It was not without much umming and ahhing that we headed to Guatemala. We’d heard from many travellers that it was their favourite Central American country, but recent events - erupting volcanoes and tropical storm Agatha – caused us to question how dumb we would be to go. We googled our little fingers off to find out what the conditions were like, but we didn’t find much. The Australian Department of Foreign affairs said absolutely nothing. The US in comparison that had flashing warnings all over their webpage. What to do!?!? We toyed briefly with the idea of going to Nicaragua instead, but having so little first hand information we decided the best thing to do was to judge the situation when we got there, and we haven’t regretted it one bit - Guatemala is a spectacularly beautiful country. Chicken bussing it through the countryside we’ve seen amazing things – at points we’ve thought the scenery resembled Ireland, Canada and Switzerland (though Claire would disagree with me on the last one). Mountain ranges are luscious; lakes are emerald green; and quaint little villages with Mayan men wearing the traditional red and white stripped pants cling to the hills.
Our two night bus bender through Central America landed us in Guatemala City, Guatemala’s capital - apparently not the safest place on the planet so we jumped on the first ‘chicken bus’ of our adventure and headed straight to Antigua. We heard a story later on from a guy that witnessed a woman being shot at city’s bus terminal. Everyone around her just continued on their merry way, not caring in the slightest. Must be a usual occurrence - scary! Other stories, including that bus divers there get shot everyday by gang members wanting the bus fare collection make me very glad we gave it a miss.
Chicken buses are a Guatemalan experience in themselves. The rickety old American school buses are used around the country as mass 2nd class transport. You can catch them to pretty much anywhere, though quite often you’ll find yourself having to change 3 or 4 times to make a several hour journey.
The funniest bit, asides from the way the drivers have pimped up their vehicles – from TV’s, car stickers, bright colours, and the disco lights – are the number of people that pile onto them. I didn’t think too hard into the name when I first heard it, but once you’ve seen 8 people squashed across 2 seats made for a maximum of 4 you get the idea. How do they do it? They cram 3 people onto a small bench seat and then there are another two passengers that look like their sitting on a seat but are in fact are suspended mid air because they have wedged themselves between the hips of passengers seated either side and are thus held dangling in the aisle in a sitting position. Luckily for us, we got to experience the ‘suspended mid air’ bus seat when we found ourselves whisked onto a full bus by a driver keen to get some gringo dollars (they often overcharge gringos exorbitantly, so we’ve taken to asking the locals how much to avoid gringo inflated prices). It was surprisingly quite a bit more comfortable – instead of being thrown from one side of the bus to the other as the bus corners at 100km an hour, even though you grip the handlebars with all your might and lock your elbows, your totally wedged, so you don’t move an inch. Genius really. And, if you’re really lucky, you won’t be seated underneath a casket of squawking chickens, or Houdini cats that escape from their boxes, and you’ll get a driver with half decent taste in music – pumping out N-trance and Madonna as you cruise down the highway.
Our poor backpacks are getting a run for their money though – they ride the whole time - wind, rain or hail - on the roof. I can’t complain. They take your bag off your hands as soon as they know where you’re off to - the ‘co-pilot’ yanking your 25kg bag off your back and running it up the back of the bus, balanced on the back of his neck, to strap it to the roof. Those few minutes not having to lug my pack somewhere are bliss. One guy managed to carry both our packs up the 3m or so to the top at the same time – one on his back, the other on the back of his neck. They have to weigh at least 45kg together. Once you’ve arrived at your destination, like atom bombs, your bags are dropped from the sky, and come smashing to the ground unless your strong enough to catch them – which we’re not. As a result, our packs are a little worse for wear with broken buckles, zippers and the like.
Anyhoo, we decided that Antigua was a much better option and was only a short chicken bus ride away from Guatemala City. Entranced by the beauty and relaxed nature of the town, we spent 4 days in the old capital recouping from being glued to a bus from Panama. We perused the brightly coloured colonial buildings; explored the ruins of earthquake damaged churches and their gardens; and did a lot of what we do best – eating – as we watched Australia get thrashed by Germany in a pub full of German supporters.
Much to my utmost disappointment, we couldn’t do the thing I’ve been looking forward to since hearing Cliff talk about it back when we were on the salt flats in Bolivia – climb the Pacaya Volcano and roast marshmallows on the lava at the top. Two weeks before we arrived, it erupted. Though companies were offering tours to rivers of lava that were flowing through properties at the base of the volcano, we thought it would be incredibly dumb to go. Not only had a journalist, a tourist and her guide had already been killed, the volcano was still unstable and it was being predicted that it would erupt again. Oh well, onto bigger and better things.
So after much needed R&R we left Antigua and scooted off to Lake Atitlan – one of the places worst hit by Agatha. The destruction was still evident. Landslides destroyed bridges and left roads virtually impassable, though chicken bus drivers continue to drive at manic speeds like they are invincible. I think they enjoy the new obstacles.
In Lake Atitlan, we based ourselves in Panajachel - not the most inspiring of places, though the view from the pontoon across the lake is superb. Once you had walked down the main street, full of vendors and their stalls with the usual Guatemalan souvenirs there was nothing much else to see. We did find an ENGLISH bookshop – woo hoo – which we went a little nuts in. We’re now carrying around 4 books to read which we will not get through fast cause there is no way you can read on a chicken bus.
With little else to keep us entertained in Panajachel, and with the lovehandles over our jeans ever so slowly increasing, we kick started our fitness regime that had until this point consisted only of chewing, with a bit of interval training. The locals obviously thought we were a bit nuts in our matching bootcamp shirts and exercise gear and gave us weird looks as we jogged through the main streets, dodging tuk-tuks driven by 10 year olds. Exercise has not been a big thing in any country we’ve visited so far – you feel very self conscious, even more so at this point because we have absolutely no fitness. It might not be the attire that makes them stare, it may be that they’re concerned we’re going to drop dead. The amount we puff and pant as we make our way along the street would be enough to make anyone worried, especially considering that the road was absolutely flat.
After exhausting the to do’s of Panajachel, including a day trip to the Chichi markets (same old same old), we boated it across the lake to San Pedro (a rip off at Q25, about $3.50, for the trip per gringo with locals paying no more than Q5) – a dirt path maze of restaurants, Spanish schools, and yoga centres. With yoga
definitely not my thing we gave it a miss and headed straight for the restaurants. After about a half hour of wandering, we finally found Cafe La Puerta, down on the ‘playa’. It is not a beach really – or maybe it was – but Agatha has left the lake littered with debris so we didn’t see any beach. It was absolutely gorgeous though, sitting at a table on the waters edge. The food was even better than the view – a delicious Greek Salad with to die for feta and a hamburger, made with homemade bread. Delicious! We loved the food so much that we went to ‘Ventana Blue’ that night for dinner – a new addition to the restaurant scene in San Pedro run by the same guy. Sitting in a tiny deep blue room with only 5 tables we devoured a fabulous curry and pad thai (the closest we’ve had to the real thing – and by real I’m talking Stanley Street standards) followed by a huge piece of chocolate mud cake and icecream. Yum, yum, yum. On all the tables were beautiful mosaic lamps, that glowed different colours – blues, green, pink. I loved them so much I bought one, and am now lugging the thing around with me until I can find some way to ship it home – so worth it though.
Always love a good moo-moo.
After a night in San Pedro we ventured across the bay to San Marcos. Apparently the prettiest of the towns found around the lake, San Marcos clings to the hill from the dock for a kilometre. After a quick wander around, in which we witnessed more destruction caused by the storm, we wandered back down to the lakeside and had lunch at Cafe Moon Fish. You’re thinking ‘random name’ I bet, but once you learn that San Marcos is also the home of month long ‘moon courses’ and other holistic hippie things, it makes a lot more sense. We didn’t hang around long.
Some of the destruction around Panajachel.
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