Sabado (Saturday).... no leisurely start today, things to do, people to meet, places to go, Ellen hopped up at 5.00 am for her hiking trip up Tajumulco Volcano the highest in Central America, breaky as usual for me though.
Meeting up with Juan (what car?? from ADV) we were also making our assault up the mighty volcano but ours was at a gentlemanly hour of 9.00am.
Leaving Xela was easy with local knowledge and we were soon up to 3000 metres looking down on the world, the road conditions pretty good with the usual Guatemalan stuntmen on the road and the weather playing perfectly into our hands.
They paint the big rocks purple with the curbing painted purple and white, something we had not seen before, purple and orange go well together
.
Turning off at San Sabastian we started our assault on a cobbled road that soon turned into dirt and rock, wet in places and rolly rocks wanting to steal our front wheels we had to keep our mind on the job.
Juan was obviously thinking of hot chics or something as his bike decided it was time for a break and lay down, Maya on the other hand was scared of getting her hands dirty and stayed upright.
We rode a few km up to a turning point and stopped there, the track was getting steeper and wetter and with the fog rolling in we were not going to see anything and it was almost 2.00pm by then anyway so we turned back, also the bit we are allowed to ride on finishes at the red hilux just above my right mirror ...you will have to look hard.
Views all round when the mist cleared momentarily
The two amigos
Looking back down the hill with the fog beneath us.
Juan on an easier section on the way down
The paved section only 1 km from the road
Given the time we stopped for lunch in a place call Los Vegas ....it was kinda the same as were were on the main drag.... not a bad view
From there taking the coastal way home we ventured off into the unknown, although we didn’t get lost we had a very, VERY good look around with Mrs.Garmin not being as local as we wanted her to be.
Riding through some stunning back road territory we hit some mainish roads and swapped bikes so I rode the 990 Adventure and Juan rode the 950 SE, this was a great comparo back to back with the SE engine being a lot smoother in the engine..... hopefully not from low compression!!!
The SE certainly feels like a bigarse trail bike compared to the Adventure with the Adventure feeling a lot more roady like, interesting the seating position with really sitting into the SE and sitting on the Adventure, certainly with the bar risers on the SE it makes life easier standing offroad.
We hit the inland road back towards Xela bordering dark then hit the fog in the dark .... this slowed progress a bit, for the first time I got to really appreciate the power of the Rigid Industries lighting which is outstanding in a very black night that just stole the OEM headlight so very grateful for these, also for nasty Guatemalans who didn’t wonna dip their lights they had the floodlights poked in their face ....that made em dip.
We eventually hit town again and I rocked in the door at 7.45 pm with a grin and a half like this guy ->
, slightly completely stuffed.Huge thanks to Juan for local knowledge and just having a dudes day out riding.
Domingo (Sunday), Tarea (homework) for most of the day until Ellen got home at 2.30 pm then off to the cafe to post this stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment