Semena Santa: The Departure

THE DEPARTURE

We had prepurchased bus tickets for a 9:00 pm departure and overnight bus ride to Santa Elena.

We were told it would be a non-stop bus on a luxury busline.  Unfortunately that was not the case.  As we waited in the bus depot in Zone 1 (the area we were told never to go alone and especially not to go at night).  The bus depot was a little scary, mostly grungy.  But what place in Guate City isn't grungy, so overall not so bad.  The bus seemed fine at first, not the Linea Dorada Luxury Bus I had hoped for but it would do.  Besides being colder than sitting in a snowbank in the middle of January and having the person in front of me reclined so far onto my lap I could pick lice off of his head if I wanted to, it had airconditioning and the seats reclined.

At 4:30 am our comfortable-ish ride was rudely interrupted.  We pulled ocer on the side of the highway and people started to get off.  At first we ignored this and kept sleeping, but once we realised the bus was near empty I figures maybe I should check outside and see what was going on.  I get outside and thankfully met a man in my disoriented sleep state that informed me I was to get on the other bus that was in front of our bus on the highway.  I had a mild freak out ran into the bus grabbed my bag and Kara and we ran to the other bus which was unfortunately pretty much full.  Leaving Kara sitting with a girl who's ass was on her lap and me sitting with a boy who listened to loud enough techno that it hurt my eardrums.

The rest of the ride was pretty miserable as the bus stopped every 10 minutes for the remaining 2.5 hours of our ride.  There was no airconditioning and the seats didn't recline and the seats were so dirty I was scared to put my head back in fear of what may move into my hair!

Finally arriving in Santa Elena was very relieving, as I was 5 minutes away from getting off that bus and walking the remainder of the way.  Upon arriving we were greeted by our cab driver who seemed okay until we told him our hotel hame and he thought perhaps we would like a ride to Tikal instead.

"No, No Senor.  Flores.  Hotel Peten. Seulemente!"

He never found the hotel, asking every person he saw where it was.  I finally say something familiar witting on the corner of the sidewalk having a cigarette.  I am pretty sure I was out of the cab before he stopped.  Throwing money at him an running to something familiar from home.  My daddio!