In this one day event on December 14 Doctors Without Borders shares insight from the frontlines about dealing with medical emergencies by broadcasting a special documentary in select theaters across the US.
2 comments December 9th, 2009
Since coming back from the two mountains I have been riding again. As you can see from the SPOT track, I’ve covered El Salvador, crossed through the narrow stretch of Honduras and entered Nicaragua. That’s 3 different countries on 3 consecutive days! One could have crossed the Golfo Fonseca also by boat, thus bypassing Honduras. The road leads around the golf in a big horseshoe. Since I had already entered Honduras (for Cerro Las Minas) before without problems I was not concerned about safety when passing Honduras by bicycle. (Also the recent elections from a week ago have resulted in a newly established government which is finally being recognized by the international community, so there was less reason to expect political unrest.)
We are in the tropics here in Central America, and the dry season is upon us, so I haven’t had a drop of rain since resuming the ride after the Costa Rica vacation. I also have stayed mostly in the low lands with the bicycle and away from the mountains. That allows me to proceed somewhat faster, but it is also very hot. I have had temperatures around 35C every day, peaking at 38C a few times. This makes one get up very early and ride the first 2-3 hr of the day in relatively cool conditions.
It again amazes me how much attention my bike is receiving everywhere I show up. I usually smile and wave at people along the road, and almost all of them wave back and/or shout enthusiastically, or blow their horns. It can actually get tiring to receive that much attention all the time. Sometimes in the evenings when I’m tired and exhausted from the heat and a long day on the bike, I just want to be left alone and not have to cheer and answer the same questions over and over. After I park my bicycle for the night and change into normal cloths, I can move around without the attention. There is bliss in anonymity…
From reading bike books I was expecting the area to be poorer and less developed. But apparently a lot of development has happened here in the last decade or so. There are new roads and bridges (for example around Choluteca), many an old, pothole-riddled road has been paved freshly (for example the road from the Nicaragua border in Guasaule to Chinandega), there are cell phone towers and little Internet providers practically everywhere. (This also makes the State Department’s recommendation not to use cell phones in public somewhat outdated, as literally everyone here has a cell phone.) There are also many colorfully painted houses and some schools and international development projects along the way.
One aspect that still shows how far these countries have to go is that they often lack running water. So you take your showers with little buckets filled from big barrels of rainwater. I wonder what these folk do at the end of the dry season…
People are universally friendly and curious (especially due to my unusual recumbent bike). Border crossings proved to be far quicker than I thought – rarely did I wait more than 10 min! And traffic isn’t as bad as I thought – that was far worse for example in Guatemala. Here, however, you always have to expect cows, dogs, pigs or vultures on the road.
Occassionally I am accompanied by other riders, usually for a short stretch only, as the locals go from one village to the next. Sometimes there are 3 people sitting on one bike, and a few times I see a bike that’s loaded even heavier than mine!
This afternoon I hope to reach Leon, next to Granada one of the nicest cities in Nicaragua. Hopefully I will have some daylight left for sight-seeing there…
Add comment December 9th, 2009
Over the last two days I have hiked both the high point of El Salvador, Cerro El Pital (2790m) and of Honduras, Cerro Las Minas (2849m). Both peaks are in or near the Trifinio region (border of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras). To get there, I left my bicycle in Aguilares (El Salvador) and then had to do a lot of bus riding. Those bus rides are often the more adventurous part of the peaks in Central America – and they are not always safe (I’ll write a separate post about that soon.)
Cerro El Pital, El Salvador:
This country high point is probably the easiest to get to of all the Panamerican Peaks: The mountain has an antenna on its top and a regular road leading to a saddle not far from the top, as well as a 4-wheel drive track all the way to the top. There is also a camp ground just below the top, from which it takes only 10 minutes or so to reach the top. So this high point is not a mountaineering challenge at all.
The marker on the summit marks the border between El Salvador and Honduras. You can stand with one foot in each country, even though nowadays you have to be willing to straddle a barbed wire fence…
I was lucky as I hitched a ride on the last 5.5 km section from the main road to the summit with a jeep convoy of some engineers doing hydro-geological development projects. This is a joint venture between Germany and El Salvador, so I got a detailed explanation in German from one of the project members!
After my brief visit to El Pital I continued the bus ride to the border, where I entered Honduras after just a few minutes of paperwork and without any problems. (I often have to explain to people and border officials, when they inspect my Austrian passport, that Austria is not Australia!)
Cerro Las Minas, Honduras:
I reached Santa Rosa de Copan after another 2.5 hr bus ride from the border. By now it was almost 7pm and there was no more bus to the valley of Gracias, so I had to stay in Santa Rosa for the night. In Honduras the currency is called Limpira, and you always get a bundle of paper for any significant amount (they have no coins).
In the morning I took the first bus to Gracias, where I arrived at 7:15am. From there it’s annother 10km or so to the entrance of the Parque National Montana de Celaque. The most convenient way to get there is by Tuc-Tuc. I arranged for a round-trip transport and paid 1/3 at the beginning, giving the driver a good incentive to show up in the afternoon to pick me back up.
The trail begins at the park entrance at 1400m, Las Minas is the highest point at 2849m. That wouldn’t be too bad, except the normal trail already has a lot of up-&-downhill, so you’re looking at about 2000m elevation gain. For a single day hike this is quite ambitious. I had barely 8 hrs, but I was going to make a run for it. The trail starts up through amazing cloud forest, very similar to what we had seen at Chirripo in Costa Rica.
I was really excited about the steep trail which followed a ridgeline and was at times a bit exposed. While you had to watch your step you also got some brief glimpses of the surrounding valleys – most of the time you were just completely surrounded by forest and couldn’t see anything.
After climbing almost 1000m I topped out on a highpoint of the ridge, with steep drops all around. This path wasn’t leading to Las Minas after all! What to do? I continued down 100m to a saddle, and the only path from there continued down. I followed that path for another 150m or so, just to make sure there wasn’t a connection to another path nearby, but it seemed to lead all the way back down again. I couldn’t believe it! I ran back up to the saddle and searched for another path towards the main summit. I scrambled through the dense forest, but without a path this is both very tiring, slow and dangerous. If you slipped and fell, nobody would find you off the path. Also, you can easily get lost. After 50m or so I gave up; just retracing back to the saddle was quite tricky already. I had no choice but to go down, which made me believe that I would run out of time (and energy) to reach the summit today.
About 300m below the ridgetop the trail intersected with the normal route. Even though I had done almost 500m extra and lost about 1.5 hr I now had a chance again; my summit bid was still on. I continued hiking very fast on the steep trail, reaching my limit. Every hour I stopped briefly for 5 min or so to drink and eat a chocolate bar, but the mosquitoes were so relentless that you wouldn’t want to rest any longer. After about 5 hr I reached the top of Las Minas.
Sicne the top is completely covered in forest you can hardly see anything, much less a panoramic view, which was a bit disappointing. There is only a small wooden board and a country flag nailed to a tree.
After about 10 min I started downhill again. I now had only 2.5 hrs to get down to the park entrance. The trail is often quite steep, which allows you to descend fast – if you’re surefooted and comfortable running downhill fast. However, there were also plenty of ascents to negotiate, down and up little creeks and waterfalls, past some camping areas, etc. Most people do this mountain in two days and camp up here. After 7h 45min I reached the park entrance again and we immediately started with the Tuc-Tuc back down so I could catch the last bus at 5pm back to Santa Rosa. If this sounds like a hectic schedule, it was! We arrived in Gracias with 10 min to spare, so the driver showed me the fortress. I gave him a good tip and was soon sitting on the bus back to Santa Rosa, where I had dinner and stayed for the night again.
2 summits in 2 days, 5 summits in little more than a month. Now I have 8 (of 16) peaks. There are only 2 summits left in Central America (Nicaragua, Panama) – after that it’s all in South America.
Add comment December 5th, 2009
Today I will leave my bike in Aguilares (30 km N of San Salvador) and leave by bus to the area of Cerro El Pital, El Salvador’s high point and then nearby Cerro Las Minas in Honduras. Both of them are less than 3000m, so no challenge from altitude there.
El Pital is not a mountaineering challenge at all, as there is a road up there and a camp ground 5 minutes from the summit! It’s more like a drive / walk in the park.
Las Minas, however, is more remote and has 2000 m elevation gain through the cloud forest, so this should be a real good hike.
As with Tajumulco, I expect the real adventure to be the various bus rides to get to the respective trails.
I should be back in 3 days. Check back for an update and photos soon!
Add comment December 3rd, 2009
Yesterday I started to continue with my ride through Central America. First I needed to cross Guatemala City, which had a lot of traffic and stinking vehicles in store for me.
In addition, I needed to climb about 400 m up to a ridge to leave the city which is situated in a bowl. This climb was very uncomfortable due to the heat and the many particles of the dirty diesel exhaust of the incessant traffic. I actually got a slight headache from this exhaust – probably not the best day for my lungs either 🙁
As a counterpoint, what followed was a fantastic 900 m (3000 ft) downhill on a great 4-lane road (the CA-1 Highway). I covered 20 km in 25 min, topping out at speeds of nearly 72 km/h, passing several trucks on the way down. The latent energy I had put into the bike on my last day of hard riding up to Guatemala City was now released and helped me to cruise effortlessly.
So it went up and down several hundred m two more times for the rest of the day. I almost got caught again in the dark on a 1.5 hr climb until 5pm. On the downhill the sun was setting and when I reached the little village of El Amate (between Cuilapa and Jutiapa) it was getting dark. I ate dinner at a small restaurant and luckily the owners told me that I could pitch my tent on their private property just a short walk from the restaurant.
The last night in Guatemala was quite noisy, with roosters, dogs, trucks, and some crazy locals in their cars seemingly competing for the most annoying noise. In the middle of the night at 3am someone pulled up next to the road some 100m away from my tent and blasted the area with super loud music from the car stereo – that lasted almost 1 hr! I put in ear-plugs and drifted into sleep again…
Today in the morning I had breakfast there while the tent was drying in the early morning sun. Then I continued with the ride towards the El Salvador border, now only about 70 km away. First stop was in Jutiapa, where I looked for and found an Internet provider to catch up on email (since I didn’t have Internet access last night). Then I continued with some hills for the remaining 50 km to the border.
Some local cyclists rode beside me in this area which was fun. Once I reached the border there were long lines of trucks lining the road for several km apparently waiting for the paperwork of the border crossing. I was getting concerned about such wait time, but it turned out that for me it took only about 15 min. The border agent first did his paperwork, then came out to have a picture taken from his cell phone while sitting on my bike, then I had someone take a picture with my camera as well. They all wished me well for the rest of my journey.
The remaining 35 km were first another 200 m uphill, then a sizeable downhill and lastly about 20 km of flat road. The latter provided a great way to end the day; riding on a flat road is just so much less strenuous…
I reached Santa Ana, the first town here in El Salvador. Near the center I found a hotel and got a room with shower and bathroom and Internet – all for just $12 per night. Here in El Salvador the currency is US$, so no need to collect yet another currency in my wallet…
Tomorrow I will continue riding towards San Salvador, from where I’ll probably take a bus to detour to the country high point Cerro El Pital on the following day…
2 comments December 1st, 2009
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