The roads in Guatemala are Awesome!

Road through enormous landslide on Guat. 7W.

Here are some pictures from the last week's riding, from Rio Dulce to Coban (rained all day, mud!!!) and then Coban to Panajachel on Lago de Atitlan (no rain, nice dirt).  The picture above is of the huge landslide they suffered along route 7W a couple years ago.  Dozens of people were killed as a village below this road was completely destroyed.  Here is a link to some live video of the landslide:  http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ed9_1231542598   The approach to this detour road through the slide was our most challenging riding yet.  Wet, loose dirt, very steep with tight switchbacks and oncoming dump trucks sharing the one lane.  Nobody can stop - the truck doesn't want to and we literally can't.

We completed a major service on my bike (Davis) yesterday and are headed tomorrow morning around the lake to San Pedro la Laguna for two days.  Then on to Antigua for Christmas.

Visor is down because it is still raining.  Doesn't capture how wet and muddy we were!

Marion's riding pants at the end of the day.

Bikes tucked safely in our hostel.  Shared bathrooms, but attached gourmet restaurant and cake store!  Room was 100 Quetzales for a night, but our nightly restaurant bill was closer to 900 Quetzales...  Fantastic restaurant at Casa d'Acuna in Coban.

View from the temporary landslide road.  Clouds kinda close there.

More landslide area pictures.

We got excited when "pavement" started, but it was worse than the dirt.  Here is the start of the pavement.

Later on the road improved greatly and was great fun.

Views like this all day.  Guatemala is beautiful!