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.

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

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.

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It did turn out to be a very unusual day. It started with a power outage that hit just after I’d made my coffee (whew). It was still out when I left. Short power outages are somewhat common, especially when the afternoon storms kick up but this one was weird because it wasn’t even raining.

Then my chain broke climbing a hill 2 miles out of town. I was fully expecting that to be a major ordeal but less than 5 minutes later the broken link was fixed and I was off again. If you’ve ever had to fix a chain you know how it can be almost impossible to get a pin back in if you inadvertently pop it all the way out so you know how happy I was about that bit of luck. I felt the pedaling getting a little weird and I’d stopped before it broke but didn’t bother to check the chain–thought the shifting was just a little off. Lesson learned there.

The most unusual thing was the police escort I had all the way from Quiche to Chichicastenango, a distance of about 9 miles that took me an hour thanks to some serious climbs. They first started tailing behind me when I was heading up a hill. At the top I thought they’d pass me but they just hung back about 30 feet and matched my pace when I was pedaling or they’d pull up beside me and we’d chat while I caught my breath on a break (for an hour!). It was much harder riding with them there but I don’t think I’ve been safer on my whole trip. The hills were the worst– I couldn’t switchback up the steep parts because the noise from their truck meant I couldn’t hear other cars coming. There’s no shoulder in a lot of places so when I stopped at the side to rest the driver would direct traffic that was waiting to pass.

In Chichicastenango they waved goodbye and yelled “Welcome to Chichicastenango!” I did end up seeing them again a couple times further down the road. They stopped in the oncoming lane when I was climbing up one particularly brutal hill and looked at me like I was insane. They were pretty cool and it was an interesting experience.

Glad I found a motel when I did but I could have made it at least to Solola. No point in riding in the cold rain when a perfectly good hot shower is available for only a few dozen quetzals. This town(?) is at the junction of the highway I was on and CA1 (aka the PanAmerican Highway). Traffic is nuts and it’s very loud. Chicken buses (craziest drivers I’ve ever seen) come tearing up to a spot at the junction honking away, long haul trucks come barreling through using their engine to brake and taxis dart in and out of all this honking for any passengers the buses missed. Lot’s of restaurants which is a bonus. I ate lunch at a place across the street and had the most incredible fish platter.

Watched most of the World Cup on Sunday except for a little bit when I fell asleep. I am so not a soccer fan. I was still sorry to see my friends’ team lose.

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I felt so good today I didn’t even realize I’d climbed 4500 feet by the time I got here. Had some steady rain for a couple hours and I actually got a bit cold which was kind of nice for a change. Gave me a chance to wear my rain jacket for the first time in since probably Alaska. Not sure what the temp got down to but I could see my breath for a bit.

My ride a day; rest a day might have to continue one more time. No point in missing the World Cup tomorrow. The rack is several days from getting delivered so it’s either hang out here or hang out in Panajachel. I’m not suffering too much-the posada I’m in is only US $12 and it has a nice bed, hot shower and HBO/Cinemax.

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My rear tire is giving me some grief. I think a little piece of wire has worn through the bead and has been causing a flat every few days. I wedged a dollar bill where it presses against the tube–maybe that’ll buy me a couple days until I get into a place where I can look closer. The flat today was on the last huge descent and it took me so long to fix it that I ended up getting caught in the 3pm rain.

While I was Uspantan I stopped over at the post office to send back my small backpack and a few other things I haven’t been using. Well the guy there was very reluctant to take anything with even a little metal on it which was kind of a problem because almost everything had a little metal on it. Luck was on my side and in walked Marty. He’s a missionary who lives in town (and speaks Spanish/English). After finding out how much it would cost to ship everything to Atlanta ($30 for ~4 lbs) Marty offered to send it back with someone he knew and they would ship it from the States for me. We headed over to his place to se how much shipping would be. It ended up being $15. Thanks Marty. I also met his wife Diane and got some good info on the roads and places to eat in Panajachel, my next big stop.

A new rack is also on the way. Karin and Marten told me about a Spanish school in Panajachel that they had something delivered to so I followed their lead. It was shipped today and should take 6-14 days. Not sure when I’ll be there because my timing is way off with these mountains. Maybe 5 more days.

Ordered a hamburger and fries for dinner like I have a million other times (from a teenager who spoke a little English). Ended up with 6 hotdog buns, thinly sliced steak, rice and beans. No fries. I ate it anyway but boy was something lost in translation.

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Had it not been for a tiny little village that appeared just in time I would have spent the night at the side of the road. Fortunately they had a perfect spot for me to pitch my tent under a nice dry roof outside a boarded up store. I was quite popular too. At one point there were at least 20 people watching me set up my tent. Some of the braver kids came over and asked about my bike/trip but with my lack of Spanish it wasn’t a deep conversation. Lucky for them it got dark when I started washing off the grime.

When I left Coban I thought I’d be riding on dirt the entire way here. 2 different road maps even confirmed this. The first 20 miles ended up being dirt/gravel but, to my surprise, the rest of the way was paved. Normally I love riding on dirt roads–my favorite part of Alaska was a 3 day ride on one however having a gimpy front rack has made riding off-pavement very stressful. I can’t go very fast on downhills either which means constant braking. At this massive landslide where they detour you down this wickedly steep and very rough gravel road my hands were numb from having to clutch the brakes so hard.

Speaking of landslides, there are a lot of them on this highway. I’d say one at least every 1/4 mile. A few of the big ones were cleared enough for traffic to get by but if only one lane is blocked they usually just leave it.

I had a good laugh today but I should mention that my understanding about why this happened wasn’t clear until a couple days later when I had a chance to research why exactly some Mayan women were so distrusting. Young women not talking to men because they’d appear unchaste I knew about but outright fear was new for me. Anyway, these two girls, probably around 10, came bounding down the hill from their house to catch a bus or something. The first girl makes it down to the road, starts to cross and stops dead in her tracks like a deer caught in headlights. She had turned to see if cars were coming and saw my big old gringo self lurching up the hill about 20 feet from her. The look on her face was priceless. And then, faster than I’ve ever seen 2 girls run from me, she and her sister raced back up the hill and hid inside the house.

It’s actually kind of remarkable how similar the indigenous Maya populations are here and in Mexico but I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. No one likes their picture taken (I always ask–unless there’s absolutely no way they can tell and I’m not being disrespectful) and guys will always whistle/yell/give you a thumbs up or, God bless them, honk right next to you as they pass. Girls under 13 will almost always run (giggling) from you and girls over 13 stare straight ahead and rarely look at or talk to you. The indigenous women either just look at you like you’re going to steal their kids or they do the exact opposite and wave and greet you.

True story that happened in one of the remote mountain villages here in Guatemala that was the tragic result of a simple misunderstanding compounded by typically negative religious influences: it was in 2000, this Japanese tourist (male) and his guide (Guatemalan man) were stoned to death by the villagers because he tried to comfort a crying child. His actions (reaching out to touch the child) didn’t go over very well especially with recent rumors that a meeting of demonic, foreign cult members was to take place in the next few days that would include the kidnapping and sacrifice of local children. In a lot of remote Mayan villages rumors still circulate that foreigners (especially women) kidnap children to sell them, or sometimes just their internal organs. Needless to say there’s still some distrust that’s more than a little evident. I found this very detailed article about what happened.

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Staying in town for today so I can watch the World Cup. Go Netherlands!