I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to get out of Guatemala alive. I’ve just accepted a dangerous mission, with the blogosphere itself at stake.

My last post was written on an iPad in the back of a rusty bike rickshaw pedaled by a rogue blogger named Alexx. My new friend pedaled us high into the mountains, his calves bulging like tamales. Eventually we went off-road, and had to portage the rickshaw over fallen trees and shallow ravines. Finally we reached our destination: a large, windowless corrugated-steel shed.

“This is where I sleep,” said Alexx, indicating a dingy mattress in the corner. “And where I blog,” he continued, indicating a bank of flat-screen monitors prominently stamped propiedad del ministerio de blog secreto de guatemala. “And where I love,” he added, indicating a heartstoppingly beautiful woman lying in a hammock, tapping away on a MacBook. “Viroqua, meet Jay.”

She glanced at me, our eyes met, I realized that if need be I would die for her, and she went back to her typing. “El baño está roto,” she said. “Si es amarillo, que es suave.”

I wasn’t sure what she said, but I knew “suave” when I heard it. I wished I had something to give her—something beautiful and rare. All I had, though, was a dozen golf clubs. I unsheathed the driver, hoping she’d catch my subtle allusion. “Please forgive my intrusion into your beautiful home,” I said. “May I give you this driver as a symbol of my gratitude, and of my hopes for an adventurous stay?”

She took it, dropped it on the dirt floor, and said, “Cualquiera que sea.”

“Oh no,” I replied, bowing deeply. “The cualquiera is all mine.”

“You want some adventure?” Alexx had dropped into a wicker Aeron chair facing the monitors. “I’ve got some adventure for you. The blogosphere is in danger, and only we can save it.”

I was taken aback. “What you talkin’ ’bout, Alexx?”

“Here’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.” He pointed to a screen full of real-time analytics. “Traffic is dropping on all the major blogs. Gawker? Down 30% since last week. HuffPost? Down 40%. The Tangential? Up 50%, but that won’t last—they can’t post unflattering photos of themselves forever.”

I was dumbfounded. “How do you have access to these data?”

He shrugged. “Hacked. Some teenage girl in Ukraine did it for me in exchange for a link to her Tumblr. My readers wondered why I thought those GIFs of otters were so great, but I played it off as irony.”

“So what are we supposed to do about this?”

“Look.” Alex pointed to a spiking chart. “All the traffic is going here, to this server upriver.”

“Here?”

“There.”

“Where?”

“I told you! Upriver.”

“In Guatemala?”

“Yes, here.”

“Here?”

“Here. I mean, there—but here.”

“What?”

Alexx slammed his hand on the table, making his Adderall pills rattle. “Listen! We’ve got to go there!”

“Where?”

“There!”

“Upriver?”

“In a boat!”

“To find the server?”

“Yes!”

“And save the blogosphere?”

“Yes!”

“Will it be dangerous?”

“Yes!”

“Can I blog about it?”

“Yes!”

Suddenly I felt Viroqua’s arms wrap around me from behind, and the heat of her cheek against my shoulder. “Se tiró un pedo,” she whispered in my ear.

I smell danger—and it’s turning me on.

“Jay Gabler’s Guatemala” is The Tangential’s weekly travel series. Previous installments:
• Uno: A journey of the soul
• Dos: Journey of the soul takes a wrong turn
• Tres: A blogger gone native

Photo by Viroqua Lopez (Creative Commons)