Just got word that Marten is on the bus back to Panajachel with my bike rack! The biggest relief by far is that he made the trip into the city without incident. Unless he has an amazing story to tell about the ride there I’m signing off for now. The plan is to leave Sunday morning.

I have some great advice if you are planning on mailing anything to Guatemala via regular post–DON’T! It’s now 19 days since the tracking info on the USPS site said my bike rack left the States. My good friend Marten has been a massive help and was able to pin down where my rack is (he speaks excellent Spanish which makes things much easier).

International mail delivery here works like this: package heads to central processing facility in Guatemala City… yeah, that’s pretty much it. The actually delivery part never takes place. Nothing is sent on to the chump waiting for his package letting him know there’s a holdup, nothing is sent to the shipper and nothing is updated on the web sites of USPS or El Correo (which is actually a Canadian company contracted to handle mail for Guatemala).

So Marten was able to discover that the rack has been sitting in Guatemala City for 8 days now. The post office guys here didn’t really know why it’s there and didn’t seem too interested in helping. We think, and this was confirmed by locals in the know, that they want someone to go there, open the package and show them what’s in it so they can figure how much to charge for an import tax. Because actually delivering it and collecting the tax then would just be stupid I guess.

Because the package was addressed to someone else I can’t even pick it up, the person whose name it’s in would have to. I hardly know the guy it was sent to so I can’t very well ask him to take a 4 hour bus ride to Guatemala City, risking life and limb, to pick up a package for me. This is where I have to say more nice things about something than I ever had to before in my life. Marten is taking a 4am bus tomorrow morning to get my bike rack from Guatemala City. Yes, he is that awesome. Matthew, the guy who I had it shipped to, wrote a letter of authorization saying its OK to give the package to Marten and he gave him his passport as further proof that it’s OK. Regardless of this actually working or not I’ll never be able to thank him enough for this. I could get the same letter and go but trying to accomplish anything at the post office with my limited Spanish would be hopeless.

I’m going pretty crazy sitting here for over 2 week now. Today was especially bad. It’s rare that I get into such a bad mood. Hopefully in 2 days I can be back on the road. The only thing that got me through this was getting to hang out with Karin and Marten and my new friends Matthew and Nancy.

Paid US $47 for another week here at Posada Don Carlos. No word on the rack other than what it says on the tracking page for USPS: Your item left the United States from ISC SAN FRANCISCO at 4:44 PM on July 11, 2010. If it happens to get here before the week is up I’ll leave and try to get the difference back on the hotel bill. I’m really anxious about getting back on the road. I think it’s because of how slow I’ve been moving for the past couple weeks and now that I’m healthy I want to take advantage of it.

Staying here hasn’t been so bad. My only complaint is that it gets a little loud sometimes with the kids playing and people talking on the couch that sits right outside my window. The windows are those kind with glass slats that don’t shut all the way so it’s like they’re sitting right there in the room with me. It helps with my Spanish so it’s not so bad I guess. The weather has been a mix of sprinkles all day or mostly cloudy with steady rain in the late afternoon/evenings. The cool weather is nice though. Been a couple nights now when I wish I owned a pair of pants.

Lot’s of good places to eat around town. I’ve been hitting up the street vendors a lot more since a good meal with a couple beers can be had for $5 vs. the $12-$15 for a restaurant meal and drinks. There a couple ice cream places that I’ve been frequenting quite a bit too.

I haven’t had much of a desire to hop on a boat and visit any of the villages that surround the lake since I’ve seen a good share of quaint Mayan villages and I don’t need to be buying anything. That might change if the weather looks like it might cooperate for the day. Lounging around watching movies on TV, catching up on Entourage and The Office and web surfing from the comfort of a warm bed is enough excitement for me when I get to take breaks like this.

Been doing a lot of reading about Guatemala and Russia (Stalin mostly–what a freaking monster and Time magazine even made him Man of the Year–twice). It’s funny how differently he was portrayed back in school (Canada) when we studied Russian history. This ended up starting a Wikipedia link bonanza where I’d being reading one article, see another interesting reference and open that up in other tab for later reading. Killed the entire day doing that yesterday.

Grabbed a bunch of free books using iBooks on my iTouch that I love so much (even though iOS 4 sucks–poor battery life, lame multi-tasking and app crashes, folders are awesome though). One of the books was a report prepared by the United States Army on the effects of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Talk about chilling. We sure do a good job of blowing the crap out each other.

Not sure if I’ll do this yet but I might end up just hitting Antigua for a volcano tour and then just riding into El Salvador and skipping the run up to the northeast to see the ruins at Copan. We’ll see what happens with the rack delivery and how it messes with my 90 day travel limit.

Weather in Quezaltenango when posted:

Temperature: 17 °C, Humidity: 82%, Wind Speed: 12km/hr, Cloud Cover: overcast

Some pics from around town. Thanks for a great dinner Matthew and Nancy! Yes I got lost in the dark on my way back but a tuk tuk saved me.

07/14 Big smile on my face when I woke up to sunshine this morning. Easy ride into Panajachel where I tracked down Posada Don Carlos. Matthew, a member of warmshowers.org, told me about this place (he and his gf stayed here at some point). He’s also coordinating the shipping of my bike rack to one of the Spanish schools here in town. He was nice enough to offer to let me stay at their place for a couple days but the hotel had a great weekly rate so it’s easier for me to only unpack once. I’m invited over for dinner tomorrow night which I’m looking forward to.

Panajachel is sweet little town on the shores of Lake Atitlan. The views are amazing. The lake is surrounded by not one, but three volcanoes, the highest being 11,400 feet tall. Boats are available to take you to the the other villages that dot the lake. There are some older, weird-looking hippies wandering about but most of the tourists are regular backpacker types. I did get one offer to buy some coke from a guy who doubles as a tour guide. I passed (on both offers). On the way back from dinner another guy came up and wanted to sell me some smoke. So if you want to get high, Panajachel is the place to be.

The road into town takes you down a nice, steep section that had me within .3 miles an hour of breaking my all-time high speed of 43 mph. The problem is when I’m going that fast I can’t look at my bike computer to check the speed so I don’t know to duck down a little lower for that extra boost (cliffs/potholes to blame).

I’ll be here for a week and hopefully not any more than that. I can’t be lollygagging around too much–my passport was only stamped for 90 days and that has to get me to Costa Rica.

GPX Track