life @ 13

greetings from the land of bling-bling, but not really
as i said before, i've been anxious to get to guatemala. caye caulker was ok, but i simply wasn't in the mood for it. while urinating in a resturant bathroom, the bartender asked me if i dive (diving is one main attraction to the island). i told him i didn't dive, so then he told me that i must get stoned. i informed him that this wasn?t entirely true, although if he was offering either for free my ears were open. so that pretty much sums up my experience on caye caulker, although i did have an interesting chat with an old resturant-owner who lived on the island long before the tourists showed up, and watched a local football game. belize is the official country of the '89-'91 toyota camry -- like the one i used to drive. belize is also the land of junked 'parts cars' parked on the street, although none of them are camrys.
friday morning i woke up at 5:45 to take the 6:30 boat to belize city. i arrived in the city at 7:30 and promptly started cycling, alone for the first time since cancun-playa del carmen. riding in the morning was, well, painful. my legs hurt, there was a headwind, the first 70k were all slightly uphill, the sky was grey and gloomy and i had my first flat tire (even worse, a slow leak). a morning of no smiles. around 70k i met a german guy, cycling in the other direction, who had been going since los angeles. after a brief 1-hour chat about nothing, he informed me that there was a fruit stand selling bananas (my staple food) only 2k up the road. so after an hour rest, 3 bananas, 1 orange, and 500ml of coke, the sun coming out and the wind stopping, i felt better. the last 65k were hilly, scenic, and hot. my determination to make it to the guatemala boarder paid off, and I was rewarded with a nice hotel room for $2.50. i spent almost 9 hours on the bike on friday.
to finish off the cycling drivel, yesterday was tough too. the first 17k of roads outside of melchor de menchos (the boarder town) were unpaved and in very poor shape -- it took almost 2.5 hours to ride. the remaining 65k were quite hilly; pretty similar to the roads in wisco, actually, but my legs held up and i made it here, to flores/santa elana.
the transition from belize to guatemala was striking and almost instantaneous. belize immigration is in a nice, clean building with friendly, english- and spanish-speaking staff who charge you $19 to leave the country. 15 feet past is guatemala immigration, where you shove your passport under a dark window get it back instantaneously with a stamp and some illegible scrawl (something i know a lot about). suddenly the roads are dusty and in bad shape and every third person has gold teeth, apparently a sign of wealth. guatemala is like the latin-american version of the old west, with horses, cows, guns and machetes everywhere. i was shot at yesterday, but fortunately it was only a 4 year old with a water gun. people are polite and friendly here, but there is a noticible seedy undercurrent, which is much to my liking. it seems like the the poorer the country, the friendlier the people and the more numerous the hijackings. i actually feel safer on a bicycle that i would on a tourist van or bus. i'm having this recurring vision of being greeted warmly by a gang about to rob a tourist bus. because, after all, i'm a cyclist, not a tourist (participating in cyclism?).
today is a rest day. a couple of israelis i met in cancun are here, so we're going to hang out and swim/canoe in the lake here today. tomorrow we?re taking a 5am bus to Tikal, supposedly the most impressive mayan ruins site. it better be impressive, because i dropped a whole $16 on a new camera for it.