Santa Cruz to Antigua, Tuesday

We went with our "be brave" (or maybe it is "be cheap") plan and took the chicken bus back to Antigua from Santa Cruz, Lago Atitlan, this morning. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, but it didn't take any longer than the shuttle since the bus drivers all drive like crazy men, and since we were just reversing our route from Friday, it was much less stressful since we knew where we were going and where we had to change buses. We had talked to Rosa and Nicole, the hotel owners, about paying our bill in the morning, so we got up around six, packed our bags - not a big deal since we travel light, but we wanted to be well packed to make the bus trip as easy as possible - and went downstairs to talk to Rosa and Nicole by about 7:30. We made chitchat, comparing notes on being hotel owners in Central America and exchanging contact details so we can refer guests back and forth in the future. Somewhere in there, we paid our bill, everybody hugged everybody, and we were on the lancha to Panajachel right around 8am. We found a place to eat breakfast and dumped our bags, and I sat with the bags and place our order while Tom went to find an ATM to get cash so he can pay for Land Rover parts with as much cash as possible. We had a good breakfast - not so good as the cooking school breakfast but better than the breakfasts at Rosa's - and then wasted a few minutes while a different kid than yesterday shined our shoes, for $5Q each. My hiking boots haven't looked so good since they came out of the box! We wandered up the street to where the buses load, and got on a bus to Solola for $3Q each at about 9:30. One of the very back seats was missing, so we had a perfect place to stow the big backpack and we rode in comfort up the windy hill. In Solola, we changed buses to Encuentros. This time the pack got thrown of the top of the bus, but It wasn't a long ride and it wasn't raining, so we didn't care and got to the next change, which we recognized, for another $3Q each. We got off that bus, and were very nicely directed towards another bus that was leaving shortly for Guatemala City, but that would stop in Chimaltenango where would could change buses for the final leg to Antigua. We knew this was a long ride on a windy road, so Tom watched the conductor clip and tie our bag on the rack on top of the bus, so we knew we didn't have to worry about that.

Even with not having to worry about the bag, this was a long and uncomfortable leg of the trip. More and more people got on the bus, and what started as a full bus turned into a can of sardines as the driver stopped at every little crossroad to pick up more people. Two-kid seats on the refurbished school bus were holding three adults, and sometimes more if a small person could fit on laps. The aisle was completely packed, and at one point the conductor had to get from the back to the front of the bus, so he went out the back door of the moving bus, climbed the ladder to the luggage rack, made his way to the front of the bus on the luggage rack, and swung in the front door of the bus...which was probably going a good 50mph during this whole back to front transit. At one point he had to make his way through the bus to collect fares, and he walked on the backs of the seats, picking his way over people's shoulders. It was, at least, a good show, which somewhat distracted us from the discomfort of being squashed and the assault on our eardrums of the the Spanish music blaring from the speakers, which is on all of the chicken buses. The only time the music was turned off was when a preacher got on the bus and started yelling in Spanish at the whole bus. We figured that if the bus went over a cliff, or got caught in one of the many mudslides we had to detour around, at least we would have been recently blessed. When he finished preaching, the man squeezed his way through the bus selling cookies. We speculated that this was some sort of bizarre communion ritual, although the preacher was accepting money for the cookies, and his sales weren't all that great. Gracias, Señor.

The change in Chimaltenango was much easier this way, and we only wandered back and forth across the busy street a couple of times before finding the bus to Antigua. It was blessedly uncrowded, the music was at a tolerable level, our big bag fit behind the back seat, and we had an uneventful ride into Antigua, arriving at 12:45, just 3.25 hours from Panajachel, and in about the same time as a shuttle would have taken since we didn't have to wait for any of our connections. We decided that we really like taking the chicken buses. Despite some level of stress, it is great entertainment, and always interesting.

We had written down the names of a few suitable hotels before we left Santa Cruz, so we wandered into Parque Central to see if we could figure out where we wanted to stay. We decided that we needed to put more thought into it and that we needed lunch, so we found Viejo Cafe, where our guide Oseas's mother works, and took advantage of their good food and wifi to get addresses for our potential hotels list. The lunch was delicious - more pork tacos and we each had a good salad, mine in a very yummy Parmesan crust that I am going to have to make - and they had wifi so we took a map and marked a few of our potential hotels. We found that our first choice, Hotel San Vicente, was just a couple of blocks away on the same street, so after lunch we went to see if they had a room. They did, we liked it, so we checked in for the night.

 
In a way, we are kicking ourselves because the room is as nice as El Hostal's room and it has a private bath, plus an awesome rooftop terrace with a 360 degree view of the hills and volcanos surrounding the town, and the cost is about the same...but they don't offer the great breakfast, and since it was raining most of the time we were at El Hostal, we would not have been able to enjoy the rooftop terrace anyway. 

And, after two nights camping in the mountains, even the shared bath seemed pretty nice, and we are still hoping that the bed here is as good as the bed at El Hostal, which was excellent...so at the moment we are declaring it a wash, but thinking that where we come back to Antigua, we are more likely to come here. We are about to head out for dinner, which is causing us much stress since there are so many places we'd like to eat but we only have one night - but I am sure we will make a good choice and be happy. Tomorrow we are planning to get on the chicken bus to Guatemala City around 9 to meet with the Land Rover parts dealer, and then get on a overnight bus back to the Belize border, where we hope it stops raining enough that we can make our way home through the flooding.