After four days with friends in Playa del Carmen, Trevor flew down to Cancun, and we spent a few nights off the coast, on Isla Mujeres, and a few more on Caye Caulker, Belize.  I hadn’t seen Trev since just after junior high school, and yet he was one who had reached out when I announced my upcoming roadtrip on social media, now four months ago.  He introduced me to his friends who showed us around on both islands.  In between, we stayed in Tulum, where we toured great ruins and discovered what would become my favorite cenote (Dos Ojos).  He brought a young buck co-worker from Santa Barbara.  We nicknamed him “Mamba,” and had to pull him out of a tight spot he had gotten himself into while hustling for some cocaine on Caye Caulker.

    They returned north, back to Cancun, and I continued south.  

    First, there were a few nights in Hopkins at Palmento Grove – part cultural center, part eco/fishing lodge centered around the past, present, and culture of the Garifuna people - a mix of African slave descendants, indigenous inhabitants of/around the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, and their indigenous conquerors who had arrived from mainland Central America.  Pockets of their 600,000 people could also be found in St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States.

    I rattled down dirt roads on a rented bicycle, past small, sad shacks and simple stores and cafes.  A bit out of town was a charming little library, opposite a huge open field half filled with cars and trucks and tents and people.  As my life would have it, on the exact day I was there, at the precise time I passed by, I had stumbled upon the 13th Annual Hopkins Kite Festival.  It seems that the more one puts themselves out there, the better the chances of good timing.

    There were parents and children and dogs and food and drink.  There was chatter, laughter, concentrating faces, and giggles and shrieks of children.  Community folk sat at long tables, sharing what I assumed to be the most recent Hopkins gossip.  I shot videos and stills of this most beautiful event.  

    The Hummingbird Highway stretches just 86 km (54 mi), from the Western Highway, near the capital of Belmopan, to the Southern Highway, continuing on to the coast at Dangriga.  It is just as lovely as it sounds, and one of the very few roads on which I did backtrack.

    I spent a few nights camping in the parking lot of a hotel in Placencia.  In exchange for a rather expensive meal, I was allowed to park and have my run of the outdoor area – pool, shower, patio and chairs.  Placencia was much more upscale than Hopkins.  They shared some of the same shacks, but there were also nice homes, businesses, etc.  There were more people, and a more visible divide between rich and poor.  I wandered about, was stopped in my tracks by a jazz man’s ramped-down version of “Hey Joe,” and caught up on writing and went with the special of the day – meatloaf – at the Pickled Parrot.  The highlight of Placencia were the nights at the ocean’s edge, beholding the waves and the sand lit up by the moon.

    I headed back on the Hummingbird Highway, which led me to my second San Ignacio.  And Marc.

    Marc was an inspired, outspoken, lunatic/angel/prophet/troublemaker from Quebec, Canada.  We met next to a bridge where overlanders sometimes camped.  He was the exact thing I needed at a time I didn’t realize I needed anything at all.  He was at the end of what was a usual gig for him – buying a car in the southwestern U.S., driving to Mexico or Belize, then selling it off to pay for the trip.  He said it helped with his periodic depression and had much good advice on routes, places, and practices.

    He told me the tale of a man who had appeared on a road in Mexico, claiming he had been waiting for him.  Marc swore that he had already encountered that same man thousands of miles prior. 

    He told of guns being pulled on him in Guatemala and how he was good either way, as he had lived a blessed, full life.

    We walked into San Ignacio together.  He chided a man for being from South Africa and told his girlfriend from London that he hated the place.  Minutes later, as a dreadlocked panhandler approached us on the street, Marc opened his arms and bellowed, “ARE YOU GOD?!?!”  Both interactions somehow ended with smiles and laughter.  Boisterous and blustery, there was no keeping a low profile around this cat.  And yet he possessed a sort of force field of playfulness, goodness, and humanity.  One got the sense that he was immune from harm.

    He was a strange hero, a man who had long since detached himself from societal norms and the expectations and perceptions of others.  I had come far on this front, but still had a ways to go.  People like him help.  I recorded our conversation during a short drive we took to the border of Guatemala and back.

    Then – just like that – he was gone.  Our paths joined for less than 18 hours.  If I didn’t have photographs and recordings of our time together, I might wonder if he had been real at all.

    Three months later, I uploaded a video of my first six months on the road.  The video slowly dissolves from white into a faint recollection of Mexico 1, whereupon these words are spoken by Marc,

…this road here is never-ending.  You’ll find that out as you travel – you’re always on a road.  And you’re wondering – does the road ever stop?  Of course not!  It keeps going, round and round…because then it leads to a harbor…and then you put the car on the ship…and then that road…and to another road…and it’s never-ending…I think life is like that – it’s never-ending – we just…become something else…whatever that is.