Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

BUS EVANGELISTS
The overnight bus ride to Guatemala City was very frustrating. The air conditioning was turned up full and it was so cold on the bus that we barely managed to sleep at all. We probably managed an hour or two but kept waking up with the shivers. We arrived, jaded, at 6am. At 7.15am we boarded another bus headed west in the general direction of Quetzaltenango - which was our target for today. The fact that the bus wasn't actually going there didn't stop the bus driver from herding us onto the bus anyway. We would find out what we needed to know later. During that bus ride we were subjected to sermons from three different bus evangelists and a sales pitch of 20 minutes from some punter selling tablets that did something we couldn't understand. I wanted to know if they were sleeping tablets. The locals gave each speaker much respect and didn't seem to be bothered by them in the slightest. Five hours later at an unknown small town we were told to get off the bus, grab our bags and jump aboard a much smaller US school bus type contraption. Confused and beaten into submission by the last 14 hours we followed directions and threw our bags on the roof and squeezed into the packed bus. There was much humour as it turned out we where the only foreigners on board and obviously not used to Guatemalan buses yet. We drove through the lush hills, up past 2000m and into the clouds, stopping briefly as a mud slide had blocked part of the road. On and on for the next two hours in close quarters and finally we made it to Guatemala's second largest city, nestled snugly next to a huge volcano. We've been here for two days now and tonight we managed to meet up with an old friend of mine, Mike Paulsmeyer, who has come here to learn Spanish. Unfortunately Mike was away for much of the weekend ironically in the town where we head to tomorrow - Panajachel - but we managed to hook up tonight for dinner and a beer.

Meeting up with my old buddy from Salt Lake City in Guatemala - Mike Paulsmeyer

Quetzaltenango town square

 Locals in Quetzaltenango