A beautiful ride today, getting lost for a while that led to some beautiful riding that I wouldn't have normally done unless I was lost - that's the way things work on a bike.
I wanted to take the main road to Chichicastenango, but ended up on a road that went down out of the mountains instead. I ended up on the south side of Lago Atitlán, a beautiful lake surrounded by volcanoes. On the road there I saw a huge eruption of one of the volcanoes - they're very active here and it's an almost daily occurence. Once I found the road around the lake, it took me up, and up, and up, into some really high elevations. I guess I topped out at over 10,000 feet.
The road to chichi is really dangerous. There is one hairpin curve after another, and a thin layer of small grain gravel on the road. A few slips of my back tire convinced me to take these all in first gear. Besides this, the chicken buses come up this road, and take up the entire road on the curves, so if I see one coming, I need to come to a complete stop and wait for it to come around the curve.
Chichicastenango is a neat small town high in the mountains. It's famous for having a big market, but I've heard it is best on Sundays, so I didn't get the whole shebang. There are less tourists than Xela or Antigua, and the market is just as much for locals.
What brought me more joy in Chichi than anything else is that I can actually understand Spanish now. People now ask me where I'm from, which I was able to answer before, but now I can understand their more subtle questions. For example, the people with whom I ate pollo frito at the market wanted to know where I was on September 11 (I was at school in North Carolina then), and if I live near the statue of liberty. They want to know what I think of Guatemala, and Obama, and if I think having a big motorcycle makes it safer to ride. I had originally thought of learning Spanish as a pit stop in my trip, but I'm starting to see just how much a difference it makes to be able to communicate with people in ways other than visually with my bike and aurally with my trumpet. This made me very excited and gave me the energy for another week of classes and homework and lots of verbs.
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