Travels of the Bay family and the Yoda Van

The drive to the coast really was something else. Yet again, we put the Yoda Van to the test and he got us where we needed to go. As soon as we had descended from the highlands it became hot and humid again. After all our complaining about the humidity in Mexico, some warmth was a welcome change after the cool nights in Xela. This country feels so different with the warm humid air blowing in through the windows of the car. And sitting along side the ocean side under a palapa drinking sodas out of thick glass bottles is an amazing experience. Those are the moments when I know this trip was worthwhile.

The beach in Champarico was a black sand beach made from volcanoes. The waves were really amazing and we had such a good time swimming in them. Paul and Matthias discovered that you could wade out really far to just where the big waves where breaking and body surf. It was really fun and I could have stayed out there for hours. I was surprised that Bonnie came out. She’s weighs about 350 pounds and I just didn’t take her for much of a swimmer. Unfortunately she didn’t last too long. I think she was hit by a wave kind of hard and I looked up and saw her standing in the water wiping the salt water off her face. But I could also see the next wave about to break right in back of her and this one totally took her down. I still have this image of the cross-dressing actor Divine in a plus size bathing suit body surfing and being smacked down hard on the sand. When she came up she had lost the upper half of her swimsuit and decided she had had enough swimming for the day. It was still cool because she sat on the beach with William and Julian while Matthias and I went in the water.

That evening we walked through town and then had a nice seafood dinner. The next day we left Champarico. Paul, Bonnie and Mary drove with us to Reu, got off at the junction towards Xela and flagged a chicken bus home. We continued on to Lago de Atitlan and the drive there was spectacular. We drove high up into the mountains again, alongside coffee plantations and other crops up to over 9000 feet. The western highlands of Guatemala is one of the most amazing places I’ve seen so far. So much of this land has been cultivated for agriculture. Not once have I seen a motorized piece of equipment for any of this work such as a tractor or a plow. The plowing, planting and harvesting is all done by hand as far as I can tell, on the side of extremely steep cliffs. We’ve seen so many men walking with a garden hoe slung over his shoulder, or women in traditional clothing (possibly with a child slung on their back) up in the fields tending to the crops, weeding, harvesting, carrying crops down into the towns. It is absolutely amazing what these people achieve.

The clothing continues to amaze me as well. The area around Lago de Atitlan is one of the few in Guatemala where the men also wear traditional clothing. We’ve seen many men in this area wearing brightly colored, embroidered outfits as well. We drove to the nearby town of Sololá on market day and we came to the central plaza which was covered in coleus plants. The whole market and plaza was filled with people wearing deep purple clothes just like the coleus plants. Xela is such a big city that there were people from all over, so you really didn’t get a sense of one particular clothing. But in smaller towns it is obvious that the women are all wearing clothing of a similar color and pattern. In San Antonio on Lake Atitlan the clothing was navy and turquoise, in another town on the lake it was light purple with animals embroidered on their tops. Today we saw another town where all the women were wearing deep maroon tops with stripes.

Lake Atitlan is beautiful. The first day we were there it was overcast, but the second day we had great weather and we went on a boat tour on the lake. There are three volcanoes along the shore and the water is green. It is often called the most beautiful lake in the world, and rightly so. We’ll be leaving on Thursday for Cobán, which is close to the jungle in Guatemala.

Despite being in the same city for over 2 weeks, every day is filled with amazement, new experiences and new things to see.

Saturday was our last day in Xela and we decided to join some of the teachers, Paul and Bonnie (the 2 nurses) and their daughter Mary and drive down to the coast. There was a water park and an amusement park and we wanted to spend the day there and then continue on to the coast and spend the night.

Inspired by the public transportation in Guatemala, I was confident, that 8 or 9 people in the Yoda Van shouldn’t be a problem and I offered to drive them.

The next morning it turned out that we were 11 people, plus we were going to meet Paul at the water park and he would join us for the ride to the coast. I had serious doubts if we would all fit in the van and I was glad that I was the driver and had the most comfortable seat on the trip. In true Guatemalan style we stuffed ourselves into the Yoda Van, two Guatemalans sitting shotgun, 2 kids in the back, Julian on Allison’s lap and the rest sitting or kneeling on the floor.

On the way to the water park we had to stop at an auto parts store. I had picked up the van from our secure parking the day before and decided to park it on the street in front of the school for one more night. The next morning both rear view mirrors were smashed. The one on the passenger side was only slightly damaged, but the one on the driver side needed to be replaced. At the auto parts store they didn’t have a mirror, but we happened to have a small piece of mirror in the car (about 6”x 4”) so I bought a roll of duct tape instead and taped our mirror over the smashed mirror. It worked as good as new. I also asked at the store if they had a new window handle (remember, ours broke right before our off-roading adventure in Mexico) and believe it or not the guy pulled out a cardboard box from under his desk filled with window handles. I only had to try 3 handles before I found one that would work. It’s much bigger than the original one and it scrapes the speaker every time we have to open the window, but it does the job. The only advantage about not having the handle was that at military or police stops, the officials got a good laugh when they asked Allison to open the window and she could only show them the broken handle.

We were ready to hit the road and head to the coast. It was about a 30 mile trip to the water park and we would descend 7500 feet. It was all downhill and the Yoda Van ran beautifully until we noticed a strange smell and the car wasn’t handling well anymore. I tried to pull off the road which was harder than I would have wanted it to be. I was having a very hard time braking and I knew the brakes were in bad shape. When we looked at them they were smoking and glowing. Awful smell. There was also no time to let them cool off, because we had stopped in a tight curve and we had to move. I decided I would let the engine do the breaking and we kept driving in 1st gear for the next few miles. Driving slow at least got us to the water park and down to sea level.

                                                  
Matthias and Paul                                    View from the front seat
at the amusement park                            of the Yoda Van.

The water park was awesome and so was the amusement park right next to it. Everyone had an awesome time, but at about 5:00 PM I was starting to get a bit nervous, because I was told several times to not drive at night in Mexico or Central America (good advice). The teachers assured me that that this stretch of road was safe so we ended up staying another 2 hours. Despite their assurance I was only worrying about the 1 to 2 hours we had ahead of us. The Guatemalans said it was about an hours drive, an hour and a half maximum. But that was Guatemalan time, and with our brake problems it was not unreasonable to think we might have a 2.5 hour drive ahead of us. Not only was it pitch black outside, we also had one more passenger: Paul, the 250-pound male nurse. We climbed into the Yoda Van again. We loaded the car with roughly 950 pounds of Americans, 200 pounds of German and 550 pounds of Guatemalans. The drive was a nightmare. Streets in Guatemala are not lit, full of potholes, speed bumps (in Guatemala they are called Tumulos) and all kinds of animals. The worst however was that there were also a lot of bicyclists, none of whom had lights or reflectors and were almost impossible to see. The drive was much shorter than expected (only about 45 minutes) and the road was nearly entirely straight without any hills. We made it fine, except one close call with a group of cyclists. When we arrived I decided that I had to decrease the passenger limit from 12 to 7 people. The beers that we had in the hotel made me relax real fast and they were the beginning of 2 great days with Paul, Bonnie and Mary. If Allison lets me use the computer one more time in the next few days, I want to write about the discussions I had with Paul. Our opinions couldn’t have been more different, so I couldn’t have been happier that I was finally able to have endless useless discussions again, with a guy who is even more conservative than Allison’s dad.