Lost Cultures - Leg #4
First challenge will be the Darien Gap, between Colombia and Panama. This is a 100km jungle, with no road to get through it. The only way around is by shipping the bike or by boat. We have found 2 options, one is to take small speedboats with the bike hauled on board, and the preferred is to have the bike strapped on board a sailboat and visit the San Blas Islands on the way around. These palm tree little islands, home to the Kuna Indians, look amazing.
Once in Panama we head north through Central America. Many of these smaller countries can be ridden through in a day and we may just do that with some of them. In many cases, it can take almost as long to work out the border arrangements than to actually ride through the country. We will probably stop in Granada, Nicaragua, which many consider the first city of the new world. Located on the shores of fresh water Lake Nicaragua, which even has sharks in it. From there, we head north and once in Guatemala, we will visit Tikal, the first of many Mayan ruins we will visit. We will camp at Tikal for the night, hoping to be woken at 4am by the horrifying sounds of the Howling monkeys in the jungle! After Tikal, as we loop the Yucatan, we will visit the Mayan sites of Chetumal, Telum, chichen Itza and Palenque. We will probably avoid the tourist cities in this area and instead stay in the smaller towns. We also hope to see a Cenote, which is a swimming hole created at the bottom of a sink hole. Next up is Mexico City as well as the Aztec historical sites of that region. Finally, we ride back to the Pacific coast through Guadalahara to Mazatlan, were we catch the ferry to La Paz on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico.
Planned date - January 27, 2017 - February 20, 2017
Leg approximates - 5700kms in 22 days (260km per day average)
TOTAL SO FAR 23,400 kms