bus rides from hell

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Hello Friends,

It has been an eventful couple of days, though I think that while traveling in 3rd world countries that there is no day that is uneventful in some way. It took us 3 buses to get from Coban to Chichicastenango. We were finally ripped off in earnest in Coban. We had stopped in at a travel office for 411. Carlos said he had a friend who ran a mini-bus service to Chichi, so we paid $60 Quetzales (about $7 U.S.) and arranged to be picked up at our hotel the next morning. 8:30 A.M. came and went, and at 9:15 we were pissed and discouraged. Enter our guardian angel, Alfredo. Nicole had met this kind gentleman the night before while having dinner in our hotel (yours truly just wanted to be horizontal upstairs). Turns out his mother lives in the Friendship Manor in Isla Vista. I volunteered there for a couple of years in college. Anyways, the next morning Alfredo drove us around to look for the mini-bus company. Turns out it no longer exists (que sorpresa), so he drove us to a terminal where for $3 US we started our journey towards Chichi. God sent us an angel...period.

7 bumpy, exhausting hours later we arrived in Chichicastenango. The hotel where we stayed was interesting. The water was FREEZING, 99% of the hair in the bed did not belong to us, and we both got bitten by something we´d rather not identify while in the hairy beds.

Sunday morning is market day where indigenous people come from all of the surrounding village to sell their wares. There were textiles, masks, sundries, meat, fruit, veggies, and knick-knacks galore. As we wove our way into the market we discovered the hundreds of food stalls ¨manned¨by women and children. Nicole and I saddled up to one table and had corn and rice tamales. I have by now tried dozens of tamales here, and they just pale in comparison to Mexican tamales. You´d think I would have learned by now. One interesting thing Nicole decided to try was mush, which was corn flakes with hot arroz con leche. It was delicious!

In addition to shopping and eating, we walked into the mountains to a place the Mayans consider sacred. It has the remains of a stone altar where people leave offerings of food, incense, and live chickens to the gods. Nicole and I hugged trees and enjoyed the serenity of this place for a bit. Though I´m glad we were there for market day, it is a poor and dirty city. When it rained, it poured, and the streets would be flooded with torrents of mud and garbage. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for those people as they attempted to protect their goods.

No travel entry of mine would be complete without a case of food poisoning, and I think it was the grilled corn. Thank you God it wasn´t too serious, but I´m still feeling a bit nauseated today.

Today we had the most frightening and hillarious bus trip ever. After getting on to the most dilapidated chicken bus of all time, we immediately learned that we needed to use our hands and feet in order to remain in the seats we had chosen. The seats behind us were broken and kept slamming into us from behind. It was just like being on an amusement park ride, except we weren´t secured by belts or cages. Nicole and I were laughing so hard that tears ran down our faces. I thought to myself that if we were to die, at least we´d die laughing! My hands were stiff and white after this half hour journey with the driver from hell.

We arrived around noon in our current location, Quetzaltenango, the second largest city in Guatemala. Nicole and I have both been struck by the cosmopolitan feel of this city. It is pretty clean, the buildings are colonial and well-maintained, and there is a wide variety of eateries. In fact, I´ve been eating like a pig because we´ve been eating the same stuff for what seems like weeks.

We are staying in a beautiful little hotel which is on a quiet street close to the Parque Centroamerica, the heart of the city. It is clean, has hot water, has a lovely covered patio filled with plants, and is $10 per night. 😊

Tomorrow morning we´re going on a tour to visit 3 indigenous villages, with a final stop at the Fuentes Georginas, pools of different temperatures fed by sulfur springs.

Love to you all,
Mo

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