Guatemala City

Logan

Our first real city on the bicycles. Peaceful chaos, and we were the only ones under our own power. Every direction to the airport was the same. Todo directo. Straight, all the way, on every road. Time ran out. Parasites, Alex and Dan incoming, so we turned around and found the internet where Central America keeps it, in a restaurant we would never have entered at home. A Taco Bell.

A seventeen-year-old ran out to the bikes and called us his heroes. Young grasshopper, we said, don't be inspired. Be jealous. He stayed inspired. His father is a Colombian diplomat at the U.N. He offered the apartment. We hid how happy a roof made us. Then he couldn't. Alex arrived by taxi with the cardboard bike box and his address written on it in marker, and we talked him into leaving the box on the sidewalk. Come rest inside Taco Bell. Not pictured, but it exists. We didn't stay.

The city-center hostel we found belonged on a different website. At 10 pm I called William Escobar, who was expecting two of us, and told him from a taxi driver's phone that there were four. He was at sushi. The driver and a restaurant owner argued over the directions while the others scolded me. Eight miles. His face, when four bicycles arrived, was the whole joke. He had room for two and made it work, then called Fernando, who at 11:30 let two strangers into his apartment. Trust people. Trust, people. That's the point.

Felipe, William, Fernando. We slept, and the border was next, and after that the ocean.