Guatemala

I always wanted to visit the wild nature of Guatemala, scattered with great mountains and Maya ruins. 

The trip to reach my first stop, San Pedro la Laguna on the lake Atitlán, was kind of bloody.. I had a 9 hours trip, in which I started to have a really bad bladder infection. Fortunately, I had some antibiotics with me. Unfortunately, it was a small white bus without a toilet... However I was lucky that the bus driver was so kind to stop from time to time, so that I could go to the toilet. The weather was making everything even more hard: it was raining cats and dogs! When we got to the immigration office, we had to walk through a river that flew along the streets. It was really not easy to wait to get in the immigration office, with all this rain splashing on the soil, remembering me how much I actually needed a toilet. As soon as I get through the immigration office, I went to look for a toilet. I was in something like four shops before I finally found a small restaurant with a toilet. Because of the rain the whole restaurant was flooded, but the most curious thing, was that the not working toilet, as I found out at the end, was in the kitchen! Only a small curtain separated it from the rest of the kitchen.

Well, even if the start in this country was kind of painful and wet, I finally really enjoyed it!

I met a great guy in San Pedro, a CSer which has a Bar called the Buddha-Bar (if you can, try to visit it, it's really a nice place, and Mike, the owner, is full of good stories) and I had the most funny bus-trip ever!

At that time I was in Rio Dulce and I wanted to go to Flores to finally visit the great Maya ruins in Tikal. I took  a second class bus! You have to imagine am overfilled bus, with two lines of seats. In the first row there where three seats: one on the right and one on the left, which were both already occupied and one in the middle (a little bit higher than the others because placed on the top of the motor). The seat on the middle was full of  boxes for chicken-eggs, but the driver was so nice to put them on the roof and clean the seat for me.  So I was on this seat, higher than the others, with a lot of people around me, sitting, lying or staying... and in front of me I had  the free view on the road: I felt like Queen Elizabeth! I just had to start to wave with my hand! Well, after 6 hours sitting on the boiling motor, I felt more like the melted wax version of Tussauds' Queen Elizabeth. ;-)

Anyway, as we were only two tourists, and I was the only one awake, I became the attraction for the people in the first rows. We talked, we exchanged food and drinks.. it was great! Suddenly the bus stopped and policemen with guns entered the bus screaming something about that everyone had to show the own bags and get out of the bus. I asked if I had to do that too, and the policeman said no.. They made some controls, I thought because of drugs or weapons. After the second stop of this kind along the travel, I asked a policeman why they were doing these controls.  He told me that it was because of fruits! I couldn't believe it! I get out of the bus and in fact I saw a small carton box on the entrance of the bus, full of fruits that people had to throw away.
I know now that they do that, to avoid contamination of parasites along the country... but have they really to act so chunky?!?
Well, now you know that if guys with guns run in your bus, it's not always because of a raid or a drug control.. it may be that they are just looking for fruits! ;-)