Day 29 - Hotel Casa Texel, Panajachel

The plan for the day was to hit up a Mayan ruin called Iximche. It was a little over an hour’s ride from Panajachel, and from there we were aiming from Antigua Guatemala, a further hour, or maybe an hour and half ride from the ruins. So, the riding wasn’t going to be too much of a strain today. We had the very good breakfast at the hotel, different from the day before as the choice was too much to resist, and then got ourselves geared up and ready to depart. We were on the road by 10:00am and climbing the hills out of Panajachel towards the ruins. There are loads of volcanoes around the lake, and whilst we could see hints of these from the shape of the base of the mountains, the cloud cover was preventing us from seeing the tops of the volcanoes, so we could only imagine what they were like. We did discuss stopping to the get some footage, but as it would have been a bit pointless (no pun intended), we decided to press on for the ruins. The roads were great with lots of twisties, but it was clearly evident that the way they deal with rubbish in Guatemala is they find a steep cliff on the side of the road and just empty truckloads of rubbish straight over the side of the cliffs. Not a particularly good way of dealing with rubbish, but I suppose they have bigger issues to worry about than looking after the environment. It also meant that there were loads of stray dogs just cruising around in the weirdest of places. Dogs would be walking around on the verges, and you had to keep your wits about you to avoid hitting them, not to mention the potholes that you also have to be aware of. The roads were pretty good, but there were still some pretty substantial potholes. About 20 minutes away from the ruins at Iximche, we pulled over to try to get some drone footage whilst riding through the mountain passes. There were 2 combis kitted out for overland travel from Brazil. It looked like they were having some engine trouble, but they weren’t particularly engaging, so we left them to it. We found a great spot to do our shoot and whilst Jorik was pulling the drone out for some footage, I headed back down the road we had just travelled to give him a chance to get the drone up and running so that I could come back around. As the coms don’t work at a distance of more than about 500m, maybe 1km, I had to gauge how long it would take for the drone to be launched. I gave it plenty of time, so as to avoid having to do the run again and go back down the road. However, when I got to the top of the hill where Jorik was setting up, it was clear that there was an issue with the drone as Jorik was spinning around trying to get the GPS to engage. Anyway, long story short, no drone footage for us in the mountains on the way to Iximche. We pulled up to the ruins, which all looks very organised. We were charged Qs50 each to enter, which is not too bad. We decided not to go with a guide as it would just cost more money to be told a load of stuff that we could probably look up on the internet anyway. I have to admit, I was a bit underwhelmed by the ruins. They were pretty cool, but not as big as I may have hoped for. They had all the ceremonial temples, but they were not very high, they had the alter where I am sure the dude of the time, Kukulkan, or whom every, would sacrifice people, but the experience was just a bit average. We didn’t spend too long there as it only took about 45 minutes to walk around the whole site, and then got back on the road heading for Antigua Guatemala.

We plugged in the destination of a hostel that we had found online, which took us along a pretty substantial highway, which was not a lot of fun to ride. We actually missed our turn off and ended up having to do a big loop around, but it ended up taking us down a great road into Antigua Guatemala, so it wasn’t all bad. Arriving in the town, it is clearly very old, and the main town has cobbled streets, which was hell for the bikes and we had to travel very slowly to avoid rattling the hell out of our bikes. We pulled up at the hostel, but they were fully booked. It looked a shame as the hostel looked like it had a pool and would be a fun place to hang out for the night, even if we are about twice the age of the average guest. I still feel like I am a youngster but have to admit I certainly don’t look like a youngster anymore. In fact, Jorik is getting a load of laughs out of referring to me as his dad, dick! The hostel recommended another location down the street that we could try, so we jumped back on the bikes and headed further into the town. Unfortunately, the second location was also fully booked, but they mentioned a sister hotel that they operate that they had checked and there was a room available with twin beds for us there. So, third time lucky, we got ourselves booked in, unloaded, took a quick shower as there was no pool at this location, and then went into town to check it out. We had spotted a local bar next door to the hotel that had a happy hour for Qs10 for a local beer, about US$1. So, to start our adventure in Antigua Guatemala, we pulled into this little dive bar, which was actually very cool, and had a couple of very cheap local beers. It was a cool spot, and we were sure to be back later that evening as it had cool music and a great vibe. The town was cool, very authentic and there were actually a lot of foreigners in town, so it was clear that this town was on the backpacker circuit. We had a great dinner at a little restaurant, steak sandwich, probably the best steak sandwich I have had all trip. Satisfied with our dinner, we headed back to the dive bar near the hotel to see if we could enjoy a few beers and maybe meet some people. We haven’t managed to engage and meet people nearly as much as we were hoping to do on this trip, so an opportunity to chat about the Enfields Overland experience, and just generally have some down time, was a big attraction. We met a young Mexican lad called Christian, who is from an area to the immediate south of Monterey, which I established is cowboy country, sorry caballero country. We haven’t travelled through this region of Mexico, but having seen how Mexico differs from place to place, it just drives it home that Mexico is so vast and so massive, and I have yet to see so much of it. Christian is a social media guy who promotes and creates content. Jorik tried hard to recruit him to our cause, but I suspect we might not hear from him again. We also met a really cool Indian chap called Ravi. He works as an IT support guy in America and was very keen on the trip. He was over in Antigua Guatemala on his annual holiday, just checking it out as he heard it was a cool place to visit. He is not wrong; Antigua Guatemala is a very cool town and I am glad we made the effort to check it out. We had a bit of a late night, which could easily have gotten much later as I was enjoying myself a lot. However, we had to ride the next day, so we called it a night before it got too late and headed back to the hotel, which was just next door, result.