Randy's bike and gear (View on flickr)

Nancy's bike and gear (View on flickr)

On private road to Chiquicara (View on flickr)

Click on the picture for a larger view

Lots of people ask what bikes we used for the trip, so here they are.

We both used Specialized Stumpjumpers with front shocks, trekking handling bars with extenders, Old Man Mountain racks, Ortlieb panniers, kickstand, wide touring tires from Continental and 36 spoke wheels.

In Peru, Randy switched from panniers to a BOB trailer. See the update and the picture on the right.

We both started out with Brooks saddles but both of us switched to various version of the Terry Liberator Y - we never did get comfortable with the Brooks saddles, despite waiting thousands of miles and the rave recommendations of so many people. Neither one of us use clipless pedals - we just use regular shoes with flat pedals. We always wear a helmet and use a marvellous helmet mounted rear view mirror. We ride with riding shorts for comfort.

We carried a full set of camping gear including tent, sleeping bags, mattress', pillow, silk sheet liners, cooking gear, gas for the cooking stove, ultralight cooking stove, water filter, two cameras, off and on a computer, headlamps, books, writing material. Nancy carried a travel watercolor kit and a block of watercolor paper. And enough clothes to ride and live in for three days. We also have rain gear and sun hats and sun screen. We carry our personal bathing gear including battery operated tooth brushes. And a small first aid kit. Randy has an altimeter to check out the distance and amount of climbing we do each day.

We sometimes (usually) feel we carry to much, so we are always evaluating what is truly required for bicycle touring. And we keep carrying too much. Our gear is made for the long haul and is solid but we are always searching for the right combination of gear. Randy fully loaded bike weighs about 100 pounds and Nancy's about 80 lbs depending how much water and food is required and available services.
Our biggest decision right now is whether we're going to leave the computer at home...

If you have any questions, send us an email or start a discussion forum.

Also, we've started a Bike maintenance log so you can see what experience we've had with the equipment.

And you can see all our "Gear" articles here.

We got to Guatemala safe and sound. And took a bus to Antigua. We stayed with new friends, Judy and Gene, in their incredible home for several days until we got started riding again. (Thank you so much Judy and Gene for all the help and the new friendship)

On New Years Eve, we walked around the plaza in Antigua and watched fireworks and listened to a little music. The plaza was beautifully lit with white Christmas lights around the base of all the trees. We felt we were back home. The sounds, the smells, the people, the festive plaza, the incredible climate, yes back home again.

The time we have been in Guatemala, we are getting quality exercise. We climbed a Volcano (Pacaya) where we got so close to flowing lava it almost melted my nylon coat. Incredible to watch lava slough down the lava worms turning the hard rock to molten liquid glowing from the fire from the earth´s core. I was hoping there was no earthquake or eruption while we were so close. It turns out there was a good one several days later. While we were hiking down in the dark, the winds kicked up, trees swayed in the violent wind and the air was thick with ash.

The next day we started out riding with another cyclist, Scot Domergue, who cycled down from Mexico. He met us as planned in Antigua and we will ride together for 3 weeks if he can stand our style of riding. So far we have had a great time and all is going well.

On the first day we only rode 6 miles but we climbed up a few thousand feet. I did have to walk a few spots as not to over stress my legs which are not use to climbing with my load. I guess there is always a price to pay for to much time off, too much Christmas and the amount of wine that I consumed during the Christmas holiday. I thought to my self as I climbed, that this was a no wine zone (no complaining zone)

We took a pickup through a remote dirt road because of reported bandits. We did stop for the evening in Palin because of hurricane force winds that knocked out the water and electricity in pretty much everywhere in the center part of the county.

The next day we rode 45 miles and climbed 3300 feet. It was tiring because it was the 2nd day on a bike in several months. But it so beautiful. We cycled around a Lake Amatitlán where there were banana trees, palm trees and many plants blooming. We ended up riding down to much lower elevations on the Panamerican highway. There was a section on the Panamerican highway that was just like in the United States, 4 lane divided highway, huge shoulder, and very little traffic. We descended 3000 feet in 7 miles. My max speed was around 38 mph and I bet Scott's was closer to 50 mph. In the lower elevation, it was hotter, had little bugs which attacked my bare legs and the vendors all were selling pineapple. This also was the end of the nice wide Panamerican highway. It narrowed to two lanes with no shoulder and lots of traffic with huge trucks. It was the kind of riding that requires heads up and getting off the road to let the big trucks and buses pass. We decided we prefer the back roads so we headed through the northeast central part of Guatemala.

Currently we are in Mataquescuintla. The ride here was of course steep because of the the volcanic terrain, but very scenic. We are riding through the coffee growing area and more forested area then we have seen in other highlands of Guatemala. People continue to beep hello from there cars or bid us good day as we pedal by. Though I am starting to see more cautious stirs and a few people that actually looked scared.

We are staying in a quality hotel -- Hotel San Miguel in Mataquecuintla which has warm water in the shower, TV and a balcony that looks out to the surrounding vista for about $12 a night. It includes toilet paper, towels and soap. We seem to have gotten a cold so we will hang out for a day or two. Meanwhile I am taking care of a little business: getting a new cell phone (our phone number is on the contact page - call us!) my pants shortened for 50 cents by a very tiny old man with foot-powered sewing machines, updating our website for 60 cents an hour, and a hair cut which I have not gotten yet)

Plus I will go get some lunch or almuerzo. The most common lunch is fried chicken and french fries, tacos, or soap with vegies and meat. I am now hungry talking about it so that is all I will write about for now.

Nancy at Lake Amatitlan (View on flickr)

We are getting into the groove of riding our bicycles down to the bottom of South America. After 4 months of living in the United States we have giving up that and live the life of Hobobikers. What does this mean?

It means staying in a different place every night. a hotel, a flop house, someone’s house, a backyard, or camping somewhere in a town that someone has claimed is safe. Currently we are staying in hotels, with anywhere from a small twin bed to three various-sized beds. Some have running water all day long and produce warm water through an electrical device attached to the shower head. This is called a suicide shower. Never raise your hand up while washing the armpits and touch the electric device. You will get a shock. Others have water only part of the day because of water shortages in the region.

At the end of the days riding we wash that day’s biking clothes in the sink or shower or perhaps a concrete basin for washing clothes called a pila. We have a stretch clothesline for drying our closes. All the shower floors in Central America are about 8 inches taller then the surrounding floor so when I step out of the shower with wet feet onto the tiled ceramic floors, I always feel like I will slip. I use a red bandana as a rug which I wash in the morning and hang it on the bike to dry during the day.

Dinners are usually some kind of grilled meat or chicken dish with rice and some other side dish. Actually this is also for lunch and also for breakfast. I am getting tired of the same food so I guess I will have to get creative.

We set out in the morning between 6 and 9 depending on the temperature and ride for the day. We only really ride 3 to 5 hours a day but it takes all day long. I have to stop a lot and get off the bike to stretch, make an adjustment or have a quick snack. As we approached Honduras the daytime temperatures seem to be getting hotter so we starting earlier then usual. In really hot weather I will wet down my shirt and bandana and ride with the nice coolness of the wet cloth.

We stop some times for a nap along the side of the road or along the side streets of small villages. Usually kids come up to us in the plazas to ask questions or beg for a coin or two, so if we want a real nap we go where no one else is.

As we ride lots of drivers beep, people say god day and others just stare at the strange site of gringos riding their bikes fully loaded past their doors or pastures or washing in a Pila.

We take photos, talk with those that are interested which seems to be a lot of people, and mostly we ride all day. In the western part of Guatemala we have been climbing up step terrain on paved and unpaved roads so I have been walking up the mountains with my bike. I sometimes do not have the endurance to ride and climb the heights that these areas present. I have been offered rides but I politely decline. I will make it to the top one way or the other. When things are very tough, Randy sometimes will ride ahead, park his bike and walk down to meet me. He will walk my bike up the hill for me. I am not proud of this but sometimes I just need a little extra help. He is so very patient. (thanks honey)

Around 4:00 to 5:00 we will arrive in our evenings destination and I will go find us a hotel that fits my requirements. I am in charge of this task because where we stay matters more to me then to Randy. I like a window that opens to the outside natural light and a halfway decent mattress. Randy would take anything for a great price but I do well (according to me) in finding the best place for the value. We have spent anywhere between 7 dollars and 15 dollars a night for lodging. Randy has not complained once about the places I have chosen

That is a typical day of the hobobikers in Central America. We rest a couple days a week, just like a work week. We are taking a couple days in Copan to enjoy the Mayan ruins of Copan Ruins, Honduras. A very nice place which we recommend. I hear it is the nicest town in Honduras but we have just gotten here so we will let you know later how it compares.

Entering Honduras (View on flickr)

There are new pictures posted and the route information is up-to-date so you can see our route through Guatemala.

We had to pay $1.30 to leave Guatemala and $3 to enter Honduras, but there were no problems of any kind. We even got the exchange rate we asked for when changing our Guatemalan Quetzales into Honduran Lempiras. Lots of friendly talk with everyone around. The border post where we crossed is a bit of a backwater, which helps, I'm sure, but the people sure were good to us.

Just to remember, here are some of the prices we paid in Guatemala:

• Hotel with private bath and hot water: $13
• Street meal of steak in a tortilla (churrasquito) with potatoes and onion: $1.80
• Guatemalan beer (Gallo) in a restaurant: $1.30-2.00
• Internet: $.80/hour
• Standard guatemalan sit-down lunch: $1.30-2.00
• Gallon of purified water: $.80
• Liter of cheap red wine in a box (pretty good - from Chile): $3
• Hire a pickup to take 3 bikes people down a dangerous road 13 kilometers: $30
• Haircut: $1.30
• Medical consultation at a pharmacy: $2.60
• Aralen antimalarial pills: $.15 each (we take 2 per week)

Despite the rather rough things we'd heard about Guatemala, our experience was just meeting lots of nice people who were surprised we were riding our bikes through their territory. I don't think we met a mean person in the country. We did read the newspapers, and like the newspapers in all countries, they reported some ugly things. I can't figure out whether there are more ugly things here than home in Denver, because all the newpapers sell themselves by reporting as much bad stuff as they can. I do think that people here perceive themselves as less secure than people in suburban Denver. In some areas they lock up pretty tight at night. Anyway, we had a delightful time with lots of wonderful people in Guatemala.

But wow, those mountains are big. We climbed far more every day than we would have in the Colorado Rockies, and it was much steeper. This week we climbed from 4500 feet to 8200 feet one day, and then were down at 1500 feet the next. It adds up to pretty steep stuff.

Update: We got over our colds pretty quickly, and Nancy seems to have gotten past her intestinal distress, so we're ready to ride more in Honduras after enjoying a 3-day stay in Copan Ruinas.

Coffee farmer raking the drying beans (View on flickr)

The areas we've been riding through on Guatemala and Honduras are all full-bore into the coffee harvest. Coffee is everywhere, and it's really interesting to see where that brew comes from.

On the picking side, we've met little kids with mayonaise jars and whole families, each with a home-made bucket. They work as hired hands, getting paid about 1 lempira, or 2 cents per pound of picked coffee. A family can pick a fair bit in a day - maybe each of the kids can pick 40 pounds, bringing in US$2.00. This time of the harvest can be the primary cash earning time of many of these campesino families.

We met Carlos, on the complete upper end of the coffee spectrum, at a hot spring in Gracias, Lempira, Honduras. He is a coffee taster, employed by the Guatemalan national coffee testing laboratory, and he helped us understand some of the details about the harvest. He mentioned that US people have a tendency to disapprove of small children being involved in the coffe harvest, but here it's a longstanding tradition, and beneficial to the families. Carlos also explained what makes coffee good (bigger beans, shade grown, mountains, etc.) and what the various grades of coffee are, and how world price fluctuations affect this region (a lot!)The coffee bean off the bush is a largish green thing, which has to have the outer fleshy part ripped off with a machine to leave the inner bean. This step of the harvest is invariably done with a machine. Then the coffee is left out in the sun for three days to dry. We see drying coffee everywhere we go. Sometimes it's on a concrete platform that looks like it's made for the drying, and sometimes it's just out on a plastic sheet by the road.

Coffee beans (View on flickr)

After it's dry, the grower takes it to a buyer or a cooperative, and somewhere along the way the base price is $1.35 or so a pound right now. That's the international base price. From talking with some of the small farmers along the way, we gather that they get about $1.00 of that for their finished beans.

Then, of course, at some point the coffee is roasted and packaged and you get to drink it at Starbucks. It sure is big business. We did hear about one cooperative of indigenous people in the northern area of Nebaj, Guatemala, who control the whole process, packaging and shipping their own brand of roasted and ground coffee directly to Italy. Their Italian priest helped make the arrangements after people started moving back into the region after the civil war calmed down in the 90's.

sculpture in Copan (View on flickr)

Our first stop in Honduras (and one of the reasons we chose the route we did) was the famous Mayan ruins of Copan. We dragged in at the end of another 3-day stretch of riding these mountains (about the best we've been able to do before resting at least a day). Nancy was sick with some kind of stomach thing and we were both finishing off colds. (All of these ailments are long gone now, thankfully.)

So we weren't at our best the next morning when we went to the ruins. We spent the entire morning there, and hired an English-language guide to explain it all. But we were all the time just feeling like we wanted to be in bed or getting something to eat, which is not what you want when you're at one of the world's most famous and important archaeological sites.

Stela at Copan Ruins (View on flickr)

Despite our sorry state, we really appreciated the artistic beauty of the place. We've been to several other Meso-American ruins, and the beauty of the stelae (tall stones that tell a story) and other engravings was just off the chart. Somehow they really developed a much more artistic way of doing all the hieroglyphic writing here.
The environs are beautiful green luxuriant growth, like at Palenque, but the structures are considerably smaller.

Probably the most significant thing we've taken away from Copan was the enormous connectedness of the ancient Mesoamerican world. It turns out that Copan's first ruler came here from Teotihuacan in the second or third century of this era. Well, we visited Teotihuacan probably 10 months ago just north of Mexico City, and the thought that these two places that seem so distant to us were so connected is astonishing.

copan ruins where the upper class lived (View on flickr)

The visit also made us cherish the string of archaelogical treasures that we've been able to visit on the ride - Tula, Teotihuacan, the Plaza Mayor, Monte Alban, Palenque, Copan, and several smaller ones. For the first time we have at least a rudimentary understanding of what they were, when they were, and how they were related. So often sites like this are just a splendor of visions and artifacts, but you can't sort them out in the end, and we seem to have gotten one step beyond that on this trip. Still ahead of us is Macchu Picchu, but that is quite a ways yet.

two macaws talking (View on flickr)

At Copan we also visited the very nicely done Macaw Mountain, which is set up as a tropical bird park, but is actually an outstanding pet rescue operation. They accept unwanted parrots and macaws and all sorts of birds from all over the place and have them set up in the nicest enclosures you'll find anywhere. We spent hours wandering the park and enjoying the butterflies, including the famous Blue Morpho, that we found there.

Lightening our Load
We're notorious for carrying to much stuff, and somebody at the the hotel in Copan Ruinas must have wanted to help us out. The maid or somebody got deep into our stuff and found our cash stashes and lightened them, got Nancy's nice earrings, and my camera was gone too. It's surprising and a little irritating that we could be cleaned out so well, especially by such seemingly nice people. Being rich gringos, such an event is discouraging but not devastating, but it niggles at you when you're the trusting sort. We're acting less trusting when staying at hotels now... Our confidence is just a little shaken. And we'll have to improve our routine a bit. (I do have to add that we let the management know about the problem, and they responded by investigating it, and even offered to reimburse us partially. We did not ask them to do that, but it was certainly a show of good faith.)

Tortoise getting by the rabbit - pushing by the truck stalled in the road on the way to La Esperanza (View on flickr)

You may remember our friend Tim Malloch that we met in the north of Mexico, in the Copper Canyon region. He was headed north, and we south, and like all travelers we meet, we pestered him with lots of questions about his route and his favorite places along it. We remembered him telling us that the back roads from Santa Rosa de Copan to La Esperanza were his favorite section in all of Central America. So we set out to follow his route. We suspected, but didn't know, that it would continue the really tough mountainous route that we'd already been struggling with in Guatemala. But we took it, and he was right, it was delightful. We spent several days with nearly no traffic, delightful pine-covered hills, and interesting people tucked back in remote valleys. We passed by little roof-tile making operations (apparently the clay is good in this area) and climbed through some of the most remote areas we've been in since northern Mexico. In one town we found no available hotel or "hospedaje" (cheap hospitality) but the mayor happily opened up the municipal offices and settled us in the community meeting room. We had all the comforts of life including a bathroom and a cold shower (which was one of the lesser cold showers we've had). All gratis, thanks to the kind mayor and town of San Miguelcito.

Looking down where we just climbed on the way to La Esperanza (View on flickr)

After finding our way through the beautiful country we had one more day of really nice riding before we landed at Honduras' main north-south highway, and it turned out to be so beautiful. Some kind of weather system moved in and we spent half our day climbing a pass in complete dense clouds, passing vegetation-rich creeks that flow out of a major forest reserve. We could hardly see anything, but we imagined what was behind those beautiful creeks coming out of the pine forests. (We're seeing our last pine forests in the next couple of weeks, because they don't grow any farther south than Nicaragua.)

When we did hit the main highway it was a bit of a shock. All that traffic. We did OK, because there was a fair shoulder. There were just two problems: We were exhausted, and the shoulder was kind of a string of huge potholes. So it was great to have a shoulder, but you had to constantly surf it in and out, going back onto the highway or dropping off to the right of the whole road.
When we got to the first of the big climbs headed up toward Tegucigalpa, we just sat and looked at it and could not summon the courage to start up with our fatigued legs. We ended up gatting on a bus with the bikes "just to go to the top of the first hill" but ended up staying on right into Tegucigalpa, the capital, about 35 miles. We had debated a lot about whether to ride into "Tegus", as it's called, as many cyclists have described it as a nightmare, so staying on the bus right into town resolved our discussion.

We are making some progress at getting back in shape. It's pretty rugged go to come back here after 4-6 months (and being sick at that) and hit these mountains that tax us nearly every day. But perhaps it's the quickest way to get back into it. The good news is that we're up in the high country where the climate is pleasant, especially in the early morning. The bad news is that it's mountain after mountain, and we tire easily.

I have to admit it's a little discouraging to find ourselves going 30 miles and being worn out. But perhaps we'll get back in shape, and maybe we'll be able to get farther in a day once we get to some of the lowlands that we think lie ahead of us in Nicaragua.

(View on flickr)

What a delightful surprise Nicaragua has been to ride in. From the moment we crossed the border from Honduras into Nicaragua, biking through a country which is the poorest in Central America has been a great experience. Yes we see some very sad sights, houses made of mostly discarded scraps of plastic, lumber, tin and natural products, children without shoes, communities with no electricity, shared wells and old people begging for money. But mostly we find a land with a many different aspects.

We ride up through dry mountain regions on remote dirt roads and everyone tells us we will have no troubles, that we´ll have no security problems because we are outside the urban areas. What we have found is whole communities come out to see the Gringos on bikes riding through their neighborhood, children yelling out hello, good afternoon or by practicing the few words of English they know. Many children near the border would ask for money, the only word they knew. Randy gave a few of the children in Honduras a lecture about asking for money and how it was impolite not to say hello as a friend, but none of the children in Nicaragua have been like that. We learn a lot as we ride through the different parts of Central America.

Some of the steep mountain areas cause us to rest more and to walk our bikes up the steep grades. We have had a chance to walk with more people or ride along a campesino on a horse. I think Nicaragua has more people walking, riding a bike or a horse in the countryside then we have seen elsewhere.