Bye Bye Xela

Having trouble writing a post about leaving Guatemala and entering Honduras so I thought I’d put it all into bullet form 🙂

• Played trivia three times in Xela.
  • First two times won a massage because I knew the bonus question but never got to use the massages. Last time we came in strong second for actually winning but the topic that evening was Guatemala history and it was also the only time Guatemaltecos came to trivia….clearly a fix!
• Wanted to hike to Laguna Chicobal
  • Holiest place in the Mayan world, believed to be the center of the world.
  • Inside the crater of a dormant volcano (yes…..another volcano)
  • Lake is considered holy because clouds seem to float into the crater, bounce off the lake and out of the volcano
• Talked my teacher, Anabella, into going to Laguna Chicobal, she had never been….3+ hours of hiking
• At the lake I found the only place in all of Guatemala without a million plastic bottles
• I like the idea of a lake as the holiest place in the world rather than a wall…better view! Mayans are onto something.
• Clouds seem to be bouncing off of lake…then fog rolls in.

• Fog does not bounce off lake.
• Begin walk downhill to bus.
• Fog turns to drizzle.
• Get lost.
• Drizzle turns to rain.
• Find our way.
• My teacher and I get soaked.
• Get dry during bus ride back to Xela.
• Get back to Xela ahead of the storms, so they can rain on us again as we walk home from the bus.
• Get my first haircut since being unemployed…cost, $1.50.

• Leave Xela & go to Antigua.
• Get up at 4am, when drunk people are stumbling home, and wait for shuttle to come pick us up to take us to Copan.
• Man with station wagon comes instead, claims to be shuttle. I am skeptical but he knows my name.
• Pick up other people, who we later learn to be Danish, and we meet in the dark before sleeping on each other in this man’s station wagon.
• Wake up in Honduras. Standard Guatemalan roadside pollution of plastic bottles and potato chip bags is suddenly missing.
• This must be what Dorothy felt like when she entered Oz.
• Go to Copan, with the Danes, and have a nice time….more on that in the next post.