Saturday, December 31, 2005

It's crazy that it only took us one afternoon/evening to get from Charlotte, North Carolina to Guatemala City the second time, when it took us over two months and over one hundred hours on the bus the first time. Customs and Immigration in Guatemala City were a breeze. Not one question. I visited the ATM, and then we stepped outside and into that familiar smell of gasoline, woodsmoke, and mold that permeates the air. The description sounds bad, but it's not a bad smell. Oh, and it was warm. Not crazy uncomfortable hot, but warm enough to make me take off my fleece immediately. What a difference from NYC, and even from Charlotte. It was about 10:30 p.m.

We took a taxi to the Hotel Fenix in Guatemala City and it turned out to be where I had stayed the last time I was here, which made me happy. It's not a nice hotel, but it's not horrible - the taxi driver said it was "mas o menos" - and it has tons and tons of character. Plus it's only Q50 for a nice big room (sin baño). Last time I stayed here I was able to observe a whole crowd of hookers from my window, but this time there was only one... and who knows, maybe she was just some woman waiting for a bus. I suppose hookers are considered to be indicators of a bad neighborhood but since I'm not their target customer, I'd rather them than aggressive children selling bracelets and postcards.

In the morning we got up early. Our guidebook claimed there was a 9:30 a.m. Pullman bus to Panajachel, and we were going to try to catch that. We had deliberately stayed at a hotel in Zona 1, near all the bus stations (because in Guatemala, each bus has its own station) and we figured it would be a fairly short walk to the Rebuli station. All we needed was to be pointed in the right direction out the front door of the hotel, but when we asked the guy there which way was 2a Av., he wanted to know where we were going. When we told him, he said that the busses were no longer allowed into town and were stopping somewhere further away and we'd have to get a taxi.

He seemed very helpful and we believed him, so we let him flag down a taxi for us. He had a long talk with the driver and afterwards told us he'd gotten the price down from Q45 to Q30. We assumed they had worked out all the details of where we were to go. The taxi took us to the Rebuli station. We couldn't say for sure, but based on the street name and the amount of time it took us to get there, we were pretty certain that we had just arrived at the place we had been planning to walk to. But the driver got out and checked something inside and then told us we were at the right place. So we got out, thinking maybe our hotel guy had been mistaken about having to go far away to get our bus.

Once inside the station, which consisted of a peeling concrete outer room with a small office and then a lot in back with some old bus seats for passengers to use while waiting, we discovered that the 9:30 bus was indeed leaving from another location. The manager told us that we could walk over there with the ayudante, or we could stay there and wait for the 11:00 a.m. bus, which was primera classe, and would only arrive in Pana forty minutes after the 9:30 bus did.

After a little mini-argument, we decided to just wait around for the 11:00 bus. I had forgotten that feeling of never being quite sure what's going on and who's trying to help and who's trying to take advantage. Was the hotel guy wrong or wasn't he? Was the taxi driver supposed to take us where he did, or to somewhere else? What had they talked about all that time if they hadn't worked out where we needed to go? Should we have taken a walk with the ayudante? I felt irritated until I reminded myself that I need to relax in situations like this. We're not in a hurry. It's all going to work out fine. You can't travel successfully if you're too uptight about things... this is something for me to work on. Relax, relax. It doesn't matter.

So we hung around and waited with the ever-growing crowd. At about 10:50, someone came out and made an announcement and there was a mad scramble and suddenly instead of people lounging all over the benches and curbs there was an orderly line. We had no idea what was going on, but luckily I had already given myself the speech so I wasn't too bothered. I went into the office and confirmed that the line was for the bus we wanted, and then we stood at the very end of it.

The primera classe bus was no ADO, but it wasn't a chicken bus either. To be fair, I think there are two or three levels above 1st class and that would explain why the bus was a bit ragged. A nice woman who had been sitting near us while we waited saved us two seats together and squeezed into the back row with her family. We hadn't even spoken to her, so she was extra nice to help us out like that. We would definitely have had to sit apart if she hadn't done that.

The ride was crazy. I don't know if it was the roads or our position on the bus or what, but we were constantly sliding back and forth. Then the bus broke down, but it was quickly repaired. And despite the label of primera classe, we still stopped at seemingly random spots by the side of the road to pick people up. When the few empty seats were filled, people sat on the two steps in the back, or stood up.

But we arrived in Panajachel safe and sound in the early afternoon, ready to see what it had to offer us for New Year's Eve.

HOURS ON THE BUS: 110.5

 

Post a comment:

Name:
Email:
URL:
A cat says:
Comment: (HTML is allowed)

View from the exit row.

Flying to Houston.

Rebuli busses.

Broken down.

Primera Classe.