Trying to Make Sense of these Mountains

We're in Cobán after a great battle with the mountains of Guatemala.
Titans have raged at lesser monsters.

We left Mexico in high spirits after renting a car and driving inland to see distant Calakmul, a ruin as epic as its name. It's now completely junglefied, and the central plaza is full of massive trees and the monkeys who swing and jump from tree to tree. There is at first one massive temple you can see, but when you climb it you see from the top that there are two more temples, each one more of a mammoth than the one that came before. And from the top of these three behemoths giants play a game of catch with lightning bolts, but they're shy so once you get past the tree line they scamper away into the sea of forest that is the border of Mexico and Guatemala.

Then we crossed into Belize, where they speak English and we camped in fields of sugar cane. Belize was a total dump except for great tamales and beer that was fantastic both in quality and selection. I recommend Belikin Stout for anyone who is unfortunate enough to be in a place where you can buy the stuff. You'll probably get 15 mosquito bites just trying to open it. Also, the bars are called "cool spots", which I thought was cool.

So after getting ripped off some more we loaded our bikes onto the roof of a van and got in that van and rode it into Guatemala to a town called Flores. Flores is actually an island in a volcanic lake in the jungle, and was pretty cool. Everywhere you looked, there was water, and islands on volcanic lakes are generally cool. The point of going to Flores was to go to Tikal.

Tikal is another Mayan city, capital in fact, that was constantly at war with the friendly citizens of Calakmul. According to an information sign at Tikal, the Tikalites were more successful in combat because they had a superior military tactic where they would surround enemy villages and attack with spears from all sides. Sounds pretty scary to me. We tried to get there at sunrise because there are around seven temples that are all lined up and when the sun rises - especially near the solstices - it rises directly over all the temples. This sounded like a good reason to get there for sunrise, but the bus didn't leave early enough, so we woke up painfully early and got there an hour or so after sunrise. Classic for this group. It was a fine sight regardless, and we were fortunate enough to see Tikal without a crowd. We saw monkeys and these weird animals that walk around sniffing the ground the whole time with their tails pointing straight in the air.

Then we split. Since Tulum, I've been riding with my good friend Alex Boon and his friend Amaury, who is from Querétaro, north of Mexico City. Amaury is riding from Los Angeles to Argentina and beyond, with no end date or end place in sight. Alex left us in Flores to get back to Cancún where he has a flight to catch back to Florida. So since Flores it has been Amaury and me on our way to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second largest city which is on the other side of the country. Guatemala is small, so we gave ourselves five days to get there. It looks like it'll be closer to ten.

Guatemala's hills are like no others I have seen. To live in them is one thing, to build roads in them another, but to ride a bicycle through them is really dumb. Generally, in the mountainous regions I have ridden through such as the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, or the Himalayas, a road leading up and over a mountain will follow a valley, then a river, then leave the river for the pass, getting steeper with each step. In Guatemala, there are no valleys, no ridges, not even passes. There are only roads that go up. Everytime you're sure you hit a pass, you keep climbing. Nothing seems logical. My arms are more tired and sore than my legs. Not even the switchbacks make sense. The whole point of switchbacks is to make the grade less steep, and there will be a spurt of absolute Steepness in the apex of the turn, then the road eases up to the next. Here though, you hit a switchback and then the road gets even steeper! It's madness! This is why we're here in Cobán after two days like this. We don't want to blow out my knees or get tendinitis. When we leave Cobán the road will turn to dirt and we will gain another 1000m (3300 feet).

All I can say is that once we do arrive in Quetzaltengango, we will feast like emperors, and toast the Mayan pantheon to a good effort at mountains.