Saturday, November 26, 2005

The first hour of the mini-bus trip to Flores was over unpaved road. The next hour seemed to be over road that had once been paved but had fallen into such disrepair that it was hard to tell. After two hours we hit smooth blacktop and picked up speed. About half an hour from our goal, we were treated to twenty minutes of sales pitch for various tours of Tikal. There was a long wait at a bank in Santa Elena, just outside Flores while some people cashed travelers' checks, and then finally we were going over the bridge to Flores.

Flores is an island town in the middle of Lake Peten Itza. It's genuinely pretty and sweet, but anything would have made us happy after Bethel. Still, our goal was Guatemala City, and on to Antigua for school. (We decided to save Xela for later.) So, numb and dirty as we were, we stepped into the travel agent that the mini-bus had dropped us off in front of, to see if there was a bus to Guatemala City leaving any time soon. The agent was on the phone, so I moseyed around looking at maps and waited for her to finish. When she did, some guy jumped in and got to her first.

He was asking about busses to Guatemala City, so I listened in. He spoke English. He hadn't greeted the agent, in English or Spanish, just put both hands on her desk, leaned in and started asking for busses in English. She took out a piece of paper and started writing out his options. She wrote about a luxury bus with baño and... "Baño? What's that?"

Ok, not only did this guy show up in Guatemala not knowing what a baño is, but he was being a complete and total jerk about it. He made multiple sarcastic comments when she made a wrong guess at what he wanted and started giving him some other information. Dude, she's doing her best - she doesn't speak English. After he got his information he took it and left without a word of thanks or explanation, either to her or to Michael and me, who had helped translate for him.

That guy was such a jerk that we wanted to make it up to the agent, a sweet and patient lady, on behalf of all English-speakers. So we broke our newly made rule of not buying any more tickets in advance and bought a pair of tickets to Guatemala City for the next morning. The overnight bus didn't leave till ten, and we didn't know what we'd do with ourselves for the next six hours, especially without a shower, so we abandoned the idea of going right away. This turned out for the best.

So we got a room, and found a German couple from our mini-bus already swimming in the lake behind our hotel. This was great, because it never would have occurred to us to get in the lake otherwise. They were very nice but it took a while for me to warm up to them because of my somewhat irrational hatred of having been on the mini-bus at all. They came up to lounge on the patio and Michael went down to swim, but I stayed in the room and washed some clothes in the sink because I had nothing clean to wear. Finally I went down to join him. The water was cold and I had just decided to sit on the steps and watch, but then a family came along.

It was a whole crowd of people, and they all stopped when the little girl started indicating that she wanted to swim. The mom called out to Michael in the lake, "Señor," and then in English, "she wants to swim with you." "Uh... okay," Michael said, and he gave me a look that I knew meant, you better get in too because I'm not swimming alone with some little girl. Great. So I waded into the freezing water while the little girl shivered and ran around and tried to decide how much of her clothes she was going to take off. The mom told us the girl could swim very well, and not to worry about that. The rest of the family moved on.

The little girl's name was Gaia and she was four years old. She and her family were on vacation from Cozumel. She was a really pretty girl, and seemed very talkative and precocious. She climbed down the steps and shivered some more and chattered about this and that in Spanish. I took her hand and led her a bit deeper and then she started swimming towards Michael. I couldn't let her show me up like that, so I ducked into the water up to my neck, and after that it felt fine.

Gaia asked Michael what his name was (using the tu form, cheeky girl) and he told her Miguel. "Miguel?" she said. Then she asked me what my name was and I told her. "Miguel?" she said again. She didn't seem to worried that we were both named Miguel even though one of us is a girl. (I really need a nickname, because even back in NYC, Spanish speaking people thought I was saying Miguel, and wrinkled their noses in confusion. It only got worse when we hit Mexico and everyone spoke Spanish. At best they think I'm saying Miriam, which is at least a woman's name and fine if we're just having a friendly chat in the park, but not so great if I'm buying a bus ticket.)

Our activity attracted a nine-year old Guatemalan boy named Jose and his uncle, also on vacation, and we had a great time out there. I told Gaia that I couldn't swim and she told me she could swim like a mermaid and then she tried to teach me, holding out her little arms for me to copy her motions. She really could swim very well and she was remarkably charming. She cheered me right up. We stayed in the lake until the sun set and it started really getting cold. As we were leaving, Gaia's mother told her to thank us and she called out, "Gracias, Miguel!" which I guess was for both of us.

After that came the first of Guatemala's famous electric showers. The idea of these is to use electricity (yes, electricity) to quickly heat the water just as it comes through the showerhead. This particular specimen shocked Michael twice, but did not manage to produce even tepid water. Still, we had soaked off a lot of grime in the lake, and even a cold shower was welcome after our harrowing and sweaty trip into Guatemala.

We followed this up with a splurge dinner on a little wharf that had been built just to hold four tables directly over the lake. We had pina coladas and Gallo beer, and I had an amazing whole fish, and Michael had a huge assortment of Guatemalan-style meats and even though the shore was lined with lights, we could still look up and see the stars. Michael threw bits of bread over the railing and we could hear the fish splashing for them. It was the antithesis of Bethel. It was great.

So today we are to take a tuk-tuk over the bridge to Santa Elena and catch the 8:30 am bus to Guatemala City. Thanks, Flores. We feel much better now.

HOURS IN A TOURIST MINI-BUS: 4

 

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Lake Peten Itza, Flores by night.

Early morning view from hotel patio, Flores.

After all that, the water wasn't even warm.