The Farm to Antigua, Saturday to Sunday

We left the farm at 4pm with the staff and headed for Cayo. We had a 20-30 minute delay on Cristo Rey Road while a tourist car was towed up and over the bank. We dropped everybody off, stopped at the bank, and got to the border at 6pm.

We crossed into Guatemala, met Hugo Mayen - our favorite Guatemalan tour guide from our B&B -  who gave us good advice about what to do about buses, changed money, got the Fuente Del Norte bus just across the bridge at 6:30, arrived Santa Elena at 8pm, and got tickets for the 9pm Maya de Oro First Class bus to Guatemala City. We were on the second story, near the front, in very comfy reclining seats, almost like the chairs at the dentist.  We ate pigs in blankets I made yesterday in the bus station while we waited for the bus.

The bus left Santa Elena at 9 on the dot.  We stopped in Poptun and in another town not on our map for fuel overnight. We both slept intermittently, and just woke up when we stopped, and for a few big noises...a water bottle falling out of the luggage rack, a flash-boom lightening thunder strike, and branches it hitting the top of the very tall bus.  We arrived in Guatemala City at 5:30am, waited in line to get tickets to Antigua, found out that we had to go to another station for the local bus, so got a taxi to the other bus station. That bus left at 6:30 and drove very fast through the streets to another bus station, where it was packed full for the trip to Antigua. We sat 3 to a seat on 2-person school bus seats. We pulled into Antigua at about 7:30.

We found the outfitter (Old Town Outfitters, www.adventureguatemala.com), which was closed, so we found our hotel. We couldn't check in until this afternoon, but they let us in to have breakfast, use the wifi, drop our stuff, and plan. We had an email right before we left that someone wanted to change our hike from Tuesday to Monday, but we said we didn't want to agree until we were here. Since we were here, we walked back to the outfitter and said we would do it, found out from them what we need to do to get ready for the hike, went back and changed our hotel reservations, then went out to be tourists and get lunch. Then we came back to the room for a nap.  After napping, we went out to walk around town and get liters and liters of water for the trip.  We ate the last two sandwiches I had packed for the trip and washed them down with Happy Hour beer at the hostel - 2 for $15Q and went to bed.