Highs and Lows

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Well it has been a while again since my last entry and a lot has happened. Caitlin ended up finding a cheap flight to come see me on March 25 and we had a wonderful time touring around Guatemala until she had to leave again early yesterday morning. I’ll back track a bit now and give you the synopsis of our adventures.

Caitlin flew in Thursday, March 25 and I took the chicken busses to meet her in Guatemala City. It’s about a 2.5 hour ride for Panajachel and you have to switch busses a few times, unless you catch the direct which I did not. The ride on the chicken busses was pretty uneventful, thankfully, and I arrived at the airport around 8 and tried to entertain myself for the next hour until her flight got in. I spaced out thoughts of how bad I needed to use a bathroom with budgeting my sandwiches and watching ridiculous repeating advertisements on the collection of TV’s above the exit. As I was about to break into my last piece of gum, Caitlin appeared 10 minutes earlier than expected and I was overjoyed to see her. It was such a surreal feeling seeing her in my country of adventure. A lot of the experiences on the trip felt that way with her and I loved sharing my previously perceived adventure of solitude. It was an interesting feeling experiencing the once unfamiliar scenery of my solitary mission, with the person that I longed to experience it with.

We took a cab to our friend Sara’s place in the city and caught up on the last two weeks, while Caitlin finished typing her last paper for school. The next day we decided to go to some hot springs at Santa Teresita and it was an excellent decision. The hot springs were commercialized and was actually more of a salon and spa, but we didn’t mind because they had many pools and the “spa treatment” wasn’t much money so we enjoyed hydro therapy baths and delicious smoothies. It was a great day to just relax from stressful weeks and long hours of traveling. From the hot springs, we had to decide how to get back to Panajachel and the assistants at the hot springs informed us the only way to catch a bus back to Panajachel was to take a cab back to the city. Cab’s ran about $40 and being on a budget I told him that there must be a better way and we headed out. With Caitlin trusting that I knew what I was doing we barged out into the town to find some chicken busses that would take us back to home. My initial instinct of where the busses stopped was incorrect so we flagged down a bicycle taxi and asked the small Guatemalan man to take us to the bus stop. He gladly took us, even after we informed him that we would be a heavy load. He said that we were not his heaviest and was impressed by the small man’s strength as he slowly but surely peddled us up a steep hill. I want to make sure that you have the image of our mode of transportation at that point. These bike taxi’s or trike taxi’s rather, had us sitting across a bench seat in between two wheels and then a man on the back peddling over the last remaining wheel. I really wish we would have been able to get a picture…

We found the chicken bus that would take us back to the city and got settled in for Caitlin’s first chicken bus ride. I told myself that I wasn’t going to make her ride on the crazy busses but our options were limited and it was midday so I figured they would be safe enough. So after a short trip back the city I asked the driver what would be the best stop back to Los Encuentros (our transfer stop to Panajachel) and he looked at me with a bewildered expression. Apparently, my directional ignorance misled me into thinking that there is only one road into the biggest city in the country and that it might be a challenge to find the highway with the chicken busses going the direction we need. Nonetheless, the driver told us that we would need to go above and take the metro to the otherside of the city and take the busses there. So, Caitlin and I trekked our way through the Metro Station looking like real travelers with our hiking packs and successfully made it to our suggested stop. As we got off, we found 4 highways crisscrossing with busses zooming every which way. Feeling very uncomfortable and exposed, we put on a confident face and took off in a direction just to be moving. After stopping a few street vendors we gathered the general direction where the busses would take off from and headed that way. A little ways on that path, I was feeling bad for putting Caitlin through this and suggested that we just get taxi to take us to the closest shuttle agency and just make do with the extra cost. We headed for the group of taxi’s gathered on a street by the highway and I heard the familiar call to Los Encuentros coming from one of the chicken busses. I proposed the idea to Caitlin and she went along with it and the next thing we knew we were off towards home – for the next six hours. Needless to say, Caitlin had the whole chicken bus experience – loud Guatemalan country bop rattling your ear drums, overcrowded seats, delays in towns, and fast maniacal driving. Let me tell you about their driving. Since these drivers don’t own the buses and only get paid by how many trips back and forth they make, they drive fast. These guys really are nuts. They zoom around the mountain curves and pass everyone on the road. The full sized school buses fly around corners nearly going on two wheels, meanwhile tossing every person from their seats who didn’t grab on to safety rail fast enough. It was actually a blast for the first few hours watching Caitlin hang on and laugh out of astonishment about the rollercoaster ride. We arrived home safely later and I promised Caitlin we would travel more comfortably in the future. A good experience though.

We spend the night in Pana and then took the next day’s early shuttle to Xela, the second largest city to the west, to some more fantastic hot springs. These hot spring, Las Fuentes Georginas, were really incredible. I mean we were way up in the mountains and they basically just damned up the water dribbling of the mountain and put up and restaurant and some canbanas around it. It was a fantastic time. The cabanas weren’t by any means elegant but the best part was that we could use the hot springs all night if we wanted, even after it was closed to the public. It was gorgeous looking up at the stars and the near full moon. We some really nice people from Washington state and learned about the guitar shop the guy owns on San Juan island and made hesitant plans to meet up this next summer. The water felt amazing in the cold brisk mountain air and took your breath away as you entered in from the cold. The jungles surrounding the springs were also a sight capable of stealing away your breath. After the late night dip, Caitlin and I had an awful time getting a fire started in the cabana, which would be necessary to be able to stay warm enough through the night. Everything there was just damp, including the matches and we exhausted all but three of them before we ended up with fire. I’m leaving out some other adventures that include finding a phone to call an airline to cancel a flight, horrendous miscommunication on shuttles and having one shuttle driver threaten the other, standing outside McDonalds at 7 am waiting for them to open, and probably something else I’m forgetting. Anyway, it was a fantastic time to Xela.

Once back in Pana, I had to work a bit because our donor trip for Mercado Global was taking place and our executive director was down from the states to show them how everything works in the organization down here as well as the impact that we have on the communities we work with. I was so glad that I was able to bring Caitlin along on these day trips because she was able to help me out on the marketing end by taking pictures for me to use in the future and was also pleased to give her the opportunity to take as many pictures of indigenous mayan people for her Central American photo collection. We had an excellent time talking with the artisans and dressing the American women in the traditional clothing and to try balancing baskets on their heads. It was so fun seeing Caitlin all dressed up! It was a really cool experience.

Another day, we went across the lake and rented Kayaks for a couple of hours to tour around the lake by San Pedro and admire the Volcanoes. We also enjoyed the markets and found a lot of great stuff to bring back home!

The last few day we went to Antigua for Good Friday, (the entire week was Semana Santa and there were processions taking place everywhere!) and we were amazed by the alfombras, or carpets, that were laid out on the streets. These weren’t actual carpets but were these works of art made of sawdust and bright dyes and were beautifully displayed in the middle of streets. We spent some time wandering around, eating delicious food, and being amazed at the quantity of people in the city. We ran into some bad luck though as we were taking pictures at the cathedral waiting for the procession to start. Someone slit Caitlin’s bag and took the money she was carrying in her wallet. Luckily, she didn’t have much on her and had left her credit cards packed in our bags at the shuttle agency, but we were upset at the situation and at ourselves for allowing it to happen. We were fine though, but it did ruin our afternoon. That evening we took a shuttle to the city and stayed at a nice hostel close to the airport and we enjoyed the company of a couple from Australia on their honey moon and an older gentlemen from Portland that was attending his runaway daughter’s graduation from a law school in Guatemala. Everyone has an interesting story.

The sad part of this blog entry is the part where I sent Caitlin off on her very early morning flight and returned back to a lonely Panajachel. It’s where it leaves me now writing this blog post and reminiscing on a great week. I hope that I will stay busy at work for the next 2 months and keep my mind off of missing people back home! Especially today I was missing everyone back at the COC in Cedar Falls at the sunrise service. Easter wasn’t quite the same here without family. I hope it all went well though for everyone and I’ll look forward to hearing about it!

Well I think I’ve written enough in this one post. I’ll be trying to post gain soon to give an update on what my work in office has been like and little more about what we do in the office. Stay tuned!