The next morning comes quickly. Our problems haven’t changed. I make coffee with an audience and we break down camp. I remove the cam strap clamps from my cam strap and Gorilla Glue patch on the cranks case. It looks solid. I think I’ve finally figured out the correct amount of Gorilla Glue to use. Hopefully not too much of it is mixed with the remaining oil inside the crankcase, but it’s this or nothing. It’s our only option for making it to the village.
I decide to start a video journal. It’s a whole lot of hurry up and wait in Guatemala. Here’s my overview of the morning:
Our plan as of this point is to get to the village where we will have access to food, water and possibly a telephone. With any good luck there will be a welder.
Here’s a video of me getting the cam strap and Gorilla Glue patched bike back on the road.
It’s stalling out because it’s not properly engaged in first gear. The bike is also cold and we’re intending to keep it that way as long as possible as not to melt the glue. I added the additional cam straps to the mounts about a 100 yards after this video to fix the stalling problem. Worked like a charm.
Behold, we made it to the village.
Yep, that’s it.
We spent our first hour in the village battling the local dialect to determine if there was a welder or mechanic in town. We need both. No joy on either front. We begin the search for a truck to take us to Cahabon, where we have learned there is both a welder and a mechanic, about two hours away. In the meantime, we setup camp in front of the village store. The owners didn’t mind. It seemed as though the villagers we’re coming up with excuses to come to the store and buy something so they could have a look at the gringos. We’re really off the beaten path.
Our first approach is to simply run out into the road and stop any truck that
was heading in our direction. The problem was that a vehicle came through town on average about once every half hour. Only one out of three or so are trucks. Our day is whiling away quickly. Finally, realizing that we have no plans to leave his porch until we find a truck, the owner takes up our cause. At first he sets us up with a truck for 400Q ($50 US) at 2:00. 2:00 comes and goes. The truck is ‘rescheduled’ for 5:00, but at
500Q now. Not being in much of a position to bargain I tell him that I simply don’t have that much. He says there is another truck that comes at 3:00 AM the following morning to take the villagers to the market. For 10Q he’ll call and make arrangements to have the motorcycle transported on the 3 AM truck for 100Q. Done. That’s less than $20. It’s getting close to 5:00 at this point.
Less the bihourly chasing down of a trucks in the road our day was relaxing.
The lady of the house was weaving fabric on a hand loom and taught Keli how to operate said loom.
It will take her three days to complete this particular piece of fabric.
At which point she sells it to the states.
I took a snooze in the corner hoping that I would wake up exactly where I fell asleep doing just what I was doing because while wrecking a motorcycle is never fun, this experience is amazing.
The owner of the store offered to let us camp for the night on his porch (the store’s porch). It’s a big improvement over last night. We’ve a chair and tables now.
Once the store closes and night falls, the village kids arrive.
I make the mistake of letting them know that I have some firecrackers and a war is waged. They throw the firecrackers that I have given them at me while I return fire. This went on for hours. I got one kid good early on and tossed a firecracker at his feet while he was peeing. Laughs were had by all, good, deep belly chuckles. Nice kids.
Can you imaging what they would say if you were throwing firecrackers at other people’s kids in the states?
After a few hours we sent the kids home and bellied up to our second night of camping. That concludes day two of our 90 miles adventure to Lanquin. Apparently our truck is coming at 3:00 am and we’ll be making the two hour trip into the market with the villagers.
Leave a Reply