway, I am now lockless and am on the hunt for a new one. Not good for my blood pressure I can assure you!
p.p.p.s YES, YES, YES WE BEAT THE AUSSIES!!!!! Come and get it you Frenchies!
Miles completed: 14,200
Road Kills: As before, plus witness to cold blooded hound murder.
* smelling bad= hazard of not washing bike riding gear....ever!