Woke up even earlier than usual. Knowing how long my day was going to be, I tried to go back to sleep. Limited success on that. 

Studied Spanish. It’s a way of life. 

Had a good talk with Nana to let her know that this trip is going to be safe. I didn’t want her to worry. I have also had a talk with Kathy. Spelling out all the plans try to help her be comfortable about what’s going on as well. 

I cleaned up my room and got everything packed up. I put all the furniture back like it was when I found it.

I went to eat Thai food for lunch. It was absolutely delicious. I figured I needed at least one good meal today besides just 2 cups of coffee.

I went back to the hotel and said goodbye to the management and her family. Then got my bag and went back down to the boat docks. One things for sure, it’s easier to go downhill than uphill with that stuff. I weighed in at 42 pounds. That’s good. 

I waited for the boat for about an hour and a half. It was a private boat, but there was enough people going on it so that we all split the charge. It went from 350 to about 40 each. So that was good news. I was willing to have to pay the whole thing if I had to do it could get here to get my ride on to the capital. 

I had a long talk with the bus driver today. It’s really weird here because there’s hardly anybody in the streets. Almost all of the shops are closed. That’s because Panajachel runs on tourism and there’s hardly any tourists in town right now because of the protests. 

Seems like the driver knows what he’s doing and he’s done this multiple times. Apparently after a certain time at night, they pretty much let people just drive through. They’re not too worried about it after dark. They made it sound like we will probably leave around 7:30 or something like that so that’s good. That’s a little earlier than I was told to expect.

All of this is just part of the gig. I just take it one step at a time and don’t get too uptight about anything.  Not always easy to do. 

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I enjoyed talking to the main driver and the head of the administrative part for Atitrans. There are the people that are in charge of transportation. 

I decided to get a piece of pizza and asked them “do you want a piece of pizza and a coke?” They said yeah so I bought them Coke and pizza.

Later on Marco who is one of the drivers said, “I think you should ride in this van here because it’s more comfortable and has a headrest. And it  can charge your phone. Go ahead and ride in front.” 

So I’ve got the first class accommodations for this trip. And it’s all because I invested like three dollars for pizza and drinks for these guys. It definitely pays off to be nice.

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That had to be one of the scariest road trips I’ve ever had in my life. We made a very circumspect way out of Panajachel. We finally got on this mountain road which was less than two cars wide. It reminded me a lot of Africa. 

There was absolutely no shoulder on the road. The hedge of bush came right to the edge of the tarmac. Many places there were branches that had broken off and fallen on the road. There were also big rocks from landslides that were taking up about a third of the road. 

It was raining heavily as we left the city. That made driving precarious. Combining that with the hairpin turns in the road and the stuff that was actually in the road made for a really scary trip. 

I thought that it was a great idea for me to be in the passenger seat upfront. I’m not so sure about that anymore. The rest of the people on the Van seem to be oblivious to what was going on. But I was looking at everything up close in personal. It was like being in a movie of some kind of scary adventure show. 

I tried to have extended conversation with the driver, Miguel to take my mind off of the danger. He was an older guy maybe in his mid 50s. 

He said he been driving these roads for over 30 years. Then he started talking about how his night vision wasn’t good anymore. But he was still doing it. That was way too much information for me. I don’t really want to know that you can’t see at night when we’re in this mountain, super curvy hairpin road in rain.

I knew we were taking this route because we were avoiding blocks in the road. My driver told methat we were going to see a blockade soon and it was going to be open. At least he hoped so. A little while later we came up to it. Traffic was coming our direction but none was going the our way. 

Finally, it was our turn to go. And then he started saying, “Oh no, they’re going to block the road.”Sure enough they brought up this big fence that completely block the road within. I kept thinking,  “Are we really gonna have to go back down the same road we just got through?” That just sounded like a complete nightmare.

Fortunately, they just keep kept going with the fence and let us through. I thought that that was really the hand of God.  I had the same exact feeling when the boat conked out in the middle of the lake and finally started up again.

We continued on through this windy, super scary road and not only had rain but as we got higher up, we also had very thick fog. It made visibility almost zero. 

He kept flipping the lights from dim to bright back-and-forth to try to see the road ahead. I know that just on the edge of the rope. Had to be a sheer cliff down to oblivion. It was terrifying.  And yet the rest of the van was calmly snoozing.

It really was two of the most frightening hours I’ve ever had of my life. 

Soon, we stopped and traded drivers. The new driver was to take us on into Guatemala city. He was way more aggressive than Miguel. Fortunately, we were on much better roads and not  in these mountain passes anymore.  I think he felt like it was his job to make up time.

He kept taking windy routes through the cities we went through. I’m sure it was to try avoid the blockades. I asked him how he was doing it. He said that he had the rest of his team that was ahead who was constantly giving him information as to what was blocked and what we could get through.  It was a really interesting partnership.

After about another hour and a half I started to see signs for the airport. I couldn’t believe we got there so fast. We were told we were probably going to get into Guatemala City around 2:00 AM and I started seeing signs for the airport around 11:00 PM! Sure enough about 30 minutes later we pulled up to Aurora airport and I got out the van thanking God for his protection. 

My bag was over forty pounds so it  kind of scary when he handed it down from the top of the van. I grabbed the bag and managed to wrestle it to the ground. 

The hardest part was actually going down two flights of stairs, which were very steep. But I ended up doing OK. 

I talked with some taxi drivers and they all said the same thing that it was about $14 to get to where I was going. I didn’t hassle with them. I was just too tired. I just said, “Let’s go.” 

It turned out to be about a 20 minute drive, I thought it was just down the road. So after that, I felt like it was definitely worth the money. 

I got to the Tequila Sunrise hostel about 11:30 PM . I already had my reservation so check-in was really smooth. I had a private room right in the front of the hostel. I got my stuff unpacked and  took a shower and got cleaned up. I think the water helped relax me so I could go to sleep because that trip was super stressful. I finally went to sleep about 1 o’clock in the morning.