Today we were leaving El Salvador and heading for Antigua, Guatemala. A reasonable 160 miles, crossing the border at Las Chinimas.

The roads are in relatively poor state, single carraigeway with many slow moving heavy vehicles. Our average speed was about 35mph and it took us just over two hours to travel 65 miles to the border.

The border crossing was a mix of experiences. Leaving El Salvador was easy and entering Guatemala was a pain. In Guatemala I had to stand at an outside counter for over an hour adjacent to workmen using a Stihl saw to cut concrete. The screaming, screeching noise was relentless.

I also got fleeced for $16 for the bike import permit. I was told to go to a money changer to convert dollars into quetzals to pay into the customs bank. More tariffs for poor motorcycle travellers – get them Donald, get them!

We were a bit frazzled after the border and heading towards the outskirts of Guatemala City en route to Antigua.

It was the Friday before Palm Sunday and this day is ‘The Friday of Sorrows’. This is the day set aside to honour the Virgin Mary. I just add that in case you were wondering.

In this part of the world, this time of the year is very important to most people. In this part of the world, ‘The Friday of Sorrows’ was an apt summary of our day.

So there we were on the road on a day when everyone appeared to be on the road. They had obviously decided to respect the Virgin Mary by going for a run in their car or clapped out lorry.

The roads were a new level of chaos.

Our average speed dropped to 20mph and we relied on Waze navigation to get around some deadlocked roads. Waze is a nightmare at the best of times and Waze on ‘The Friday of Sorrows’ was hell.

I won’t go into the dead ends and blocked roads we encountered, the times we struggled, the times we crumbled – it was one of the most exhausting, frustrating, confidence sapping experiences on the bike we have had in the whole of the Americas to date.

Forty miles and an estimated three hours to our destination, we reached the bottom of a very steep mountain with hairpin after hairpin bend. There’s nothing as bad in the UK.

The long line of vehicles went as far as the eye could see and they were crawling up, almost at a standstill.

As I’ve mentioned before some of the old heavy lorries are at 2mph on these roads and it’s sometimes difficult to see if they’re actually moving.

Now, on level roads in traffic we can go as slow as 3mph as long as Susan doesn’t wiggle. However, on a very steep incline we have to at least maintain 7-8 mph. I could explain why but I expect you don’t care about the details so I will move on.

Stopping suddenly on a steep incline with a bad road camber means there’s a possibility Susan will use up another BOom BOom jacket gas cannister and at £100 a time we don’t want that!

However, once we reach the back of the line of traffic we stop. It’s really not a nice place to be.

I recognise the gradient is too steep to start with our heavily laden bike. Yes, I can give it a go but in a couple of metres I have to do it again, and again, as I catch the back of the slow moving line of traffic. I really don’t want to fry another clutch.

There’s only one option when you have a heavy load. You ditch the cargo. We’ve all seen it in the movies – picture the scenario, the plane is going down and they have to throw the gold out to gain height to clear the mountain range.

Well that was exactly my position!

I was immensely pleased with my strong leadership qualities for I didn’t hesitate to discharge my precious cargo – ‘Susan you will have to get off!’

Susan didn’t hesitate and jumped off. As we like to say in football parlance – ‘she took one for the team’.

Susan started walking up the side of the mountain, up the side of the road with no pavement. It was unbearablly hot and the slow moving passing heavies were spewing thick oily black fumes.

What did I do? Well, I’m now the pilot with a light plane and I’m able to shoot up the mountain, make a few scary overtakes and forge ahead.

Now this is when I arrive at the same situation as my story in South America when I leftt Susan to walk up a snowy mountain. Today there were remarkable parallels.

After half a mile my helmet intercom makes a certain noise to say it’s lost contact with Susan. I can’t stop. There’s nowhere to stop and so I push on.

I soon come to an area where the incline is less and I know I have to stop. Susan is being left far too far behind. The bike is on the edge of the carraigeway and I’m causing chaos, partially blocking the road.

I wait.

I wait.

15 minutes.

I know she will have taken off her ‘hat’ and so even when the intercom now tells me with a certain tone that she’s within range, I still can’t speak to her.

Then I hear her shout.

I don’t know what’s happening. I genuinely think she’s been hit by a passing truck or bus.

Let me paint a picture – if a passing truck or bus stays on our side of the road they will pass within a foot or less of Susan. With the oncoming traffic they have problems pulling out to give her space. It’s that bloody tight.

So what do I do?

I shout into the intercom. No answer.

I decide to abandon the bike in its precarious position with everything we currently have and walk down the bloody mountain.

I shout again into the intercom.

I walk.

Then she answers – she’s fine! She’s still walking. She’d been shouting at a bus that had come too close.

Another 15 minutes later she reaches me.

Oh, she looks hot! No,no no! Not like that hot! I mean tomato heid hot!

It’s not a pretty sight but I take a diplomatic decision at this time not to tell her – ‘you’re doing great’ I say. That’s good leadership – sometimes you shouldn’t tell your team mate they look like their heid is about to explode.

She looks ahead of me and the parked bike. The road goes up like a rollercoaster and takes an unimaginable sharp hairpin. Susan knows what’s going to happen next.

‘Shall I keep walking?’ ‘Yes I think you’ve got to’ I reply.

I wait for a space in the traffic. I move the bike to the middle of the road. I wait. I block the traffic behind. I wait. I wait until I have enough clear road ahead that I can take a run at the corner.

Thankfully, the drivers behind are calm. They will be taking in the scene of a guy on a bike and a hot headed woman with a heid about to explode walking up the mountain. I’m sure it is better viewing than Guatemalan telly!

So off I go. Zoom, zoom around the oh so very steep hairpin. Hot heid is left walking behind.

I stop after a quarter of a mile and wait where I again really shouldn’t be waiting. Hot heid eventually arrives. She’s absolutely knackered.

‘Shall I keep walking?’ she asks. ‘I’m fine’.

Now under extreme pressure I remain diplomatic. She doesn’t look fine! But I say nothing! What a guy I am when I’m operating under pressure.

‘No, its okay’ I reassure her. This could go on for ever as we didn’t know where the summit was. As we were now on a slightly less steep area before a very bad hairpin it was time to give it a run.

Hot heid got on and I blocked the traffic. I waited. I waited. When I think I’ve left enough space ahead and eroded the patience of the drivers behind I go.

I could only see as far as the next upward hairpin, probably about 100 meters and I maintained 8mph. A steady 8mph. The queued traffic rolled behind me.

Why was I going so slow? Well the slower I went the longer it took me to catch up with the heavies ahead. With luck we would clear the top before we reached the end of the next tailback.

What a plan. And it worked!

Next mountain I did the same. Next hill, I did the same. I caused frustration but I kept moving, 8mph moving. Cars that did manage to overtake me, in the face of relentless oncoming traffic, just caught up with the 4mph queue ahead.

Later, I made overtakes that I really shouldn’t have. Susan remains calm and doesn’t take me to task. I put such overtakes into one of two categories – ‘I would do that again’ and ‘I wouldn’t do that again’.

Today’s overtakes were in the category ‘I would do that again’. We just had to get moving and get out of this absolute chaos.

Now there’s more to this story to tell but I think I’ve told enough. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the 360 camera on the bike as we were crossing a border and had to leave the bike unattended. So no photos. Anyway I wouldn’t want you to see a photo of Susan – she still thinks she looked fine.

We reached our destination, Antigua, checked in, and parked the bike in the hotel garage. That’s yet another story I could tell involving ‘nick nack’ (there’s a movie reference for you) but I’ve said too much already.

At last here’s a photo. There’s Susan at the door of our room. I’ve made sure she’s in shadow so you can’t see her hot heid. I’m doing yourself a favour and it’s no problem. Thank me later.

We were a bit shell shocked by the time we arrived at our hotel. Genuinely, it was that difficult. So we had a shower, put on our least smelly clothes and ended our ‘Friday Of Sorrows’ in the best place possible. Salud.