Muscles and Churrascos

We did make it to Quetzaltenango, to which from this point on I'll refer to as Xela, because it's the same place and Xela is about 75% easier to write. Xela is the Mayan name.

Broken, we made it. After Cobán, we climbed and climbed some more to a town called San Cristóbal, whence our map indicated that the road turned to dirt. With this knowledge, seared by anxiety into our brains for days, we took our time in San Cristóbal. Lucky we did, because we ate the best churrascos to date in San Cristóbal Verpaz. Churrascos, for those who do not know, are a Guatemalan street food sensation. They are some of the best street food on offer worldwide. Yes, worldwide. Better than tacos. Even Amaury, my Mexican comrade, agrees. So, you may be wondering, what is this sensation? Well, to begin with, you don't find churrascos, they find you. They're mobile, fast and usually pedal-powered. Finding and eating churrascos is a convergence of the right place and the right time. Say it's 11am in San Cristóbal Verapaz and you're hungry. You go to the main square, and lo and behold, a churrasco has appeared before your eyes. You approach and ask the churrasco man, "Whatcha got?" and he replies, "churrascos". You tell yourself, "fantastic" as you try and collect your emotions and you ask the price. This is the greatest variation in churrascos, and in San Cristóbal at the right place at the right time, the answer is 10 quetzales, which is about $1.25. So you order one for yourself and one for your friend as you sip your included coffee and sit in the shade and wait for the thin strips of marinated beef to grill. The churrasco lady who is accompanying the churrasco man refills your coffee and confirms your worst fears about the dirt road. Then the churrasco arrives on its styrofoam throne. Surrounding it are its princes guacamole and sour cream, with lady rice and squire beans not far away. Waiting not far away are the peasants, the humble and numerous tortillas, which are grilled after the meat over the same coals to lend a smoky meaty character. Then you mix it all up and cram it all into tortilla after tortilla and drink cup after cup of coffee and imagine it all turning into muscle as you destroy yourself gaining the limitless altitude that is the experience of riding a bicycle through Guatemala.

After lying around a bit after our churrascos in San Cristóbal we left in pursuit of eagles on the dirt road. Indeed, right in the middle of town, our road turned into nasty, dusty dirt with rocks the size of grapefruits sprinkled liberally all over the surface. Luckily, there was hardly any traffic and the road wasn't so dusty. I didn't have to put on my surgical mask which I bought in China as part of Jaco's and my disguises to pass as Chinese bike tourers into Tibetan roads, which were off limits to foreigners. Check it out at www.supercontinental.blogspot.com. We climbed and climbed, until suddenly, gloriously, we came to a pass. Imagine, a pass! We could look out over the valley and see the roads we would descend into the abyss, from which we would undoubtedly spend the next week climbing. But for the moment, we were at the top of a pass, all potential energy and churrasco ready to explode in a feast of downhill we had been waiting days to enjoy. To our left was a pile of trash with vultures circling and eating, despite the fact that it was either on fire or smoldering. Below us was the valley, green and lush. Above us was of course, nothing but blue sky. To our right was the most gigantic landslide I've ever seen, complete with a sign posted by the government explaining that they didn't work on the road because every rainy season there's a landslide and it's a bit futile. Enter on your own account and risk, it said. It seemed like the landslide lasted for about a kilometer, and after that turned back into the already nasty dirt road. We checked our brakes and our wheels, and forged ahead into the disaster.

To be honest, on a bicycle it wasn't much worse than the dirt road. In a car however, the road narrowed and there were bigger boulders that posed a great risk to wider vehicles than ours. Once we cleared the landslide there was a slight incline again, then we descended for another couple hours. At one point, Amaury's tire blew because his rims got so hot from braking that they melted the rubber on the tube. While fixing the flat we met another tourer, Flavian, who was riding a foldable bike with really small wheels. He was going up the other side, and was a cheerful lad. It was a massive surprise to see another person, not to mention cyclist on this road. He told us that indeed, once we hit the valley, there would be a lot more climbing.

To no one's surprise, there was. After hitting the valley in a town called Chixoy, we climbed on good roads for another two days before finally descending again into Sacapulas. When we awoke in Sacapulas, Amaury's knees were showing obvious symptoms of climbing fully loaded for two days, and we elected to take a bus the rest of the way to Xela. I'm not sure which is crazier, traveling by bike or by bus in Guatemala, but I think it's by bus. Willingly putting yourself in a Guatemalan bus on Guatemalan roads is really insane. The drivers seem like they've taken some sort of stimulant cocktail, then get into the driver's seat of old American schoolbuses, turn on weird dance music, accelerate and smash everyone inside into the walls on every turn. They spout black CO smoke and honk compulsively. When we disembarked in Xela, the bus was still moving as they threw us our bags and bikes from the roof of the bus. Amid honks and smoke the bus turned the corner at the terminal, and the co-pilot screamed the name of the next town they were heading to at people on the sides of the road, hoping to gain new customers for the return journey.

In Xela, we've been staying with the gracious Ana, whom we met on warmshowers.com (which I think is a hilarious name for a website). Funny mental images aside, warmshowers is a great website that connects people traveling by bike with people who are willing to host them. Ana hosted us for just under a week. She took us to her cabin at Atítlan (another outrageously beautiful volcanic lake), to hot springs, and even found a doctor to see me on Christmas day to look at my throat (I had laryngitis, but I'm all better now). It was boundless hospitality, inspiring in every way.

We're still here in Xela pleasantly waiting for Alex. I buy the newspaper in the morning and read it with cafe con leche and breakfast at a churrasco place near the police station. We're the only non-cops in the place, which has no name and no advertizing. It was pointed out to us by a policeman, who, it turns out, know where to get good cheap churrascos no matter where they are.