3/13- Big day. Woke up at the asscrack of dawn and packed in a hurry, to catch our early AM bus. Despite planning to leave really early, the sight of Maryse attempting to get dressed was too much for me and I succumbed to, er, amorous proclivities. When all was said and done, we were a bit late leaving. I got all anal about how many blocks it was to the bus station and actually pulled out the stopwatch to clock our progress. We’re averaging about 58 seconds per block, so we should have about three spare minutes before our bus leaves, provided we keep up the pace... We still hadn’t gotten our wits about us, so as we charged blearily down the street, keeping track of seconds, we missed a turn. Shit. I reoriented and devised a “shortcut” or at least I hoped so.
On the next block, we passed an English couple in a similar state of disarray, and established that we were all similarly late for the same bus. Hustling en masse to the station, we arrived with a couple minutes to spare. I tried to round us up some food, but the “jugo de naranja” was actually some vile version of Tang, so we got on the bus with just our bag of dried snacks to tide us over. Oh well...
On the way to Cuathemoc, the border with Guatemala, a Guatemalan guy across the aisle started telling me how dangerous Guatemala was, how everyone carried guns, showed me his license to carry, etc. Said Ciudad Guatemala was a den of thieves. Also said we would have been much better off to go to Tapachula, further south, for the border crossing, because the one at Cuathemoc would take forever. Very nice. I tried unsuccessfully to catch some sleep, and only managed a light trance state. The road started getting very intense, and Maryse got bus sick. Finally arrived at the border at 11:00 and got off, both relieved and apprehensive. This was, I knew, our last cushy Mexican bus before the legendary Chicken Buses of Guatemala.
The English folks popped into the border station while we watched their luggage, and we agreed to share a cab to the actual border a couple klicks away. They watched our stuff while we went into Mexican customs, which was complicated by the necessity of having to go next door to pay our visas, which I thought I could do before finally leaving Mexico at the end of the trip. We did get to hold onto our tourist cards, which are hopefully still good for reentry.
Finally, we were clear with Mexican and Guatemalan customs, and got in the taxi for a short ride to the border. Stepping across, we were in another land. I had been warned about the moneychangers at the border, and managed to negotiate a decent rate for changing pesos into Quetzales, especially in light of the fact that the banks were closed that day. After a round of negotiation, we got on the nearest chicken bus heading for Huehuetenango. When the bus was full, we sat there, as the assistant bus driver screamed “¡Huehue! ¡Huehue!” at the top of his lungs, exhorting more people aboard the sweltering, overstuffed bus. More and more people piled on, until the bus was so full it seemed like nobody could board. Wrong. They somehow got more people on, stacked four deep in the aisle, until we finally left after some arbitrary threshold of absurdity was apparently crossed.
When we left, we _left_. I mean, that bus driver was getting every bit of performance out of that old bus, in terms of acceleration, cornering, and braking. With total disregard for any sort of sane driving behavior that I know of, the driver rocketed down the road, blaring the horn, swerving, and generally driving like a bat out of hell. The frantic speed at least provided some ventilation, and I was starting to almost be comfortable, but at every stop the co-driver would hang out of the front door and scream “¡Huehue!” some more, and more people somehow got on. The assistant guy determined that my backpack was taking too much room, and removed it to put it on the roof, generating no more space in the bus, as Maryse’s pack was under it, but generating a good deal of apprehension in me. Would it bounce off, get stolen, or meet some other nasty fate? I asked if it was seguro, and the guy said si, si... Breathe deeply. The bus rocketed on through some beautiful scenery and absurd, twisting road strung through the mountains. There was evidence of numerous landslides, and the possibility of ending up on busplunge.com crossed my mind more than once.
Arriving in Huehue like James Bond’s martini -shaken but not stirred- we found ourselves in a truly nasty place. Total chaos, diesel fumes, blaring horns, merciless heat and sun... Everyone was screaming at us in an attempt to get us on the bus they were hawking, right now. The English guy said that these bus guys were notorious for saying whatever it took to get you on and paid up, and where you ended up and when was just your luck. Well, shit.
I approached the only non-chicken-bus in the lot, a decrepit old Greyhound reject but at least it had real seats, and the guy said, sure get on board, we’re heading direct to Antigua! Sweet. We and the English couple climbed on and the girls held seats while us men went in search of sustenance. I found some reconstituted OJ in a carton; slim pickings at the old busyard. Got back on, and the driver entered and asked us what we thought we were doing. I said, well, we’re going to Antigua... He said, there are no more seats on this bus, and it’s the last one of the day. Furthermore, there will be no transport tomorrow because a big manifestation (demonstration) is planned. Ah, fuck!
Going into the ticket office, they said that there was just one seat left, but we could book it and the unlucky half of the couple could sit on a little plastic stool in the aisle. The English folks thought the guy was lying about the demo the next day as a tactic to get us on the bus at all costs (turned out he was telling the truth) and they went off in search of another bus. Maryse and I bit the bullet and paid the $4 each for the ride.
The bus filled up, and I kept having to switch seats as ticketholders came on and politely asked me to move. I ended up in a seat in front of Maryse, dreading the moment the ticketholder would appear and usher me into the aisle, to sit on the little plastic stool for five hours. The bus got underway, and I still had a real seat. At every stop, more people got on and claimed their seats, but never mine. Eventually every reserved seat was spoken for save mine, and the aisle filled up completely and then some. A bunch of Guatemalticos ended up standing, but yours truly scored the one and only seat that went unclaimed! ¡Gracias a Dios!
As the bus clunked on into the night, sounding like the rearend was going to fall out every time we hit a bump, we talked with our seatmates a bit in our broken Spanish, tried to be cheerful about our itinerary, and wondered when we’d get off to make the connection to Antigua. I asked the guys to my right and left, respectively, about the best way to Antigua, and they opined that I should get off... Here! Now! Maryse and I pushed our way up the aisle to ask the driver about the possibility of connecting to something heading for Antigua, but the Latin American Psychic Friends Network had it all taken care of. The driver pointed off the bus, and as we stepped out, the baggage handler shoved our packs at us (how the hell did he know what we were going to ask...??) and pointed to the ass end of a chicken bus 10 feet away. “¡Antigua!” he screamed triumphantly as our former ride blasted off behind us, leaving us in a cloud of stinking exhaust and without our change, but with a connecting ride, apparently. ¡Viva Guatemala!
Now, most chicken buses you see have all sorts of decorations on them, spoilers, wings, and all kinds of decals to make them go faster. Most also have some sort of “Jesu Cristo” or “Dios es mi Guia” type of slogans. I didn’t see the front of this particular bus because we got on through the back, but judging from the ride, this was Satan’s personal bus line. The driver drove as one possessed, or at least pursued, by demons- maybe both. Most roller coaster rides are much more tranquil than this infernal bus ride. My god, how can I put into mere words the terrible ferocity of that experience? We slammed through tiny, narrow stone streets at absolutely incredible velocities, missing pedestrians and other vehicles by subatomic margins. Twice we crested hills so hard that we, in the back of the bus, experienced zero-gravity moments, floating above our seats before slamming down again. The seat ahead of us was attached to the floor by a couple bits of rusty metal, so when we tried to hang on to it for dear life, all we accomplished was to shake its occupants a bit harder, which they didn’t seem to notice at all. I finally asked the guy across the aisle from me if the driver was crazy, or if this sort of ride was somehow normal. The guy said that yeah, maybe the driver was a little bit crazy, but this was the last bus of the night to Antigua, and there was a parade there, so the driver was really cranking to make it. Indeed.
Arriving in Antigua, we got stuck in traffic, so rather than announce something like, “we’re stuck, sorry” the driver took the expedient course of simply walking away without a word. We noticed that there was no driver after a minute or so, although for some reason people were still getting on the bus, and asked someone where the center of town was. They said it was just a couple blocks away, so we loaded up the packs and hoofed it, grateful to have arrived at all, and especially in one piece.
We walked a couple of blocks, surrounded by the already thick Semana Santa crowd, and turned a corner just in time to meet the procession bearing a greatly suffering icon of Jesus dragging his cross through eternity. They were followed by an appropriately solemn and dolorous band, to remind us of the gravity of the Savior’s suffering and sacrifice.
You know, I think that if Jesus were around today he would be horrified at the Catholic Church. I think that Jesus would much rather be remembered for thirty-three years of living, teaching, and joy rather than three very bad days near the end. You know what else is odd? The Catholics get very, very into their suffering Jesus icons and parades, but the real miracles go strangely uncelebrated. Like, the whole crucifixion is slobbered over endlessly in gory detail, but the Resurrection is just sort of skipped. Shouldn’t the Resurrection be the real main event of the party? Whatever. What do I know about it, anyway?
Moving on: After taking some pictures of the parade out of morbid fascination, we focused on our main objective in Antigua: finding our friend from back home, Gillian. We had the name of her hotel, so we set out to find it, which turned out to be harder than one might think. First, we ran into two Gaulois-looking drunken French train engineers who stumbled out of a pub in front of us. They were pretty lost in general, and being drunk wasn’t helping. Maryse engaged them in French while I stood by monolingually mute. After a few minutes of chatting, it was established that they had no idea where our target hotel was, so we moved on. I asked a cop, and he gave me one of those really long, rapid discourses in Spanish so common when simple directions are requested. Damn, how hard is it to just say five that way and two that way? Whatever, we sort of had a heading for the place and so we set off. But how do you go three blocks that way when there are streets on one side but none on the other? Oh well, ask someone else and go with the consensus. We ran into the drunken Gauls again, who were more than happy to chat at some length. We asked them what street we were on, and they said it was “Una Via” (One Way) street. Must be hard to navigate when all the streets are named either “Una Via” or “Doble Via”!
We asked an old lady where we might find Casa de Leon, and she said, “Nueva Leon” and directed us to the park. Well surely if it was on the park, Gillian would have said so, but we headed that way, having noplace better to go. Trying to get into the park, we met the procession head on, and were swept back by the tide of humanity. A guy stepped out of the crowd and said in English, “Looking for something?” Yeah, Casa de Leon. He said no problem, he’d take us there. On the way, Oscar said that he spoke French, German, English, Spanish and I think a couple more. He worked at a language school in Antigua, and had picked them up here and there. Maryse tested his French and found it workable. Impressive.
Evan more impressive was that he led us right to Casa de Leon as promised. As he waved a friendly goodbye and kept on his way, we looked across the street at our long-awaited destination, and lo and behold, there was our friend Gillian, just putting her key into the front door! Talk about synchronicity! We ran over, and were reunited with much hugging all around. Yaay!
Gillian said that there were no more rooms anywhere in town due to the incipient huge holiday, and then promptly scored us one upstairs. Sweet. After a much-needed shower, we headed out on the town. I forget where, but the food was odd, including something like macaroni and cheese that Maryse was unfortunate enough to order. Whatever, they had a surprisingly good beer, Moza, that claimed to be “tipo bock” and wasn’t, but was actually dark and drinkable.
Our energy rapidly fading after the long day of travel, we went back to the room, shared a shot of our Oaxacan mescal with Gillian, and hit the bed, instantly asleep.