What could go wrong? or musings at a barber shop

As we prepare to leave San Cristobal, I recognize the same patterns in myself that I see every time I have to make a change in my life. A mixture of excitement and apprehension. I think everyone must go through the same thing, which gives me some comfort, but I am who I am, and the butterflies coupled with a slight depression, topped off with anticipation of good times to come is something that, given my lifestyle, I have come to know well.

I love it here in San Cristobal. We have an amazing house, language courses were a total kick in the pants, and the burgeoning local climbing community is fun to participate in. There must be thousands of caves left to explore in this area, climbs to climb, coffee shops to indulge in, people to meet, and barbers to explore. But if I were to do that, then I might miss out on what lies ahead.

But what does lie ahead? Our short term plan is to leave tomorrow (Wednesday the 17th- St Patties Day) for Pelenque, a vast complex of mayan ruins about 150 miles north of here, but in the jungle. Goodbye cool air (SanCris is at 7000 feet), hello Mosquitos. We will spend a day there, then blast across the south part of the Yucatan peninsula to the Belize/ Mexican border. We have to ride a 300 mile day, because on Saturday we will make the first of 6 border crossings in the next 10 days.
Crossing borders down here is a bad idea on Sundays so we need to be positioned to cross first thing Saturday morning.  Then we enter Belize, try to find a reasonable rate for Belize dollars, get the bikes fumigated, purchase liability insurance, and head down the road in a country that speaks some language similar to English. Belize has a reputation as a country littered with caves. I would love to spend some time there, but we need to make tracks south. So we plan on leaving Belize on Monday via the western border with Guatemala. We will drive the short distance to Tikal, another marvel of a ruin (or so I hear), and check them out. After that, we head south along the Belizian, Guatemalan border towards Honduras. Honduras has a reputation…

and this where I will stop with that type of business. As I've written before, this type of travel is a mixture of personal adventure and wanting to know what lays around the next corner. We often try to ask the question of when we should stop using the "guide"- chatrooms, guidebooks, blogs, and start using our noses. If I read enough accounts of any given place, I am sure to find one where someone has a horrible experience with robberies or with bribery, or with a cow. But there are many more where nothing negative occurs. In fact there are stories where people have an amazing time interacting with the locals and exploring the areas. Of course, we need to be careful to not go into truly dangerous areas and for this I try to do a little research. But then the cycle starts all over again and I start to read about crazy shit that happens and then of course I get nervous.

This is where we stand. We've found a wonderful place in SanCris and the unknown road of danger (or not) is out in front of us. What if we can't cross the border without having to pay a huge bribe? What if we get all of our gear stolen at gun point? What if it is hot, and we have to suffer for days on end? But what if all of these things happen, and we get through it and we learn about ourselves and how we react in tough situations. As my buddy Andre says, "What could go wrong?"

Or what if nothing of note happens? Will I be disappointed? Will I feel like I should have taken that slightly smaller road? Who knows? But for now we are off and we have some information at our disposal and there is a lot of world out there that we will just have to figure out how to live in.

So as I sit in a barber shop, waiting my turn and musing over our third major departure of the trip (1. Seattle 2. Ventura, CA 3. San Cris), I feel anxiety over what lays ahead, but damn lucky to have the opportunity to feel it.

Update: 

While getting my hair cut, I spoke spanish for nearly a half an hour learning that my barber has been cutting hair for 50 years (19 of which are in the building I got mine cut it), his name is Raul Flores. He told me that there is a teachers strike in San Cristobal right now and because of that the teachers have blockaded all of the roads in and out of San Cristobal. Hmmmm, with the roads blocked, how will we leave town?