It was 7:30am by the time Rafael turned up with the van to take us to the starting point of our ride. On the way we stopped at the Guatemalan equivalent of a truck stop to have a traditional breakfast with fried plantains, black beans, eggs, and hand made tortillas (the tortillas were being made by a couple of women in the back of the restaurant). The starting point was the ruins of Iximche, a small but interesting Mayan ruin. The first couple of hours was on rough gravel roads, through a number of villages that are well off the beaten tourist path. At one, we stopped at a house to watch a family weaving traditional cloth. All of the women of the house were weaving, from the youngest who looked about 8, two other older daughters, and the mother.

The road went all the way to the bottom of a valley, then steeply up (in the hot sun) to the top of a ridge...and then down again and up again and down again and up again. Then we started on our first single track. Here, single track mountain bike riding means riding on the paths that the locals use to tend their fields or to travel between villages. This means you often encounter one of more people carrying a load of some sort. This also means that the tracks are designed for walking, so a screaming downhill can suddenly turn into something completely unridable.

After about three and a half hours we reached the lake Atitlan overlook. The lake is incredible, surrounded by a series of volcanoes up to 12,000 feet, and with a series of colonial villages dotted around the coast in the valleys. This is the lake that Aldous Huxley claimed is the most beautiful in the world, and he or someone else said it is like lake Como in Italy, except that it is rimmed with volcanoes. Is it the most beautiful... who knows! After a lunch at the overlook, we started down an amazing track that went diagonally down the face of the steep mountainside. One of the greatest dangers was that the view was so amazing, you could get into serious trouble taking your eyes of the track. Trudging up the hill were ten men and boys carrying loads of green wood planks using the traditional setup of a band around the head and ropes to the load. There were also women carrying babies and laundry on their heads. At one point, a man with a machete stopped us and abused us for using the trail with bikes, shouting that it was solely for the use of the locals. Rafael handled the situation...he says it happens sometimes and he just says it is the first time he has been on the track!

The last part of the road was through the narrow cobblestone walkways of a village---Tane says it was some of the most epic riding he has done. We must have done nearly half a mile in the narrow steeply descending alleyways, bouncing down steps, with kids chasing us and yelling, and grabbing at our helmets from their windows.

The ride ended in Panajachel, the main town on the lake. It is also known as Gringotenango. It seems that tenango means �The place of�so this is an ironic reference to the fact that there are so many foreigners in the place. We rushed off to have a beer with Rafael at a lakeside bar, then back to meet Sal who had come over in the shuttle. The five hour ride took its toll on me, and I had to let Sal and Tane go to dinner together.

The streets of Panajachel are lined with vendors selling mostly Guatemalan textiles and everything made from them, so Sal and Tane had a great time looking around.

We collapsed into bed, with the dread of Chichicastenango looming over us the next day.