DAY-45

DAY 45-

12/19/2011

Woke up this morning, yup that’s what I have to do learn Spanish. Loaded up my bike and made it back to Antigua in 1.5hrs, pulled in around 9:30, very smooth and fast trip. I started doing circles looking for a different hostel and who do I see walking down the road, my friend Clay who is also riding a KLR650 down to Argentina. I met him in Puerto Escondido, we started to talk and changing stories and then decided to meet up later for beer/ dinner. I decided to head back to my original Hostel because it has a great place to study and huge breakfast. I checked in and headed down the street to figure out my Spanish school. I walked in to find out prices, I had heard up to $140. He told me $120 for 5 days 4 hours a day, without me bargaining he dropped the prices down to $105 for morning classes and $80 for afternoon, sounds great afternoon please. It breaks down to 4 bucks an hour, but has been warned that it will be 4-6hrs a day of homework which I will be serious about.

So quick story that for some reason I didn’t write about, riding from Puerto Escondido to the Guatemala Border. We had been riding half the day and it started to get really windy, as we stopped for lunch. We joked about the wind and how hot it was and then headed off back on the bikes. As we come around a corner it is just getting windier and windier, all of a sudden there is miles and miles of Wind Turbines coming our way. WAM BAM SLAM, it’s on the wind is slamming into us, all I can do to keep my speed and lay into the wind as hard as I can just to keep the bike on the road. I am a sail getting blow around the road, all my strength just to hold the bike in my lane. If I go left I get hit by a truck or bus and if I go right I fall into trees and marsh. There was one point I was leaning left as hard as I could bike is at a hard angle winds blowing so hard that I start to still slide right toward the trees and marsh lean even harder I don’t know how my tires didn’t just slip out and left me laying on the road.  

So that story gets you ready for this one, we were exchange stories over beer and we were just telling each other about different things that had happen we both had unique crazy experiences getting across the border. Then I was like “dude what about that wind getting to the border” He looked at me and said “oh yeah that wind was gnarly I got pushed off the road and wrecked hard.” Wait what! “Yeah I wasn’t going fast about 70km caught a big gust and dropped off the road and wrecked in grass and marsh, luckily there was a big truck of Mexicans running a torch down the road who stopped and helped me.” Not only did they help him get his bike to the road but his Pannier had exploded so all of his clothing and gear was getting blown all over the place so they chased after it all. The wind kept blowing his bike over so he said screw it and threw his bike and himself in the truck and got a lift for about 20km till the wind died down. He told me he had found out that, that stretch was the windiest area in Mexico. The wind comes from the east coast and blast through to the west coast, supposedly people sailing have to watch the winds and time it right to get by on the west coast safely.

We laughed, drank beer, got some street food, and just hung out talking about routes and what not. It is always nice to meet up with another rider who has the same carefree style and are just along for the adventure.

So I will be hanging out in Antigua till Christmas learning Spanish then make my way south toward Nica...