Free at last!!

Tuesday, July 25th

After taking a ¨first class¨ bus from Xela with destination Guatemala City, it suddenly hit that I was away from the comfort of the AC, Air circulation vent, MP3 playing, etc.. this was the street for real, as I remember them from my youth in Ecuador. After one and a half hours of torture through the windy highway, we arrived at Los Encuentros which happens to be a town without any other purpose than for passengers to transfer busses to other destinations.

Quickly, I jumped into a very folkouricly adorned bus that had seen better days as a proud member of some school district in Arkansas. It was cool though, don´t get me wrong! 2 Quetzales to get to a town called Solola and then another 2.5 to get to Panajachel or ¨Pana¨ which was my final destination. Thank God I was wearing my Uruguay sweatshirt.. soon after jumping in the first connecting bus, a girl asked if I was from Uruguay to which I answered negatively. Then I explained that I had visited a couple of months back. She happened to be from Uruguay and now living in Pana. So she showed me the way to get through the busy streets of Solola to take the second connecting bus.

Now, at this point all this onion, arm pit, live chicken smells plus the effects of the curvey road are starting to add up.. my head felt a bit light and I was starting to worry that perhaps Greg had passed some of his sickness onto me. But the beautiful landscape that followed was enough to get all the viruses off my system. What a wonderful view!!!! the lake in all it´s glory serving as the base for a few volcanoes in the horizon. This is Lake Atitlan which actually is the collapsed crater of an ancient volcanoe.

People here are very simple, humble and always welcoming. A few of them, have found a great way to make money.. selling bright local fabrics to all foreign visitors. Others, do the same but in a much more (personal opinion) damaging way. Since when are smoking pipes and bongs part of a traditional custom that our Mayan aborigens make in their homes with their own hands? Since when, I ask, are Bob Marley shirts and Jamaican knitted hair nets parts of the local vestiments? Oh well, at least they are making money but let´s make sure we don´t forget the real customs.

But I digress, aside from having to bat american transplants from offering me weed, the town is actually pretty cool. I found a place to stay for 40Q which is a real deal. The only problem is that it´s kind of further out and if I wanted to go out at night I would have to cross a very dark alley by myself (note to self: Remember Oaxaca) But for tonight is ok.. I am tired anyways and will not go out.

The town basically consists of a long street where everything you need could be bought for a price. This street ends at the lake and some of the piers set up there for boats used for transportation between Pana and the numerous other towns around the rim of this crater.

After walking around town and trying to answer the question: ¨what the heck do I do here?¨, I decided to stop for dinner. It was just ok but the nightlife in this place was great. Tons of people from all over the world were there; including these two american girls no older than 19 who had somehow ended up in the same table as these two sleezy looking locals. These guys must have been truck drivers above 40 with exposed bellies and all. They seemed to be having fun until one of the girls decided to leave and the already drunk road warriors started kissing her profusely. The American girls took this to mean ¨how wonderful are the locals? would you believe this friendliness?¨ when the guys were actually just being themselves: sleezy.

Oh well, I go to bed. The room is big, wooden and I find a spider near my bed. I HATE SPIDERS!