We left Chimaltenango around 9:00 and rode the side road to Antiqua Guatemala, the original capital of the country. In Parramos we were going to go to breakfast at a famous fancy restaurant but we got sidetracked in the center of town and ended up eating at the corner eatery and talking to the owner Manuel for an hour or two. All the while his wife worked the dozen customers that came and went while we just talked away. Occasional he would get up and tell her there was another customer. But he was explaining to us about the differences in the 23 languages spoken here in Guatemala.

We had a couple of places in the area we wanted to visit... Well we got a little lost, but it was a beautiful quiet road. There were a lot of people walking or riding their bikes, most with some kind of load. There were two women with babies on their backs carrying cooking wood on their heads, another group of two women with a wheelbarrow pushing a load of wood that got away from them, a horse carrying a huge pile of greens, lots of bikers with various field implements, and just bikers getting to and from town. We finally found our way, but the people we saw along the road were more interesting than the things we'd been looking for.

The ride was wonderful. Downhill and in the country. We got to Antigua Guatemala and now we entered another world, The gringo world in a colonial city in the middle of Guatemala. Antigua is a tourist-ridden, beautiful, romantic city, and we took a very pleasant weekend there.