birthday

(Excerpt from the blog entry, My Own Fantastic Heart of Darkness, Part 2, posted June 11, 2015.)

The reason why I love this part of the world and why I am here: the contradictions. The beauty and the chaos.

As soon as I crossed out of English-speaking Belize, the crazy, scattered, broken, hostile, friendly cacophony of shit that is the Guatemalan border town of Melchor de Mencos hit me in the face. The people were kind, but the instincts I felt to protect myself and my stuff were fierce. I needed money, found a bank machine and dragged my easily-detachable bags off the bike and into the sweaty cajero room with me, sweating droplets that fell from my head to the floor like bombs. Was it me or "it" making me feel this way? Maybe a little of both. But since, I've learned it's a gut reaction I have to trust. If I don't, I'll get fucked. This is the unfortunate truth.

Still. I felt better. I expected the newness, the struggle in speaking to people in broken, bad, partial-Spanish, having to rely on instinct to get around. Oddly there was something about it all that felt like home... though this is as far from anything resembling a "home" as I've ever known.

The crossing itself was easy; some people made it that way, most notably a beautiful young boy who ran around in front of me, opening gates and pointing in different directions with a magnificent smile on his face. I could have figured it all out myself, eventually.. but he made it a pleasure. Young enough to be my son, and with stitches on his head from a motorcycle crash. I slipped him some cash once I had all the documents I needed. "Por favor," I said. "Comprar un casco, mi amor…". [An approximation in English: “Buy a helmet, for the love of god…”.]

Once I got the cash I needed, the road north to Tikal was easier still. Broken bits of jungle with gently sloping hills and sweeping tarmac that would occasionally break into long stretches of gravel from construction projects. But nothing especially dramatic, creepy or exciting. A smell of burning wood begins to fill the air here - a smell that would get more and more intense the farther into Guate I got.

The Mayan ruins in Tikal are spectacular. Many of the buildings are still buried in this protected section of jungle, filled with creatures of all kinds: spider monkeys, ant eaters, toucans, parrots and other beings of shapes and sizes I never in a million years thought I'd actually lay eyes on. You can walk for miles in this fantastic, thick, vine-choked space, and in the early morning the spider monkeys go berserk, chasing each other through the trees and screaming at the tops of their little lungs. It is in fact inscribed in white on eloquent wooden signs (in Spanish and English) that they enjoy throwing their own feces at tourists passing below.

I found people there to commiserate with. Miguel, who grows orchids on his land near the eastern edge of Lago Petén-Itza and wants to start his own hotel some day. Carolyn, from Germany, who rode her bicycle from Alaska down through the Americas, camping alone under security lights at gas stations, and who shared her excellent coffee with me my first morning in the country. And these guys - a Welshman, German, American and a Brit - who take 3 weeks together every year to roam around the earth in hot pursuit of Star Wars set locations. I drank beer with them for hours, arguing about politics, getting to know their dark secrets, and developing little crushes on them. Their matching t-shirts almost did me in.

When I took off from the sheltered, manicured tourist habitat of Tikal into the real Guatemala, it was my birthday. 

The smoke got thicker upon leaving the park boundary - thick enough to coat the back of my throat and turn the air a hazy, creamy hue. I pulled over in Renate for some breakfast (a town that serves as a base for Tikal tourists), and a man followed me into the restaurant. He sat at my table and started speaking to me in half-English, laying on the compliments heavily. Skinny and sickly-sweet, offering to interpret the menu, telling me that I was beautiful, complaining of his struggles.. and finally asking for money. He'd inch closer, watching me eat. Heightening my awareness of the disparity between us, quite deliberately, effectively. But it just pissed me off, like a cornered cat. When I rode off after paying the bill, he followed me down the street.

In the "dodgier" city of Santa Elena on the east side of Lago Petén-Itza, I felt better, skidding along dirt streets in the rising heat, stopping every so often to check my map and stare at the stained and crumbling post-colonial buildings there. Everywhere were little patches of burned ground, some with smoke still rising from the center.

Eventually I found the road south, comprised of thick red gravel, deep in places - deep enough to warrant stopping to let air out of my tires. I had no idea what I was in for…how much of it was gravel, whether or not it would turn steep, rocky, rutty, or whether I had the dirt skills to manage without wiping out and successfully breaking the other foot, etc. There would be no one within screaming range to bail me out, nor hospitals nearby with strong enough pain killers.

The gravel turned to asphalt after 15 miles, but it was the beginning of a path that took me into my own netherworld, exposing me to something unnamable that I'd been looking for all along. The other tourists, the English speakers, the Guatemalans used to catering to English speakers…they all disappeared, along with the well-decorated protective barriers, flowery language and steep prices that accompany them. Suddenly I really was different from my surroundings. And despite the ever-thickening smoke, I was once again able to breathe.

To not know what to expect.. to have one's presumptions dashed to bits.. this is what I was looking for. To be motoring along at a good clip, when the road suddenly turns to a dirt lot with a 20 degree downward slope ending in a body of water.. requiring the delicate yet firm massaging of one's back brake so as not to skid into the back of a pickup truck waiting for the ferry on the other side…that's what I'm talking about.

There's something extremely liberating about having no idea what to expect, to taking on challenges as they come, despite one's limited skill set. Throughout the course of the day I saw so many things I'd never seen before. Above-ground graves on the side of the highway, with inscriptions to the dead scrawled on brightly-colored concrete slabs; town centers clogged with market stands emptied of food, with people wandering about slowly amongst piles of burning trash; entire villages clustered on riverbanks, hauling water uphill, on foot, with multiple 5-gallon plastic jugs; and the jungle. You could feel its oppressive moisture and violent beauty here, scaling up terraced mountainsides, where thatched roof shacks are built and rebuilt using whatever means are at hand. Colors shifted like temperatures the higher I rode into the mountains. And people…kind but extremely cautious. Over the course of time, I'd learn more about why. 

When I finally got to Cobán, I was exhausted and high from all the visions…giddy with it, happy to see more. I found myself stuck in traffic because of a protest, but I didn't mind. The people marching seemed empowered. They were smiling…engaging me and everyone else on the sidelines directly with their eyes, fists in the air, music pumping into the background. I didn't know what they were protesting about (though it may have been about a controversial dam project and associated violence against indigenous communities), but their energy enlivened me, even after the most tumultuous 200 miles I'd ever ridden. 

The hotel I was looking for didn't exist…but I found something better, cheaper, friendlier, run by an old man who corrected my Spanish gently, who laughed at me when I laughed at myself.

It was the best birthday I've ever had.