Going The Distance

Holy hell, Batman. We’re going to have an audience. And not just a news audience, people, a real live studio audience. We’re booked to appear on Nicaragua’s number one talkshow, Margarita, te voy a contar…

We arrive at the studios at 2pm. On time, for once. Bike parked, into the green room for hair and makeup. Canal 2’s news team quickly ask if they can interview us, so we are ushered outside to the bike for an interview on Nicaraguan news.

News Interview over, we head back to the green room for finishing touches to hair and make up. Helmet Hair tamed by baffled looking Nicaraguan lady who had never ever seen hair as thin as mine… Margarita gives us our questions to look over (interview going to be in Spanish, time to practice) and leaves us alone. Filming on the show starts, but we are not required for about another hour. Which means that the two of us are left alone with a dictionary, our rubbish Spanish, and a whole lot of time to work ourselves into a panic.

It was like waiting for a Spanish GSCE oral exam, knowing that you hadn’t done nearly enough preparation, and that in fact you weren’t going to be asking directions to the town hall to a solitary man in a room but instead answering questions in front of a live studio audience of 100 and potentially a nation of Nicaraguans.

Finally, we were brought out on stage and sat down beside the charming Margarita. I think the audience were fairly baffled – not at all sure that two Brits with a poor grasp of Spanish was what they signed up for. And we were away. Mike remains convinced that he wowed the crowd with his flawless Spanish, dancing through jokes about local musicians and polygamists with a polyglot grace which I’m not sure he possesses. He’s making the edit of the event so no doubt it will be vetted to tell that very tale.

Either way, he got some great laughs out of the audience. I engendered pity, and all in all, the audience seemed to engage with the idea and we got our hand shaken a lot as we left the studio. Interestingly, the audience all formed a long queue to receive a cake as they left the studio. Methinks they might have been bribed to sit through our interview…

Once we’d finished with the interview yesterday, we headed to Granada for the night. It’s one of the most wonderful towns on our route – it has the same vibe as Antigua in Guatemala (colonial, slightly touristy, very laid back) but is smaller and on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. Mike spent a summer during his university career on the Island of Omatepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, studying the behaviour of capuccin monkeys, so this was all his old stomping ground. We stayed in Hotel Granada because he remembered it, and I had to endure much reminiscing. If you make it to Nicaragua, please make it to Granada. It’s totally lovely. We made some new friends last night, and managed to get contacts for yet another great interview this morning.

Maria and Evan own a bar called Nectar. An absolute corker of a place on the main street from the town to the lake, the road where most of the gringos hang out. Maria is Nicaraguense and when Mike told her what we were up to, she suggested that we interview Jose Joaquin Quarto, a nationally recognised historian and political activist, recently awarded a national prize for his work, and married for 62 years. And she organised that we did.

Another astounding interview. He’s a formidable brain, and certainly on the history of Nicaragua. He even spent time incarcerated for his beliefs during the civil war. He credits his family (9 children) as his greatest ever accomplishment, and the courtyard of the house has its four walls lined with hundreds of photos of the family, mostly getting married.

He talks to us for a while about the history of Nicaragua, then he is joined by his wife of 62 years, Gladis. We have another very moving interview about love, marriage, and the role of God in the union. Jose and Gladis lost one of their children, and Gladis says that it’s the hardest thing that she has ever had to endure. They talk with so much pride about their 22 grandchildren and many more great-grandchildren, it’s a wonderful thing. I have to confess, once again, that my Spanish didn’t get all of it, but I did make out that love at this age is not like love in youth, but that it’s equally precious.

So it turns out – and if any of you are actually following our journey, you’ll have realised this long before we did – that there’s virtually no way that we can make Ushaia by Christmas. 2 months, half the journey left to do. Not likely. Unless we bust our balls. We’ll keep you posted on this.

So three days in Managua was not necessarily on our To Do list. But, as it happens, it was worth it though we did have to work through some major frustration (and all last week’s X Factor videos on Youtube. Mike angry.) Firstly, we managed, with the help of a bloke we met in Leon, to get an interview with the host of Nicaragua’s top talkshow, Margarita te voy a contar… Margarita and her husband, Alejandro.

Every Saturday afternoon, the show airs to the nation. And Nicaraguans tune in in their millions. Margarita is like an Esther Ranzten, with smaller teeth and many more years on her side. The show is human interest – with elements of Surprise Surprise  (long lost relatives), and Candid Camera meets Hearts of Gold. She has a very strong faith, and as such, the interview with her and her husband was hugely celebratory and thankful for what they share. I have to say, I love these interviews. The role that God plays in a marriage down here in Latin America cannot be underestimated. It’s like a foundation for everything. Perhaps it’s hugely reductive to say that God’s presence means that they argue less (one of the many flaws with our one hour interviews is that they only tell us what they want to tell us – so we never get to hear or witness the arguments) but all of them talk about how they are bound together, feeling more secure in their ultimate destiny because of the presence of God.

When we asked about her fame, Margarita said that it is nothing like as invasive as fame is in the States, and that she is able to have a totally normal life when she is out of the studio. Occasionally she is stopped on the street for autographs, but she loves that, and no paparazzi will follow her around.

I loved her advice which was to have some sort of physical contact with your other half every day – whether it’s a hug, a kiss, or even just a pat on the back. I force Mike to give me a kiss and a hug every morning (I have to say, this seems to be getting harder and harder as the trip goes on…) and despite his general disdain for the gesture, I do feel it gets the day off to a good start.

We spent a fair amount of time in Leon just mooching about. The thing about covering all this distance is that you need R&R afterwards (and what better way to R&R than to go drinking with a South African?).

Prior to our arrival in Leon, our Head Researcher (read “only researcher, my dad”) had contacted the University of Leon’s English department, with the idea that they may be able both to help us find a couple and to provide a student to act as translator. Both of which they did fabulously, a huge huge thanks to the head of the faculty, a genial and generally wonderful man called Francisco. With his star pupil, Ulisse, we headed out to the suburbs of the colonial Leon, off paved roads into narrow mud streets lined with single story dwellings. (I’m making this sound more dramatic for effect, natch).

Gorgonio and Soledad have been married for over 50 years. He is friendly, but has trouble walking. His small and sweet-faced wife is now almost totally deaf, something he says is one of the hardest parts of the marriage now. We wanted to find out about how the family, and their relationship, had been affected by the civil war. He managed to bypass it by keeping his nose down and working the fields. Again, God was an important part of this marriage – and family felt like the most important thing in the lives of this couple, something which we have felt increasingly as we have headed into Latin America.

We get back to the hotel, pack up our stuff, say goodbye to Team Leon (Francisco, Ulisse and the faculty secretary who found us Gorgonio and Soledad) and set off with Chris. Our loud, blonde, Jaarpie Jiminy Cricket. We picked up another pan-American biker on the way into Managua, Phillippe, and tucked into lunch.

Now for 3 long days in Managua. Not the most inspiring of places. Our hearts sank as we waved goodbye to our biker friends as they left us for Granada, and we started on the road to setting up our next interview.

We set off “early”. This means 9.30am. No matter what we do, we don’t seem to be able to get our shit together enough to be able to hit the road. The plan today is to cross from El Salvador briefly into Honduras then out, as soon as possible, into Nicaragua. Honduras, by all accounts, is not a wise place to be at the moment. There are major political rumblings, the ousted president has smuggled himself back into the country in the last few days, and it’s generally not a wise place to be.

As we pull up to the Honduras border, we come up behind a BMW GS1200 Adventure. The bike of the pros (or rather, the people who think they are pros. Wooooooo). The Ewan and Charlies of this world. It’s beautifully rigged with slick Touratech silver panniers, lots of chrome accessories, and a rider in the full, correct kit. I see the Floridian numberplate and the blond hair curling up under the helmet and my heart sinks. Oh God. Some minted Yank.

Hearing English, the rider turns, takes off his helmet and strolls over. Oh God. He flashes a wide smile, and starts yakking with a thick South African accent. We’re ok. He too is heading across two borders to Leon, Nicaragua. He’d been in Honduras before and been mugged, so was happy to have company for the second crossing. Meet Chris. A South African who has been living in the States for the last 18 years. (”I’m a bona fide African American”) He set up a successful construction business, married a US girl and lives in Fort Lauderdale. He somehow managed to convince his wife to come with him on the trip down to Ushaia from Canada. She has rheumatoid arthritis which requires a bi-weekly injection – the medication for which needs to be refrigerated. So Chris set to work in his garage creating a tiny fridge which could be rigged onto the bike. So successfully was his design that Touratech have asked him to create a prototype which they can then look at manufacturing commercially. What a legend.

He and his wife (and I think there’s much to be learned here…) are taking a year to go down to Ushaia then back up through Africa (Mike’s dream!). But, here’s the deal, she does 6 weeks on, 2 weeks off – flying home to Miami (or up to see friends in New York), when she gets fed up, or they get fed up of each other. They are both party-loving, independent individuals, and it seems to be working perfectly.

With Chris, just moments after the fight

I’m left alone guarding the bikes as the boy negotiate the paperwork. I’m in a huge crowd of Hondurans, bustling and trying to sell stuff. After about 20 minutes, a woman walks past and mumbles irritated at me. Another local woman comes to my defence and a fight ensues. My defender is waving a broom at the now spitting and hissing psycho lady. The whole crowd (of maybe 100) is cheering and woooooing at appropriate moments. Finally the “puta” who started the whole thing is shooed away by the jeering crowd and the threat of a broom. I thank my little saviour.

It was the first time we had ridden with another rider, let alone someone on a BMW with an engine nearly twice the size of ours, with half the weight we are carrying. Chris danced in and out of the traffic, smoothly overtaking as the BMW beast acceleration glided him round cars and trucks. We are basically a car. Overtaking is very hard because of the weight that we are carrying and the limited acceleration as a result. 

That aside, the ride at dusk into Nicaragua, pink sky throwing the volcano into silhouette, was one of the most spectacular of our trip so far along La Ruta de los Volcanes. Just breathtaking. We have about half an hour of this scene then the lightning starts in the distance. Nearly continuous flashes of light which illuminate the clouds in front of them. It’s now a race against the weather – which we naturally lose. In the tension to beat the weather and keep up with Chris, Mike clunks into a Chicken Bus which stops in front of us, taking out the indicator and light on the sidecar. Another trip to the mechanic… The heavens rip open and deposit such volumes of rain that even the pocket of the poncho I am wearing becomes fat with rain (it’s zipped shut with a flap over the top to prevent this from happening); we have to ride through deeps rivers which have appeared on the roads. We were only 10 minutes from our destination in Leon, but in ten minutes everything we own is rendered sodden.

We then go out into town with Chris, once we’re dried off, and head to the backpackers’ bar. Where we naturally meet friends of Chris’ from Antigua (which seems to be the centre of the Central American backpacking world). We sit and do the classic thing where it’s not conversation but people retorting with their own travelling stories, trying to outdo each other. I liken it to the way graphite is formed. Layers that are tightly bonded, but nothing holding those layers together. So the layers slide over each other as the pencil of conversation moves on regardless of what went before. A slightly laboured metaphor, but you get the picture.

There a number of international schools in San Salvador, designed to catered to the wealthy middle and upper classes of El Salvador. People who live in gated communities in the capital, who drive BMWs, and who (chose to) see little of the country around them. The children of these people need to be educated, so they are dispatched to either the American school, the Lycee Francais, the British school, the German school… you get the idea. Well, it just so happen that we’re staying with a friend who teaches science at the British school. So Friday night is spent, after we leave the couple and their exquisite, gated property in the hills, with a collection of teaches from said school. All people our age, and drinkers. We meet in a great bar called La Ventana, where we happily get drunk with the kind of bawdy Brit banter which we haven’t had for a while. We then go clubbing, San Salvador style. Somewhat bizarrely, all the clubs are located in shopping malls. So hundreds of people are milling between various clubs, all located between clothes shops and the usual mall fayre. Very bizarre.

Either way, we wake up with hangovers. Time to hit the papusas, methinks. Neil, our awesome host, takes us up to the top of the volcano to check out the crater. Then to a fat lunch with, natch, papusas.

Highlighted by flash of lightning in pitch black night (check out the science specs)

Before the rain, a volcano on the way to San Miguel

We set off late. Of course. But what a wonderful morning of tourist bliss. Head to San Miguel, El Salvador’s 3rd largest city and on the way to the Honduras border. It, of course, absolutely pisses with rain once again and we arrive, like drowned rats, in San Miguel. I make Mike watch So you think you can dance? and then The Devil Wears Prada. All is well with the world.

El Sunzal is truly magical. It’s a surfer’s paradise, being home to one of the Top 10 breaks in the world, and putting El Salvador firmly on the surf circuit. We’re here because we had arranged to meet Mark Beaumont (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/cyclingtheamericas/), the cyclist doing the same route as us in the same time… We’d been working towards a meeting since we last crossed paths with him in Utah. Which is why we ended up driving 4 hours into the night last night so that we could see him. He is in El Sunzal to try his hand at surfing.

Our room looks out over the sea. The rolling waves are peppered with the black spidery forms of tens of surfers waiting for the right break. The vista is framed by palm trees, and for the first time in a very long time, it feels like we’re actually on holiday.

Mark is a fascinating character. He’s intense and focussed in that way that you’d expect from a man who has cycled the world in record time. But he’s also great company, entertaining and very interesting. Not what you’d expect from such an athlete (I remember when Mike was training for the Marathon des Sables. His chat disappeared into a vortex of “personal bests”, “calorie requirements” and sleep). We’ve had our ups and downs with regards to how we feel about him – when we first heard about what he was doing (the same route, in the same time and that he had total funding and support from the BBC), we were floored. We were in Vancouver and we spent a day in relative silence and despair, contemplating the likelihood of our film going anywhere, when we were doing a lazy man’s version of someone else’s. But we slowly picked ourselves, tightened our proposition (very much on the love stories, the couples, the experts – rather than a intro to the places we were visiting along the way, which is what he will be doing so well – with a team of BBC researchers behind him) and we came to thank him for being a bit of a talisman. When we crossed paths with him in Utah, it was fabulous. We laughed, got on very well, and resolved to see him again.

Mike goes to the local mechanics to fix the punctured inner tube. He comes back speechless – blown away by the artisanal skill of these guys. Without any of the accountrements of US tyre shops, this little llanteria turned useless rubber into fully operational wheel in less than 5 minutes. For a bill of $3.

Next appointment is in San Salvador, the national’s capital. A city living in the shadow of a conical volcano. Of course we set off later than we intend to, and of course we are driving into the darkness. But no matter, this time we live to tell the tale. We head to a spectacular house, on a hill looking out over San Salvador, owned by a writer, Evangelina, and her husband, Mario, a former industrial rice farmer – from what I could understand, before the civil war, one of the biggest rice producers in the Americas.

The place is like a palace. There’s an entire room devoted to Mario’s love (and competence) of hunting: the floor is covered with animal skins – leopards, deer, erm… – the walls alive with heads of buffalo and antelope; with the centrepiece being a chandelier of antlers. Made by Evangelina herself.

They have 7 daughters. The family is exquisite. Evangelina, with some basic maths, must be in her 70s, but looks sensational. We later meet her 50 year old daughter who genuinely looks younger than me. Evangelina writes for the national newspaper, El Diario Del Hoy, and did a piece of the factors in lasting marriage (her own marriage is 52 years old), which is how we found her (with our Wonder Researcher, Mark Boylan). But her and Mario’s story is much more interesting than we could ever have hoped: Mario lost everything when the revolutionaries seized his huge family rice farm and left him with absolutely nothing. The family went from wealth to poverty, moving to a tiny place where the 7 daughters all had to share few rooms. I have to confess that my Spanish wasn’t quite up to understanding all the details, but Mario freely and sadly admits that it took him decades to recover.

When I asked them how they made it through that time, how their marriage survived, Evangelina said that often crisis drives couples closer together. They had to fight together against the world which had dealt them such a cruel blow (Mario’s farm of course was misrun by the new, land-hungry owners, and the productivity fell away – part of the bigger picture which contributed to the lack of food in the country. Added to this, a blight had attacked rice crops across the Americas, and Mario was at the fore of research to cultivate a variety of rice with resistance. All that research was lost). Evangelina talked about how marriage is like a boat. You have to build something really sturdy before you set sail, and to be ready to be tested by the calm waters and choppy seas which await you. God, of course, is at the tiller, helping you chart a path through these waters. I liked the analogy, personally. I like the fact that you need to be sure of your craft before you set sail, and that you are at the mercy of elements far beyond your control. I just need to understand a little more of the Spanish to bring you more wisdom.

As an aside, they served pupusa, a traditional El Salvadoran dish. It’s their version of the tortilla – only thicker and often stuffed with cheese, beans or meat. As I worshipper of all white foods, I can attest that the cheese pupusa is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. Cheese in baked into the bread so it’s one large, doughy, squidgy lump (not unlike myself) and it’s perfection.

Well, campers, the high of meeting and successfully interviewing Rigoberta Menchu is short-lived. We have to hit the road for El Salvador. Nothing crazy about that, I hear you say, it’s only about 4 hours from Guatemala City to San Salvador. Well, yes. But not when you travel like the Clears travel: nothing works as easily as it should. For starters, it takes us ages to leave anywhere. So we’re still buffooning around (writing emails for research, making phonecalls to sort stuff in San Salvador, Skype-ing my parents) until 2pm. Then we set off. Then the heavens open. Again. Big, fat drops of rain which overwhelm us and blind everyone.

We stop in a Burger King in the ‘burbs (a Burber King, if you will) and I GET RECOGNISED by the lady serving me. Yes, people, our appearance in the national paper, Prensa Libre, means that along our route, people know our story. This is my 15 minutes of fame! All hail Warhol! We hide in Burger King, read the article and lunch (standard issue burger for lunch. How depressing. These are the bits that you don’t hear about).

Back on the road when the rain eases up a bit and we head on to the Guatemalan border with El Salvador (a bridge across the Rio Paz). It’s better than the one with Mexico, but still it takes ages. And, of course, while we’re at it, darkness drops like a black inky curtain. Sub-optimal. I’m tense because we still have 200km to drive. Mike is trying to be upbeat, but I become toxic so I warn him, and put in headphones to spare him any ludicrously unjustified wrath. And it’s then, right then, that the tyre gets a puncture. 5 minutes into El Salvador, on a steep ascent, in the pitch blackness, in the middle of nowhere, miles from where we are hoping to get to (which happens to be dinner with Mark Beaumont, the cyclist doing the same route as us for the BBC). NOT COOL. That bloody carter key (all you buffs out there should know what I’m talking about – because I don’t) – the same one which took 20 minutes to get out in Yuma, takes half an hour this time. All it is is a tiny little pin which hold the wheel in place. It’s tiny. And irrelevant. And a pain in the arse.

Sorted eventually, arrive with Mark at 11pm. Too late for dinner, but there’s always time for beer. Good to catch up with him – last time we saw him was Moab, Utah. Very nice to talk to someone doing a very similar thing.

Unbelievable. Guatemala’s most famous woman agrees to an interview with us. We head to her home in Mixco, just outside Guatemala City, and settle down to interview Rigoberta Menchu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1992 and her husband, Angel. (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1992/presentation-speech.html)

I can’t possibly do this interview justice when we are racing out the door to get to El Salvador now, but I don’t think I have met such an inspiring woman for a very long time. She won the prize for her efforts to bring the struggle of indigenous people in Guatemala, and now the world over, to the fore. Her own story is one of immense suffering, her family were tortured during Guatemala’s fierce civil war, she was exiled alone to Mexico, and continued to campaign. She won the prize in 1992. She is, in some ways, as controversial a choice at Obama – though in a different way: elements of her autobiography were thrown into question when an anthropologist went sniffing about. That aside, there is no doubt that her entire family were slaughtered around her, and she has endured suffering which very few can know in their lifetime. Yet she has been able to take those experiences and use them for the positive, to try and eradicate indigenous suffering and poverty.

The interview, as we expected, was inspiring. She talked about her work, her dedication to bringing peace and understanding, and about her own love for Angel and the importance of it in her life. Angel talked about love in the Mayan tradition, and his advice was some of the most sage that we have heard so far (”love is every moment of every day. It’s the ups and downs, the victories and the failures, the laughter and the tears.”). What an amazing experience. Not for the first time on this trip, I’m am totally flawed by the people that we are meeting.

Today feels better. We have an interview with the national paper, Prensa Libre and we have a planned interview with arguably the most famous woman in Guatemala. It’s all going to be ok… Except that these highs and lows are not doing much for my hope that I’m not bi-polar.

We spent 3 hours in the afternoon being interviewed by the biggest paper in Guatemala, the Prensa Libre. They filmed us driving round the city, then pulled up in the main square to do the interview. The most amazing thing occurred. We were told that Guatemalan people (the “Guatemaltecos”) are very curious. So when the interview began, and he had us leaning against the bike, with us in our suits, , camera pointed at us, a crowd started to gather. By the time we had finished, there must have been 25 people gathered around us in a circle listening to our interview and asking their own questions. This in turn prompted two other news crews to arrive to interview us. It was a frenzy, a totally brilliant frenzy.

After that, the reporters took us for lunch in the bustling market. Hundreds of people selling everything from fruit to local curios and we ate chillis rellenos and drank fresh lemon juice – delicious things that we’d usually steer well clear of for fear of the mighty bum wee.

We then decided to go to Antigua, the ancient capital of Guatemala. A few people, and the guide book, said that it was worth a visit, but we don’t normally have the time for tourist stuff (weep) because of research and driving, etc. But bloody hell it was worth it. If you come to Guatemala and don’t go to Antigua, you have missed the most exquisite city I think I have seen. Without doubt, a highlight of the trip so far. Nestled at the base of a forested basin, with cobbled streets, exquisite buildings, lovely shops – and a fair few tourists, but not so many it’s in any way oppressive. It was gorgeous. Lovely dinner together in candlelit courtyard. Loving being a tourist.