the long bus ride home

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Our trip began flawlessly- no wait at the airport, free wine from a wine rep at the bar we stopped in to kill time (good natured guy named Larry who determined that I should be Curly, since we also had a Mo, and then proceeded to do a 3 stooges stunt, accidentally landing me with a sound smack in th nose in the process.) and great seats on the flight.
After a smooth (if relatively sleepless) 4 hour flight, the sprawling lights of Guatemala City appeared. There was a standard 45 minute wait for our bags, and then we found our way via taxi directly through the heart of the shabby city to a bus station. With dizzying speed, we were on a bright yellow bus (with mercifully plush seats, as long as you dodged the ones that were broken) to Chiquimula. What the travel book claimed would be a 3 hour tour turned into a 5 and a half hour ride, due to construction on a main highway, that, according to a gentleman on the bus, only gets worse every year. Mo and I roughed it through with no bathroom break (the bus didn´t stop once since we were running late) and two or three sips of a coca-cola. At one point, after an eternity of not moving, Mo and I fell asleep for 5 or 10 minutes, which amazngly recharged both our batteries. The bus filled quickly with many men, women and children, so that by 6am or so, there was standing room only on the bus. We befriended a sweet little 7 year old who was standing next to us, and after the first hour or so, invited her to sit next to us (the three of us played musical seats a few times trying to find the configuration that was most comfortable for all of us). She provided some much needed distraction from our exhaustion and thirst, and she spent the better part of the trip writing words (with a little help from Mo and I) and stories in a little journal of mine- she had the neatest penmanship I´ve ever seen from a second grader. She even taught us some words we didn´t know. Leave it to two teaches to find a pupil on a bus in a foreign country.
I got a bit of car sickness toward the end of the trip, and, and as the bus finally pulled to a stop, I relatively raced out the door to upchuck the coca cola in a gutter. Quite an explosive end to the trip.
Chiquimula is a bustling little city, and, after a few wrong turns, we made our way on foot down crowded streets with foot high curbs to Hotel Hernandez- which lived up entirely to the guidebooks description. Mo and I made a pretty quick beeline for the sparkling pool at the back of the hotel, jumped off the high dive that doubled as a waterfall, and came to the conclusion that we need to make swimming pools a priority when booking our trips. We then ventured out to grab a bit of food, and after wandering in and out of 4 or 5 places, including the open air street market a block form our hotel, wound up with fresh corn tortillas, a couple of fresh rolls, a lock of gouda, some market fresh grapes and a couple of carrots. Back a tthe hotel, our batteries expired, and we were out like a light. Overall, an exhilirating, great start to our journey- on to Copan manana!

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