Journey to Antigua

A group of 8 of us from the complejo took off right after school on Wednesday, September 14th for a 4-day weekend trip over Salvadoran (and Guatemalan, Honduran, and Nicaraguan) Independence Day to the frequently-referenced Central American gem of Antigua, Guatemala. After a late and frazzled arrival to the bus station, we spent the next 5 hours relaxing in the top level of double-decker first class bus (quite a bit different from the Greyhound experience my mom and I shared in Tampa Bay, FL many moons ago)! I felt like a little girl exploring all the amenities unique to a first-class experience like a leg-rest and more refreshments than I had on my last 5 domestic flights combined. It was exciting!

Yet, as I looked out the window, we passed many little village-like towns with zinc roofs and fences patched together with a sundry of materials ranging from planks to bushes to more zinc. Women clad in colorful aprons cooked pupusas along the side of the road while the ever-present stray dogs wandered around scouring the ground for any stray scrap of food that they could conjure. Outside little corner stores sat clusters of men engaged in menial conversation wiling away the eve of independence. Occasionally, groups of predominantly teenage boys ran along the side of the street carrying a stick affixed with a coffee tin containing a burning candle invoking Olympic torch images.

As we arrive in sprawling Guatemala City, soon there is a McDonald’s every other block interspersed with Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, expansive malls and towering movie theaters. We are dropped off at a 5-star hotel where we are supposed to meet a shuttle to take us the last 45 minutes to Antigua. It’s not there. Our phones are supposed to work in Guatemala, but they don’t. Eventually, the 8 of us get into two beat-up Toyota Corollas with all our luggage and anticipation of a great weekend ahead!

We finally get out of the bright lights of the city and are cruising along a hilly and windy road presumably through gorgeous, mountainous landscape. However, it was about 10:00pm in the middle of the Guatemalan countryside, so views were essentially non-existent. To me, in the U.S., hill, windy and dark means to drive slowly and cautiously. To a Guatemalan taxi driver, it means barreling along at higher than cautious speeds in hopes to get your 4 gringo passengers to their destination as quickly as possible so you can collect your money and go home. Unfortunately for the driver, he hit a ginormous pothole at going unreasonable speeds. All of a sudden, we knew something was wrong, but he continued on. In our less than perfect Spanish, we suggested pulling over to inspect the damages. As the driver and our male representative got out to observe, it was discovered that we had not one, but TWO flat tires on the passenger side. Newsflash: a car only has one doughnut! Luckily, we were caravanning with the other taxi and could use theirs. However, it was a one-way road, so he couldn’t come back to us. We had to drive another few miles to reach our second doughnut, but it was quickly changed and we giggled about the adventure as we continued on our way innocently thinking that our perils were in the past!

As we were coming into the outskirts of Antigua, our front seat passenger shouted out “tumelo” [speed bump]. No sooner did she alert the driver than we totally bottomed out and lost the function of our transmission. The poor driver tried to continue on, but the car just kept getting slower and slower no matter how much gas he tried to feed it. Eventually, we were waiting on the side of the road for the first taxi to find our house, drop off the other four people and come back for us. We eventually made it to the BEAUTIFUL house that we had rented at a ridiculously reasonable price and were able to smile about the circuitous route we had taken to arrive. The journey was one, big, confusing juxtaposition of developing world meets modern world provoking thoughts and questions that bring me a blissful kind of joy and continue to addle me three weeks later!