Confirmed it now is that the Star Wars mythology is apparently deeply embedded in my psyche, which only makes sense given the number of times I watched all of those movies when I was growing up and how much the adventures in my no-friends cerebral pretendland revolved around those characters. I never had the action figures, because they were too expensive, my mom said, but my rich cousin John had them all, including the ships and the Darth Vader action-figure carrying case, and I was infinitely jealous. But that's not the point. My off-the-cuff comparison of Tikal to Endor turned out to be half-right: It wasn’t Endor, but the fourth moon of Yavin, the scene of the celebration at the end of Episode IV.

Of course, when we booked our tickets to Guatemala, everything seemed hunky-dory down there (according to the State Department, anyway). Upon our return, for curiosity’s sake, we checked again and found this:

This Public Announcement is being issued to remind U.S. citizens of the continuing serious security situation in Guatemala. This Public Announcement expires on November 3, 2005.

U.S. citizens are urged to be especially aware of safety and security concerns when traveling in Guatemala. Although the majority of travelers visit Guatemala without mishap, violent criminal activity on the highways in Guatemala continues, and the number of armed robberies on city streets and in private homes is increasing. Crimes against foreigners have included murder, rape, and armed robbery. Criminals in Guatemala are extremely opportunistic; all travelers should remain vigilant and take appropriate measures to limit risk and losses. Assailants often respond violently if they perceive resistance from their victims.

Although fewer highway robberies have been reported recently, violent criminal activity on the highways in Guatemala continues and tourists, among others, have been targeted. Buses of all categories, tour vans and private vehicles have been stopped, with drivers and passengers robbed, sometimes violently. Armed robbers have intercepted vehicles on main roads in broad daylight. Highway bandits have committed rape in the commission of robberies.

The most common highway robberies involve pickup trucks pulling up next to the victims' moving vehicle with occupants brandishing weapons, or impromptu blockades on isolated roads forcing vehicles to stop. Travel on secondary roads increases the risk of encountering a criminal roadblock; robbers have used mountain roads advantageously to stop buses, vans and cars in a variety of ways. The roads around Lake Atitlán that connect the neighboring towns have little security and visitors have been stopped and robbed.

Gangs are a growing concern, both in Guatemala City and in rural Guatemala. Gang members are often well-armed and prone to unprovoked violence. Gangs are believed to be responsible for a substantial increase in violent robberies on inter- and intra-city buses; U.S. Mission personnel are not permitted to travel on these buses. Mission personnel continue to observe heightened security precautions in Guatemala City and on the roads outside the capital city.

There is little evidence of effective investigation of these crimes or arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators. The police suffer from corruption, inexperience and lack of funds, and the judicial system is weak, overworked, and inefficient. Criminals, at times armed with an impressive array of weapons, know there is little chance they will be caught and punished. In some cases, assailants have been wearing full or partial police uniforms and have used vehicles that resemble police vehicles, indicating some elements of the police might be involved.

“Why you no choose Antigua? All the gringos study Spanish in Xela. Is better in Antigua.”

So spoke the middle-aged man at the filthy Guatemala City street corner where we were trying to find the next bus to Antigua. The Spanish had already been studied, though not by me, and we three gringos were on the leisure portion of our vacation. This was, in fact, the only part of my vacation. M. and C. had gone down two weeks prior to study Spanish in the mountain town of Quetzaltenango (more easily referred to by its Mayan name, Xela [shay-la]). We met up for one week of traveling around Guatemala before returning home. We’d been doing a lot of traveling around the country, and Antigua was to be the last stop before we headed to the airport the next day.

“You are from Nuevo México, eh? I have been there. I know Taos.” He pronounced this last word with a laboriously rounded vowel sound, obviously practiced but never quite mastered. “I lived there. I did, you know, whatever I could. Anything.”

We chatted for a couple of minutes about Nuevo México, about Antigua, about gringos, as a large bus—referred to here as a ‘chicken bus’ because of the wide variety of typical passenger species—backed into position near us. Most chicken buses are actually American school buses from the ’70s and ’80s with stern warnings still intact about not throwing gum at your neighbor.

“This is the next bus to Antigua, my friends.”

We hand our big backpacks to the guy standing on the roof of the bus, as is typical, keeping our most valuable possessions in a small pack we carry on to the bus with us to keep close at hand. We confirm with the driver that this bus goes to Antigua, and the driver’s assistant guides us to our seats and places the pack on the rack above our heads. The bus is already growing crowded, and we’re tired. We stayed last night in a bare-bones hostel in the mountains near Semuc Champey, three hours by unpaved precipitous mountain road from a small town called Cobán. We’d been awoken at 4:55 a.m. for our 5:00 a.m. minibus by some Spanish-speaking voice with a flashlight in the dark. The journey was too bumpy for sleep, and when we arrived in Cobán at 8:30 with empty stomachs and sagging eyes, the bus to Guatemala City, another four hours further away, was already loading. We hopped on board and continued the journey. When we arrived in Guatemala City, it was just a four or five block walk to the place where the bus to Antigua loaded, and the last leg would be an hour and a half at most. Almost there.

It seems strange that the assistant is so forceful, putting M. into a seat in the row in front of us, when she’d been heading to the row behind. When I realize our broken umbrella is still in my lap, I put it on top of the backpack on the rack above my head, and notice as I lower my eyes the hands of the assistant repositioning it next to the pack. He is behind us, helping other people into their seats and packing three adults and their belongings into every two-adult-width seat. A large man squeezing past me drops some coins loudly on the floor. C. and I moved our feet and help him locate a coin that has rolled under our seat. He thanks us and brushes past. I close my eyes for a moment. The bus starts up and begins rolling forward around the corner as C. starts shouting.

“Where’s our bag!?” I look up at the empty rack. Shit. I stand up, spinning around to scan the blank brown faces in the seats behind us. The two men, the assistant and the coin dropper, have already disappeared out the back door. They were so well-practiced, so by-the-book, but at the same time so obvious—after the fact, that is. Of course they were thieves. Why else so much attention to the bag? Why else seat M. in front of us? The bus is moving faster now. C. runs out the front door, explaining what’s happened in Spanish to the driver as she passes him. I follow, but the driver only slows, and we have only seconds to scan the crowd at the corner. They’re already gone. I grab the ladder on the back of the bus that leads to the roof, climb up to make sure our big packs are still there, and am ushered in the back door of the bus by the real driver’s assistant.

By the time we reach Antigua an hour later and find a phone to call the credit card companies, they’ve rung up $500 in charges. Once we get back to the States and all the charges appear, it will turn out to be over $1000. Fortunately, we won’t be held liable for the charges, but C. is out a backpack, a hundred in cash, inexpensive but irreplaceable jewelry, a phone card, subway passes, her driver’s license, and so on. During the ensuing days, at random moments, she will remember something else that was in the bag. The emergency rain ponchos. We’re driving down city streets on the way to the store when her eyes drop. The earrings were in there too.

But now the photos are back from the lab and I am reminded of all the transcendental, ephemeral beauty I witnessed. It began the day after I arrived. As soon as I got out of Guatemala City’s filthy crime-ridden slums, my overcrowded bus took me up along narrow mountain roads weaving amid volcanoes draped in fog. Peasants led burros along the side of the highways. Crews of itinerant machete-wielding men walked from field to field. Short barefoot women with toddlers slung in blankets over their backs and enormous bowls of food or cloth balanced on their heads waited on the shoulder for someone to stop and take them where they were going.

M., C., and I met up in Panajachel the day after I arrived, spending a couple of days exploring that town and some of the villages that line the volcano-encircled lake there, Lago Atitlan. We then caught an overpriced ten-hour bus to a town called Florés, which put us within a couple of hours of Tikal, the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the middle of thousands of square miles of protected rain forest that spans northern Guatemala, western Belize, and southern Mexico. We spent a day in Florés debating whether or not our digestive trouble was caused by amoebas, but still took some time to eat good food (relatively good, when compared to the desayuno típico of eggs, clumpy refried black beans, and a little sliver of salty cheese) and swim in the lake. From there we hit Cobán, toured a coffee plantation, staying in a hotel that claimed to have hot water (a real luxury), but in fact the hot water just turned out to be less cold than usual. Stopping in Cobán broke up the return to the South into bearable pieces, and put us near Semuc Champey, with flooded caves we explored by candlelight and its serene cascading pools of mountain spring water. A little thievery amid all that? So be it.

Then again, it wasn’t my stuff that got stolen.

Alright, folks. Photos from our trip to Guatemala are now up. It’s been just over a year since my last trip worthy of a photoblog page. This whole working for a living thing is highly overrated, as far as life as an intrepid traveler goes. And I get 50% more paid vacation than most American adults. Call me spoiled. I don’t know how people can be expected to subsist on two weeks of vacation a year. That’s barely enough to make the rounds to see family and friends, let alone explore this cool huge orbiting sphere we inhabit. At least the money’s good. What a novel change not to be broke all the time.

Oh yeah, the Guatemala pictures. I almost forgot. They’re here: Guatphot.

Alright. It’s 1:10 am and I really should go to bed. In fact, that’s imminent. I have to pack and get ready to leave for Guatemala for a week. Why Guatemala? Because it’s there. I’ve been trying to remember my Spanish for a couple of days, but all that’s coming to mind is Czech. That’ll just be nonsense.

Hola. Como esta?

Dobrý Den. Samozřejmě.

Como?

But on a wholly different note: Isn’t it really about time to give it up? Always on the cutting edge, Robert Smith now has a MySpace profile.