Epilogue

Decided to add some final thoughts about the motorcycle trip before moving on with the blog ...

Nealy is a great motorcycle passenger! Most people lean around corners or when they see an obstacle in the road - this latter habit is really dangerous, cause then the driver is not only dodging rocks or pothole or whatever, but also trying to compensate/steer against the passenger! Nealy didn't do any backseat driving! I could tell when she got scared though cause she would squeeze me with her knees - haha!

When she first arrived in Guatemala, she got a little scared when we were cruising through the neighborhood, but by the end of the trip, she had nerves of steel!

Everyone we talked to was very helpful. We stopped and asked lots of people for directions - people at gas stations, people we shared a refuge from the rain with, people just walking by the side of the highway! But it turns out that most people in Central America are not good at estimating distance or time. We would stop and ask directions to learn that we were only half an hour from our destination. Twenty minutes later, we'd stop and learn from someone that we're forty minutes away. Then we'd arrive in an hour. Haha! The only thing consistent about the time/distance estimations we received was that they were unreliable. Eventually we only asked which direction to go.

The signage was pretty unreliable too! Guatemala has okay signage - at major crossroads, there's usually a sign telling if there's a large city down the road. It was really tough to tell where we were at any given time. Fortunately there's an election going on and we could sometimes decipher where we were from the advertisements. In Honduras, there was usually a sign at the entrance to each town! Unfortunately, there were no other road signs. Which is why we missed the turn to the ruins. Although, on the way back from our detour there were a bunch of signs pointing to the ruins! Why would they only provide signage for southbound traffic?!

We also notice that the Hondurenos have a very strange accent - they were very difficult to understand. Which is when I realized that I'm learning Guatemalan Spanish. Guess that should've been obvious.

Some people have been wondering what was the scariest part of the trip. It was a little hairy driving the the mountains of Honduras in a cloud, and driving through Guatemala City at night in the rain with a chain that should've fallen off was a little alarming. But probably the most concerning thing was travelling with a pretty little blonde girl! Especially in the non-touristy towns. People would stare at us (and by us, I mean mostly Nealy) as we approached and then as we walked past, they turned to continue staring. We especially drew stares in Jutiapa. I really didn't want to have to stab a guy.

In Juayua, there was a group of old drunk guys that kept yelling "hello" at us. Living in Chicago taught me to ignore people. Nealy, on the other hand hasn't learned this skill from living in a large city. She responded to them! Likewise, when the occasional person would try to sell us something or hustle us, she'd say "que?" I had to keep reminding her to ignore them!

I wore jeans on this trip so I didn't burn the tops of my knees. But I did get a weird hand tan. Just from my wrists to the middle knuckle of my fingers.