The Man Who Cycled the Americas by Mark Beaumont

Author:Mark Beaumont
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld

11

Crossing the Guatemalan border felt like a wonderful milestone. It was certainly very easy: the border guards stamped my passport without question and within seconds I was in Central America.

I was looking forward to smaller targets in the coming weeks after the three and a bit months and 6,500 miles through Canada, the USA and Mexico. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama looked like a fascinating tapestry of countries, as alike and yet as contrasting as European countries.

It was thirty-four days since I’d cycled out of Ciudad Juarez into a country I had completely underestimated, not least in terms of its size. I recalled how nervous I had been, and then how lost I had felt during my first few days alone without any means of communication, and then realized that I could now get by pretty well with basic conversational Spanish. This made a huge difference, and I entered Guatemala feeling strangely at home, certainly far more relaxed.

In contrast, Julio, my new escort, was anything but chilled out. José and Roberto, despite my initial reluctance to have any company, had been great and most of the time I had been able to ride as if they weren’t there. They had also been brilliant at explaining about the world I was passing through, and given me far more information than I would have picked up. Julio was no qualified guide, he was the driver for an elderly lady in Guatemala City. As soon as I shook his hand I realized that he was very nervous at being taken off ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ duties in order to ensure my safety through Guatemala. In fact it wasn’t long before I felt I was the one looking after him.

Back in the 1960s a massive flood of the Usumacinta River, which marks the border, permanently shifted its course, and overnight a big section of Mexico became Guatemala. Despite such a natural and seemingly fluid divide, the sense of being in a very different country was immediate. I cycled into the border town of Ayutla with that indescribable excitement of being in a new country, alert and playing a personal game of spot the difference.

There was a lot to look forward to. I had about eleven weeks to reach Aconcagua and start the climb. Put in those terms, it no longer felt that long. In the short term, I had a BBC cameraman joining me for five days. In other news, I learned that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. I was amused to watch hundreds of photographers turning out to take photos of the President’s new pooch. When I checked on Twitter, many of the trending topics and feeds were related to The X Factor. In Ayutla, I felt a million miles away from these ‘realities’, and was left wondering if the situation in Mexico would ever make the world news.

The original plan had been to continue south-east on the same road, but there were now a number of strong arguments to divert inland towards the historic city of Antigua Guatemala.

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