OK, so mountain biking and road biking are not new thing. However, the popularity of them is certainly growing by the second.
Living in Antigua, Guatemala we have seen the rise of biking groups get bigger and bigger.
Which is a good thing, but can also be a bad thing if the destination is not prepared for the influx of riders.
What happens is, the locals, and I’m talking mainly from Antigua point of view, ride some of the most beautiful trails with volcano views and pristine rain forest. However, they are usually private farms.
If it’s a small enough group the owners of the farms are totally fine with it. But with the growth of the sport, this starts to put a strain on the farm owners.
Basically, and we’ve seen this happen with all sports all over the world, a lot of times these weekend riders who come from cities or tourists visiting, don’t care about the tracks they leave behind, and it ends up costing the landowners and the villagers money to clean up their mess.
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So with that, new bike tracks and pump tracks are opening up. You need to pay a small fee, but you can do whatever you want, and the owners take the responsibility of keeping it clean and maintaining it.
Plus, safety is a super important factor in Guatemala, as it is for most parts of the world. And riding in bike parks certainly helps take care of that.
A New Bike Park in Guatemala City
The biking community in Guatemala isn’t huge, so whenever anything new and exciting happens in this arena, the news travels fast.
San Agustin Bike Park is definitely on the hot news list.
The other weekend we had a blast going to the Grand Opening.
This park, as with most, is a huge working farm that has more than enough space for many different tracks and levels.
They have truly made an amazing park.
I was a skier for many years of my life. And whenever we arrived at different slopes and resorts, we would always find out the different levels of trails there were. Besides the bunny slopes, we wanted to know where the black diamonds and double black diamonds were.
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This park took that idea and used it for the different bike tracks.
They had all different levels of color formation, so it’s easy to find and to do.
And you can’t have a good bike park unless you have some gnarly downhill tracks and even Enduro tracks.
The grand opening was also done in real style. With great food, drinks, and a welcoming feel for all bikers and non bikers who came for the support.
Looking forward to having my family shred it up with the other bikers of Guatemala and visiting bikers from around the world.
