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The story of our mad ride through the Central America-4. From sweaty jungles and ancient temples to broken bikes, dodgy borders, rugged islands and going back to school. Here’s what happened…
This travel blog tells the story of our motorcycle adventure through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in 2024 during our round the world trip. To read more stories from our travels check out Our Adventures
Our motorcycle adventure through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua
By Andy Davidson
Mad or Nomad: Round the World Motorcycle Traveller
The Central America 4
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua teamed up back in 2006 to create the Central America 4. It sounds like a super hero gang, but its just an agreement allowing tourists to travel within these countries on one 90-day visa.
We rolled across the border into Guatemala, grabbed a couple of coffees and divided our 90 days up over a map. The biggest chunk of the visa pie goes to Guatemala and then Nicaragua leaving little El Salvador and Honduras to what’s left. Coffees finished and happy with our rough route we excitedly pointed our wheels towards Tikal…
Guatemala
Tikal
Tikal is an ancient Mayan city hidden away in Guatemala’s northern rainforest. They reckon it dates back to the 1st Century AD (although agriculture has been found here dating back to 1000BC and the first buildings went up 400BC). It boomed between 200-800AD becoming the most important and largest city state in the Maya region. But then it was mysteriously abandoned and nobody really knows why…
We arrived early while the sun was waking up and strolled through the huge park alone. A cool breeze swayed the trees, monkeys jumped between branches over our heads and we climbed up gigantic slabs of stone and through cold empty temples. It’s so hard to picture its once 100,000 inhabitants walking these same paths.
We climbed to the top of a pyramid and looked out over the forest. There are over 3,000 structures here, but only 5% of it has been uncovered. The sheer scale and ingenuity is indescribable.
Towers measure over 60m high, royal palaces, pyramids, administrative buildings, jails, ball courts, monuments and astronomical observatories to calculate the 260-day Mayan calendar as well as pyramids used to calculate equinox and solstice. The buildings were designed with serious precision. The temples face the sun and create sounds due to the way they were built. If you clap in front of one it makes the sound of the Quetzal (national bird).
This place and the Mayan civilisation is incredibly impressive – even rivalling and often surpassing the achievements of European civilisations and empires of the same time. It was hard to leave, but as the day wore on the sun was in full swing and tour busses started to arrive.
Riding the North
The north of Guatemala was baking us. The higher the sun rose into the sky the more unbearable it got so we plotted a route south to Antigua. At 1,600m above sea level, we’d finally be able to cool off. We just wanted a few days where our boots wouldn’t be filled with puddles of sweat after a ride…
Our route hugged the mountains so we could keep as cool as possible. The road and gravel tracks took us through rural villages where women chatted by bridges after washing themselves and their clothes in the water below. They combed their long black hair and walked home carrying huge pots of water on their heads. Their pretty dresses and smiles beamed in the afternoon sun.
Traffic jams through markets crammed with pigs and chickens and stalls of colourful peppers were the norm. Young children marched up hills alone, heaving huge water bottles on their backs held in place by straps around their foreheads. The north was very rural and very poor in some places, but stunningly beautiful at the same time.
Semuc Champey
We stopped off halfway at the town of Lanquin as it made a good base to visit Semuc Champey. Our accommodation offered all-in minivan tours to Semuc getting there for 10am. We politely declined, saying it’s okay, we’ll ride there ourselves… the look of horror!
“No! You can’t! It’s 10kms away and the road is so bad you won’t even be able to find it!” It’s beautifully poetic words like that which put smiles on our faces. Unfortunately, the road wasn’t as adventurous as we’d hoped, apart from the last 50 metres, which was the most fun bit. The ticket lady hadn’t even opened her office by the time we arrived. But luckily, they let us in early and the place was completely empty making it even more special.
Semuc is a natural limestone bridge. Over a thousand years, the Cahabon River carved its way through the limestone and now passes underneath it. What we’re left with is a 3,000 metre long ‘bridge’ covered in stunning crystal clear turquoise pools. And for three hours we had the place to ourselves.
READ MORE: How to Ride to Semuc Champey
Pizza and new friends
After a week in Guatemala City, we finally reached the beautiful town of Antigua and escaped the northern heat. Greg got in touch to say we could crash at his place. Turned out he also owns the best pizza restaurant and bar in town (Brooklyn Pizza) and he kindly insisted the pizzas and beers were on him. But he also insisted on pouring everyone at the bar non-stop fireball shots!
While in Antigua we also met up with a fellow round the world motorcycle traveller, the awesome Singara from Texas. We had a blast hanging out with him and chatting travel. After a while we moved in with a homestay family while we did a week of Spanish school. We loved Suhadey and her family and it was going to be hard to leave!
To the Lake
We heard that Lake Atitlan was a must visit, so after some time loving life in Antigua, we packed up and made our way west. But as soon as we left, the heavens opened and biblical floods crashed down throughout the mountain range. The rain relentlessly hammered us the whole way. The roads leading to San Pedro, Atitlan are seriously steep and with the onslaught of rain, the hills were awash with rocks, branches, rubbish and gushing muddy rivers. Our motorcycles waded uphill through deep thick muck as debris crashed down the hill in waves. And going downhill towards the lake was even worse.
After a few days the rain cleared and we could finally explore the region. Lake Atitlan is a volcanic lake in the Highlands of Guatemala. Pretty towns and three volcanoes circle the lake and the basin itself lies in a caldera created by a super volcanic eruption 85,000 years ago. The eruption was incomprehensibly huge. 270 cubic km of rock burst out of it. That’s so ridiculously big that its ash can be found as far as Florida and Ecuador.
We walked through the towns, watched the sun dip into the lake and ate silly amounts of chocolate as we meandered between chocolate making classes. We found a little homestay and signed up for a week of Spanish school. But the weather took a turn for the worse again. The rain was so heavy it even rained in our room – literally. It was hard to enjoy the region being wet all the time, so we made the move back to pretty little Antigua.
Back to school
We returned to Antigua for a few reasons. First, to escape the heat of the north and the rain of the west.
Second, we had been having problems with our bikes for a while. Alissa’s kept cutting out randomly and we heard there was a good mechanic in Antigua. We took the bike to him and asked for the injectors to be cleaned and to check the fuel filter and sensors. He returned the bike saying it was all fixed. We took it for a long ride and it was even worse, so we returned and he said he found and fixed the issue – it was just a faulty sensor.
And third, we wanted to learn Spanish, because only knowing “bonjour” just isn’t cutting it. We signed up to a Spanish school for three weeks and checked into an awesome homestay where the family didn’t speak a lick of English. We’d be in total immersion for that time. Three weeks later and now armed with “yes”, “please” and “is it spicy?” we were finally ready to tackle the rest of Central and South America…
READ MORE: Guatemala Motorcycle Guides
El Salvador
Bike woes
As we left Guatemala, the problem that was originally on Alissa’s bike was now transferred to mine – but worse. My bike would cut out going up every single hill. We called the mechanic in Guatemala saying they must have swapped a part. He was insistent they hadn’t. We kept calling until they ‘remembered’ what they switched and it turned out it was the throttle body – not the sensors, just the body.
But then we got thinking, what else did they switch and maybe not even do. We realised they switched the tanks and after disassembling the pumps found two extremely dirty fuel filters, which hadn’t been cleaned. Replacing those and returning the tanks to the right bikes fixed the problem by 99%, but Alissa’s bike would still cut intermittently, so this is an ongoing problem.
Waiting for cables
For five years from the UK to Japan and through Southeast Asia to Australia we carried a spare throttle cable and a tin of spare inner cables. But in all those years we never needed it on the XT. So, obviously, there was no point carrying a spare one again for these bikes…. But, of course we needed one as we entered El Salvador, and even more obviously – we couldn’t get one. The mechanic we found in San Salvador said the local Honda dealer was out, but that he was going back to Guatemala and would return in a week with a new cable for us. We didn’t mind waiting and taking some time out to explore the city and nearby volcano.
But, Guatemala Honda only gave him one cable… and it was the wrong one (the CRF requires two). We can’t wait around forever for more cables to come, so a mad dash around the city in a thunderstorm ensued. The rain was so bad, local riders pulled over to huddle under shelters from the rain.
I sat on the CRF at a permanently red traffic light in shorts and a t-shirt as buckets of rain were chucked into my face. They looked over and waved me under the cover… “No hay problema! Mi piel es resistente al agua!” They nodded, confused. Spanish school was paying off already. Luckily, we found a spare cable, switched them over and left for Honduras as we were now weeks behind our rough schedule.
READ MORE: El Salvador Motorcycle Guides
Honduras
Happy 40th
Riding into Honduras was special because it marked the 40th country on our round the world motorcycle trip. And the 88th country we’ve travelled to so far.
Unfortunately, as we lost so much time in Guatemala and El Salvador messing about with repairing the bikes, we had to run through Honduras. Plus, we wanted to escape the rain and hoped Nicaragua would have a kinder sky.
Drones and DHL
But before we could leave Honduras, we had to make a quick stop at DHL. Drones are illegal in Nicaragua and we couldn’t take it across the border so we posted it from Honduras to Costa Rica.
Having a drone is frustrating. We got it a year ago when we started in Canada. We saw all the cool shots and videos people make and thought, wouldn’t it have been amazing to film in some of those remote places we rode through in Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, the Pamirs of Tajikistan, the Wakhan Corridor, the vastness of Siberia, Laza and Xinaliq, Lo Manthang? We bit the bullet and bought one… and have flown it a grand total of once.
We have absolutely no idea how people find the time to film, fly drones, and make YouTube videos as they travel. And even if we could find the time, who’d want to be stuck indoors doing that all night and day? Maybe we should have posted our drone home instead of to Costa Rica. But, we sent it and headed for the notorious Nicaraguan border.
If you’re looking for info on how to ship your drone, check out our Honduras Guide.
READ MORE: Motorcycle Travel Guide: Honduras
Nicaragua
No ‘TIP’ for you!
Crossing the border was as painful as we expected it to be. It’s sometimes the luck of the draw with borders and we’ve had much worse, but this one’s right up there.
It was seriously slow. The amount of paperwork needed is silly and their setup is stuck in a time warp. How are its neighbours so much more advanced considering how much more touristy Nicaragua is?
To be fair, the staff at the border were friendly and helpful and the hoops the government make people jump through and their immigration/customs system isn’t the border staff’s fault.
But, we did have a couple of angry officials and it was all because of the drone, which we didn’t even have. A police officer inspected our bikes and asked if we had a drone. We gave her our DHL receipt. She checked our bags and gave us a slip of paper saying we do not have a drone.
We then had to queue (the 5th queue) to get our temporary import permit (TIP) and had to give the TIP lady (who was not having a good day) the slip from the police officer.
But even though it was clearly written (in Spanish) that we do not have a drone by the police officer… just having the word ‘drone’ on there sent her into a downward spiral.
She refused to give us a TIP because “we had a drone” and wanted us to get out of the huge queue that was forming behind us. No way. She was taking 20 minutes per person and we’d already been waiting in the queue for hours. I went in search of the officer while Alissa held fast.
The officer had left her post and after explaining everything to her colleague – her response was literally to look me dead in the eye and with no words or reply, she just sucked her teeth and that was the end of that conversation.
15 minutes later I saw the police woman and ushered her to the TIP woman, who had now lost her cool. A shouting match ensued between them. The police officer won and we were issued a TIP.
Hours had passed, a gale force wind was blowing over palm trees outside the building, the rain was fierce, it was getting dark and we had a two hour ride ahead of us. It was a fun introduction to Nicaragua.
A tale of two cities
We divided our time between the cities of Leon and Granada. Let’s start by saying they’re both nice cities and there’s no winners – except Granada – we loved Granada!
Granada and Leon are long time rivals – even resulting in a Civil War between them. The story of the American mercenary William Walker who invaded and became the Nicaraguan president in the 1850s is mad… Worth digging into if you’re interested.
What we found most interesting about Leon is how anti-American it is. Clearly shown by the countless murals. Snakes are painted on walls in US colours for example. People here say it’s due to the US’s constant involvement in their political affairs and propping up puppet governments and supporting coups. Assassinations, revolutions, wars – the more you look into this country the crazier it gets.
One of the main reasons we visited Leon was to board down a volcano… Cerro Negro is the youngest volcano in Central America, but also one of the most active in Nicaragua. And you can fly down it on a wooden board after a sweaty hike up. Since it was formed in 1850, it has erupted 23 times – luckily, you can go quite quick on these boards!
Granada has a cooler vibe to it. The restaurants are excellent, it’s nowhere near as humid, there are beautiful warm water volcanic lakes close by and there’s so much more to do so we spent more time relaxing and unwinding there.
Ometepe
Our last big stop in Nicaragua was Ometepe for a bit of island time. There’s a bunch of little ferries carrying people and cars across throughout the day. Once we got our bikes on the boat, the chaps working on the ferry chucked big bags of fruit in front of the bikes to ‘protect’ them in case they fell over. Good idea, but please can I have some rope… just in case? They shrugged as if it was unnecessary and implied I was being overcautious. It was a beautiful day with blue sky, but you never know. Twenty minutes into the journey the sky turned grey, the rain lashed it down and people were falling over as the boat rocked from side to side in nasty waves. Lucky it had those bags of fruit for protection – and the ropes!
This island was formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua. It was first inhabited over 4,000 years ago, and the indigenous people believed the gods lived on the island. Its ancient history is fascinating… Well, it was until the Spanish conquistadors brutally subjugated the island in the 16th century, plundered its riches, forced Christianity upon the inhabitants and seized the lands for their own.
Today it’s a cool place to visit for its volcanoes, waterfalls, awesome hiking and wild beaches. But one of the coolest things about Ometepe are all the little backroads around the island. They’re perfect for our CRFs. Riding the circumference of the island, circling both volcanoes, stopping off to drink icy lemon shakes on the beach before picking trails that lead nowhere is what it’s all about. It was the perfect way to wrap up our Central America 4 adventure…
READ MORE: Nicaragua Motorcycle Guides
Read more on motorcycle travel in Central America
Thanks for checking out our Motorcycle Travel Blog: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. We hope you enjoyed it! Here’s a few more related articles on riding in Central America that we recommend you read next. You’ll find guides on every country in Central America in our North America section: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.
Try these next…
If you enjoyed this Central America motorcycle travel blog or have any questions, please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you.
Hi guys.
Enjoy ur trip, I did it with my wife 14 years ago.. great times..
I must pick ur brains sometime regarding a trip I wanna do to Mongolia and possibly the Philippines from Ireland.
Enjoy and stay safe ,
Best wishes
Trevor
Hi Trevor, thanks very much for your comment.
Wow, 14 years ago, I wonder how much it has changed since then.,
Sure! Message anytime. We do have a lot of guides on Mongolia you might want to have a read through.
Cheers and all the best,
Andy
Hi Andy..
Thanks very much for ur response ,
Wait til u guys get to carretera Australia in southern Chile and torres de paine you’ll love it..
Hey Trevor!
Awesome, yeah we’re really looking forward to South America – I assume you meant Carretera Austral – not Australia 😀
Did you enjoy riding that part of the world? If you have any tips or great routes we’d love to hear it!
Cheers again mate,
Andy
Hey Trevor, I love your blog wow 14 years, I travel to Guatemala few times during the year, I’m glad to tell you that the little country isn’t perfect as you know but the Natural beauty overcomes everything. Lots of ex Pats are retiring there and is becoming a hot spot for aventure races like mountain bike, trail running etc.
Hi Pavel, thanks for your comment. Glad to hear you’ve travelled to Guatemala, such an awesome country! Take care,
Andy
I’m very interested in reading your story, I want to do this adventure, I have already spent time in Guatemala learning Spanish, but I am really excited about reading your story,
Hi Stacy, sorry for the late reply. Glad to hear you’ve spent time learning Spanish in Guatemala, it’s a great country to do that. Did you learn in Antigua or Atitlan and which did you prefer?
As for riding, we have our own motorcycles which we’re travelling around the world on, but you can find rental shops in Antigua and do some rides to Atitlan 🙂
All the best,
Andy
Hi Guys!
Thank you for your report! we are in Mexico at the moment and heading all the way down to Argentina, ( from Australia we shipped our bikes to LA and 9 months on the road).
Could you please give a little bit more information about how you shipped the drone from\to? what did you do with the batteries? did you send everything or just the remote and the drone? I’m little bit concerned with the process so any information will be much appreciated.
Thanks and hope we see you on the road one day.
Asaf & Hadar
Hi Asaf, thanks for your comment, great to hear about your travels.
Sure! We have dedicated guides explaining all of this. If you visit the Destinations and North America you will see guides on all of the countries in North and Central America. Simply click on Honduras or Nicaragua and you will see our Motorcycle Travel Guides for these countries. In there we explain everything about the drones – how to ship, where the DHL offices are, Google Maps, contacts, collection and drop off etc. It’s very easy and simple to do so don’t worry.
These guides also explain the entry processes and route info for those countries so they may help with your trip planning too.
But in short, we only sent the drone. Took the battery out and kept it along with the remote.
Cheers and all the best,
Andy
Thank you Andy!
Much appreciated.
You’re welcome!