With our fingers crossed and only 1 spare left, we continued the next day and hoped we could make it to the larger and touristic town of Antigua. There’s a bikeshop over there where they can probably fix the wheel. After only 20 kms (12 miles) it went wrong again; another broken spoke. Used the last spare one and managed to make it to the next large town, Escuintla. There, we took a bus for the last 35 kms (21 miles) to Antigua. That was a whole new experience, the only choice we had was a so-called chickenbus where they transport everybody and everything. The bikes and luggage were tied to the roof and we were inside with 3 people on a bench for 2. But at least we didn’t have to stand. The driver drove like a rally driver, but we survived. The bikes and the luggage too, even though the wire of Ronnie’s bikecomputer is completely severed.
We were glad to be in Antigua, but now we had to wait for the new spokes to arrive. The spokes were sent to the US where somebody brings them with him (back) to Antigua. We stayed there for a few days and decided to play backpacker for a few days.
The lake Atitlan is described by many as the most beautiful lake in the world and is not far from Antigua. There are many shuttle busses a day going to the towns around the lake. So we decided to take one of those shuttle busses and live the life of a backpacker for a few days. We packed everything we needed in a bag and left all the other luggage and the bikes behind in our hostel.
The backpacker life didn’t start out very well; the van was half an hour late. When finally everybody was seated, the van was stuffed. The driver raced toward Atitlan and it wasn’t for long when we heard a strange noise coming from the van. A flat tire! Like we hadn’t had enough flats on our bikes the past few days. The driver disappeared underneath the car to change the tire. The spare was no more than a slick, but that was even very good compared to the one he took off. That one was so worn that we could see the canvas!
After the tire change, the race to Atitlan continued. We did get to enjoy a beautiful scenery with very steep roads so somewhere we were happy that we weren’t on our bikes. Finally, the lake came into view, we had a beautiful view from the road up above. In the town of Panajachel we got off the van. We still had plenty of time to walk around and enjoy the view.
To get to the other towns around the lake, you can go by road and take another shuttle bus. But it is much more fun to go there over the water. There are many small boats (lancha’s) going over to the other towns every day. So we took a boat to the other side of the lake, to San Pedro, the next day to Santiago and then back again to Panajachel. Now we had seen every side of the lake. It indeed is a beautiful lake, but to say it’s the most beautiful in the world is a bit over exaggerated. There are so many beautiful lakes on this earth and what are the criteria for such a title?
It’s a real backpacker destination and there are many hippies and wannabe hippies. In the streets the women and their sometimes very young daughters try to sell their merchandise in a very pushy manner. Even when you’re in a restaurant you’re not safe; they just come in. Besides that, you sort of trip over the stalls with artisan stuff (traditional stuff such as rugs, clothing, bracelets and masks). They all sell about the same stuff, so we don’t really understand how they can make a living off of it. And there are a lot of tuk-tuks of which the drivers can’t wait to take you where ever. If you just walk around you get asked about taking a ride many times. As soon as a little lancha with tourists docks, the whole town starts moving. The women and daughters are there to sell their merchandise, the dads try to get the tourists in their tuk-tuks and the sons always seem to know a very good and cheap hotel.
The lake is situated in the mountain area of Guatemala and many of the people living in this region still wear traditional clothing and speak the original language. We did see many people in beautiful traditional dress, especially women. They also spoke a language we didn’t understand a single word of, with very different sounds than Spanish. Especially in the town of Santiago that traditional influence was very visible. There, the men also wore traditional clothing; pants down to the knees and some sort of scarf around the waist.
After another night in Panajachel, we went back to Antigua. This time we had a very different driver who drove more careful and had a much newer van. Our stuff was still waiting for us at the hostel. Now we still had to wait for the spokes to arrive. The flight of our contact in the US had been cancelled twice, probably due to the bad and very cold weather in the North of the country. But the spokes also haven’t arrived yet.
We waited for 2 weeks and the spokes haven’t arrived (yet). Our contact should be on his way to Guatemala right now so we decided to move on too, without spare spokes. To make up for lost time, we’re taking a bus to Flores/ Tikal Maya ruins tomorrow. That saves us about a week of cycling. There we want to get back on the bikes and we’ll just hope we won’t brake another spoke. If so, we’ll have to bus the whole way to Playa del Carmen in Mexico.