Hit and Run

Panajachel, also known as Gringo-tenango because of all the foreigners, was a wonderful weekend trip! It was much warmer and cleaner than Xela, and it was nice to get away. You definitely don´t need much more than a day in Pana. There´s one major street with lots of vendors, and then Lake Atitlan, which was incredibly beautiful! Our hotel was way nicer than I expected for what we paid, and even had a hot shower!!! It´s been almost 3 weeks since I´d had a hot shower. Anyways, Sunday we went to a wildlife reserve. It had the works: swinging bridges, waterfalls, all kinds of vegetation, and monkeys. Then for under $15 you could hike to the top and take a series of ziplines all the way back down, overlooking the waterfall, the volcanoes, and the lake. Definitely the highlight of the trip!

If you use good judgement (and try to keep a guy or two in the group as much as possible) there are only about 3 things you really have to worry about in Guatemala: traffic, pickpockets, and highway robbery. So upon leaving Pana we jumped a ridiculously crowded chicken bus out to the highway at Los Encuentros. From there we jumped another ridiculously crowded (i guess that should just be a given with a chicken bus) bus headed towards Xela. So the bus drivers are insane and try to pass vehicles on windy mountainous roads, so you´ve regularly got 3 vehicles wide on a 2 lane windy road. Anyways, we were passing this guy in an SUV and I don´t know what went wrong, but he started swerving. He swerved directly at us, then overcorrected in the other direction, swerved again, overcorrected again. On the 3rd time, he drilled the side of the bus, directly where I was sitting (I was sitting beside Sharon who was sitting by the window, and he hit directly below her). Fortunately, chicken buses are apparently tanks, and no one was injured. The guy who hit us totalled his SUV, the engine was a wreck, and his glass was all busted out, I´m shocked he got out without a scratch. It was weird how calm and completed detached we were as we watched him swerve at us a couple times and then hit us. Anyways, the driver got out to talk to the driver. Literally within 3 minutes he was back on the bus and we kept driving! It was insane! So we continue down the road and 20 minutes later we get pulled over. At this point I start worrying about problem 3 in Guatemala, highway robbery, but I guess I´m slightly paranoid at times because as it turned out it was only the police. They told the bus driver he had to go back to the scene, so we all had to get out and he had to give us half our money back. At this the passengers started cussing out the police saying it wasn´t the drivers fault, etc. but he wasn´t too impressed. So we all got out and stood on the side of the highway waiting for another bus. The next one that stopped, all the Guatemalans jumped on, and it was too full for us. So then we just had all the Gringos standing on the side of the highway, which was alittle intimidating again due to the problems with highway robbery. But we weren´t there for too long when another bus came along, and even if we had to stand 30 minutes of the remaining hour, it beat standing in the cold on the side of the road. And here I am, back in Xela safe and sound. And that´s the story of how I became a participant in a hit and run.