Today was a beautiful day and I decided to take the long way to San Pedro. I drove from Panajachel south around the lake. The views were so fantastic that I had a hard time trying to find the best place to take a picture to capture the view.

I was doing my usual thing of stopping every once and a while and getting directions. The second to last time I stopped for directions I was in Santiago Atilan. I asked the guy if I was on the correct road to San Pedro and he said yes. As I was about to take off, he told me to “Cuidado”. Usually people tell me to have good luck or good travels, etc, but this time it was cuidado. I asked him, Porque? He responded with a single cognate:Banditos.

I just said gracias, and continued on, but was trying to pay more attention. I guess I’m used to people saying that, but never from immediate vicinity locals.

After another 4 or 5 miles, the pavement stopped. There were some people hanging out at the last tienda and I confirmed that I was heading the right way and one guy said cuidado. Again, I asked “porque”, and he said because the roads were not paved.

I drove offroad for another 2 or 3 miles, perfectly sunny day, and the dirt road was in OK shape (even took a picture).

There was a long straightaway and from both sides of the road two men dressed in camo with a balaclava covering thier face jumped out of the jungle and pointed their guns at me.

They ran towards me screaming to stop with their guns still aligned.

The men arrived at the bike (now 3 men, one came from behind) and started screaming at me asking for my dinero. I complied as they had one gun touching my forehead through my visor and another gun pointed at my gut.

I was in a state of complete panic and but managed to put the bike in neutral. They kept screaming for my dinero, I handed them my fake wallet and coin purse.

They then started to grab all over my body and ripped my sunglasses off and went straight for my traditional money belt.

The guy on the right kept prodding at it and was waving the gun at me shouting and motioning for me to give them the contents.

My money belt was then ripped from my body.

Then they started ripping through my tank panniers taking nothing as they weren’t interested in my rain gear.

Agian, they started grabbing around, this time in my tankbag and found my camera. They then asked for my phone. I have no phone, and I kept saying that repeatidly.

Satisfied with my response, they ran back into the jungle.

I continued straight for 100 yards… but realized it was another 15KM to San Pedro on an unknown dirt road.

I decided to just turn around and fly through the area figuring they were happy with their grab so I could go to the nearest town.

Standing on pegs, I hauled it through the dirt and paved back into town. I am writing this while I am now on hold canceling my credit cards.

Next, I get to have the fun of filling out a police report, getting replacement cards, and new passport.

Their take was the above cards & passport, 40$ USD, 60 quetzales (<$10), and my favorite saftey/sunglasses. I’m glad they couldn’t figure out how to get into my mapbag ontop of my tank bag to get my GPS tracker. They were swatting at it likes cats at a laser pointer, but didn’t take the time to open it. Though it was in tracking mode, so it would have been funny to see if any tracks would show up.

Strangly, they threw my fake wallet back in my jacket. They took the Q60 that I had in the money part, but I had stashed another Q100 and US$5 in the card pockets.

Oh well. Other than the massive inconvenience of time of replacing my cards and passport, the thing that sucks the most is that I had 3 days of pictures on my camera that I didn’t download. So Kim and Tyler, if you want to make the website, you have to email me pics!! It is such a shame because I had a great video riding ziplines through the jungle and looking at the lake!

I should have paid attention to the locals and spread my stuff out even more. argh…… I don’t believe that I had both of my ATM cards in the same place. Atleast I have enough money stashed in other places to be fine for a very long while.

I still love Guatemala and of course plan to continue my trip south.

Unharmed,

dave