Xela, the frigid and glorious

Hello loyal fans, I am back again. After 2 weeks of travel through Honduras and El Salvador I have finally arrived iin Guatemala where I will stay for the next 5 week!!! How exciting! Reference yikesbikes.blogger.com for more details about the last two weeks. Honduras was absoultely beautiful and I will add some pics when my cord turns up but El Salvador was super fantastico. We stayed with the family of our friend Ana, who is Salvadorena. We had an absoultely glorious time. I was sad to leave as it felt like home after just one week. The Salvadoran people were so so kind! I can´t say enough about it, just very helpful and welcoming. It was also an excellent educational experience as we learned about the bloody history of El Salvador. We were also heartened to hear about the progress that the leftist party, Frente Farabundo Marti Para Liberacion Nacional, FMLN, is making toward achieving the presidency in this highly corrupt country, which would hopefully go a long way to improving the bleak situation of the poor in this country.

After El Salvador, Eli, Karla and I made our way over the border into Guatemala City where we passed an uneventful evening in our luxury hotel room (50 Quetzals = 7 Dollars each) and by luxury I mean it had hot running water and a FREE bottle of water. It was also steps from our bus terminal and was pretty luxury for the neighborhood we were in.

My first daylight view of Guatemala City was pretty bleak and nearly jaded me to Guatemala City. I think the bus terminal was in one of the worse parts of the city (no worries though mommy as there we were triple locked into our room, one lock on the terminal gate, one on the hotel gate, and then one on our room). Oh boy we ventured out this morning to find pancakes for Elizabeths final meal in Central America. We did find pancakes but unfortunatley we also found people drinking at 9 on a Sunday morning who greeted us with heckling as we walked into what we thought was a restaurant... Very strange. With the drunk hecklers and the ridiculously loud music coming from the jukebox and the lack of decent morning beverage options we bailed out of there right quick. Unfortunately we never found more pancakes. We gave up our hunt for a decent place to sit down to a breakfast. I guess we have a hard time differentiating between bar and restaurant because they all seemed to be bars which was strange for 9 on Sunday morning.

Our standards were pretty unrealistic this morning for what we wanted to eat. We told the cab driver to take us out of that crappy neighborhood to a restaurant that served pancakes but wasn´t a chain, or an American restaurant where we could sit down to a meal and that was between our bus terminal and the airport... not too much to ask is it?

So we ended up in the Parque Central where we were just in time for the Catholic Procession complete with incense, marching bands, a flotilla of black and lace clad ladies, booming cannons, and the main attraction, the Virgin Mary float carried by at least 20 burly men who I must say didn´t look too thrilled about it. My inner Catholic was really intrigued by all this pomp and circumstance. It was a true Catholic spectacle. Pictures very soon! So this redeemed my impression of Guatemala City.

And then we bid adieu to our dearest Elizabeth after a panaderia (pastry shop) confection who is on her way back to the US as I write unfortunately. We had a good two weeks. Our lifelong dream of international travel together was finally realized and a fantastic time was had by all!

And then came the true spectacle of the day. We had bought our bus tickets and were sitting placidly in the bus station at 12:05 awaiting our 12:30 bus when I remembered... SHIT! My other suitcase! You see my HUGE suitcase the size of three toddlers and carrying over 50 poundds of toothpaste and toothpaste for the Xela tikes had been waiting in the bus terminal from which we departed two weeks earlier when I first arrived in Guatemala. They stored it for us there while we were travelling for 2 weeks. It was simply not an option to leave it as Xela is 4 hours from Guat City. So after quick deliberation and with 25 minutes before the bus left I left Karla at the bus station with all of our luggage (and nonrefundable tickets bought) and flew to a taxi. We sped through Guat City on what probably should have been a 20 minute ride in exactly 11 minutes. I can only imagine what the people at both bus stations were thinking when this crazy guera (white girl) came sprinting into the bus terminal looking for the big suitcase. I felt badly about being so rushed but crammed it in the back seat of the taxi (took up the whole back seat and trunk pretty much) and flew back to the bus terminal. I was frantically making phone calls to find the phone number for the bus terminal to tell them to wait. At 12:28 I said I would be there in 2 minutes and he said the bus was leaving in 3. Karla says I arrived approximately 20 seconds after the bus left. We all loaded into the taxi, along with a woman from DC who was apparently int he bathroom when the bus left without her (along with her luggage) and proceeded to chase the bus down on the highway and flag it down so we could board.

Nothing except the buses in Latin America run on time... strange.

Long story short we made it safe and sound. And more pronto. I´m off to eat Indian food in Guatemala. I love it! Ciao for now