This is just a note for other bike tourists and people who travel with their MSR Whisperlite stoves. The wonderful thing about the Whisperlite is that it will burn plain old gasoline. The terrible thing about it is that (if you use the gasoline to prime the stove) it makes a mess every time. You're always dealing with ugly black soot on the stove.

Well, we've started using regular denatured ethyl alcohol to prime the stove, and we never have to clean it, and rarely sense any kind of fumes. Ethyl alcohol has been easy to get in Mexico and Central America - you just go to the drugstore and ask for Alcohol Etílico in a high percentage (88 or 90 grados). It's cheap and wonderful. Our stove is more reliable, but most important, I don't get dirty all the time from it. (And we can surrepticiously run it in a ventilated room because it doesn't make any smells.)

Here is a great writeup on all types of fuels and where you can get them around the world.

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.  read more here... lee mas aquí... »

Hi friends!

Holiday greetings from the Hobobikers.

You may have noticed that we have not posted many stories on hobobiker.com for the last 4 months. In case you have been wondering what we have been up, here is a recap, along with our future plans.

You may have read that at the end of August, Randy and I went home for a two weeks visit with our respected family and to make sure everyone was healthy and doing well. It turns out they were all fine and we where the very sick ones. Whooping cough is a a hideous illness called the "100-day-cough" because it lasts that long (and maybe longer in Randy's case). I started to feel ill in Guatemala a week before coming home and got sicker and sicker while in Colorado. Within two weeks, Randy came down with the same awful cough which was treated with rounds of antibiotics, coughing syrup, and inhalers. Randy even broke a couple of ribs during one of the 1000 coughing fits he has had. We came to the conclusion it would take at least 100 days before we were well enough to travel so we decided to hang out in western Colorado and recuperate.

We bought a used car, bought car insurance, restarted our cell phone contract, got Internet access for the laptop and made arrangement to live in a trailer house normally used as migrant workers housing for workers in the orchards in Palisade, Colorado. We loaded the car up with everything we would need for several months.  read more here... lee mas aquí... »

You might wonder what we're doing with all this time off here in Palisade, Colorado. Well we intended to be riding and trying to get into shape, but winter has now set in...

But here's what I've been up to . If you're a computer geek or a geography nut or a bike tourist planning to go to Mexico, you'll probably like it. Otherwise you'll think I'm crazy.

Our new Mexico Route Section has the complete and accurate maps of where we went in Mexico, down to daily detail. Each region in Mexico has an overview map with some narrative about our route (how the road was, what the best sights were, etc.) Then at the bottom of each regional map are links to the daily detail, with a map of the day's ride and an elevation profile, and downloads of the .gps and .kml files.

Geography geeks of the world, unite! Thanks to Google Maps for their incredible free services (and the fact that they turned on imagery for Mexico and Central America a few weeks ago).

Enjoy the new Mexico Route Section. And the Guatemala Route Section is ready too... But we have more to do with that one!

We remember so very many women and have so many stories to tell from our time in Guatemala - we thought we'd just tell a few stories. Read on for lots of pictures and a slideshow of the women.

Maria Brito

To get to Maria Brito's house, we rode our bikes just up into the skirts of the valley where Nebaj is. As you leave the city (or town, really) you end up right away in green cornfields with people's houses scattered among them. Before long, you get to the end of the electricity lines, and well beyond the paved road, and end up on a muddy track headed up the hill. That's where Maria's house is. When we first met her, we thought "Oh, she's pretty poor" because she lived in a shack that she herself would not consider a house, with no electricity and with the water spigot across the road (at least she had one). But like many of the women we met, her dignity and friendliness transformed her right before our eyes from someone to be pitied into a woman to be honored, repected, and treasured.

We've finally started figuring out what to do with our GPS, and I'm a map nut, so we have lots of geographic information coming your way now - including the details of our Mexico/Guatemala section. But here's the whole things so far: You can zoom in, use satellite view, lots of things. Most of the pictures we've taken on this part of the trip now have geographic information, too.

Update: More in-depth maps are now available for each region and even daily for the entire trip

We are staying in Colorado until the beginning of 2008, at which time we will continue our trip to the bottom of South America. Why, you ask, well mostly to get healthy and get rid of the long lasting affects if whooping cough. One way to do this is to exercise daily which we believe we will be able to do here even in the winter. So we will take this opportunity and explore the western part of Colorado.

We have decided to relocate for two months to Palisade, Colorado where Randy's parents live. We will hang out with them and help out as we can. Randy will get some work doing website design and I will continue with my new profession. Painting. Not the wall type, but the type you do on paper which is called art. Palisade is such a beautiful place with wine vineyard and orchards through out the valley and surrounded by towering mesa called the Bookcliffs, the Colorado National Monument and the grandest of the grandest mesa called Grand Mesa. The sun in this part of the world is crisp with a golden rays brightly eliminating the landscape. Can you tell I am excited?

We are staying in migrant housing (normally used by Mexican workers here at Talbott's orchards) because they have all left for the season and there is lots of room for a couple of hobobikers. We have two roommates, Ryota who speaks Japanese and Artemio who speaks only Spanish. Our view out of the bunk house bedroom is looking at the sun rise of the towering Grand Mesa and the sunsets illuminating them and the orchards that all around our quarters.  read more here... lee mas aquí... »