Nothing adVentured, Nothing Gained! Part 1

The story of our arrival in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala has all the necessary elements for an adventure: expectations and surprises, anxiety and relief, harrowing drives and beautiful vistas, sickness and recovery, embarrassment and cultural misunderstanding, inky evening shadows and sunburn-inducing rays.  But most importantly, this arrival story has a happy ending.  This is Part 1.

All went well on our 3 flights from Boston to Guatemala City.  And we were pleased with the ease of immigration and customs.  As we exited the airport, we quickly spotted a man with a sign for Shelly and Marshall.  He introduced himself in English as Antonio—a teacher at the language school—and quickly put us at ease.  Before long, we were introduced to our Spanish-speaking driver Walter and boarded the van that would take Antonio and us the expected 4 hours to San Pedro.

Packed with souped-up school buses, cars, lorries, and motorbikes, the streets around Guatemala city were hot and slow-going even if cheerfully decorated. 

An old school bus converted to municipal transport in Guatemala City.

Family vehicle.

Armed with M-16s.

As we gawked at the sights and the passing vehicles, we should have seen that Baxter wasn’t feeling very good.  Instead, we chalked his malaise up to lack of sleep and a long day of travel.  When he vomited in the van, we realized he was carsick.

We took a break at a rest area outside the city where we all got some fresh air, cold drinks, and some food.  It was there we learned that Antonio’s son was being hospitalized for appendicitis and that Antonio would be dropped off at a bus stop where he could catch a bus to the hospital.  Now well outside the city limits Walter pressed the gas pedal further to the floor for Antonio’s sake, but lost ground when we had to stop a second time for Baxter to empty his stomach into a plastic shopping bag—after he had partially emptied it on his and Shelly’s clothes, the van seat, and the floor.  With obvious litter strewn along the side of the road, I was tempted to add our leaking shopping bag to the landscape but ultimately felt compelled to bring it back in the van with us for the journey.

Peaking above 120 km/h we successfully hustled to get Antonio on the departing bus just in the nick of time.  From here we could see signs for Lake Atitlan—the body of water on which San Pedro sits.  We were hopeful that we were getting very close to our destination.  

Soon we turned off of what had been relatively well-maintained, wide roads onto a choppy street that wasn’t wide enough for two cars and a pedestrian to all pass abreast.  Breaks in the road often spanned 6 or 7 feet at a depth of 6 to 8 inches.  The word “pothole” seems woefully inadequate.  At other points, the paved road altogether disappeared for a few hundred feet.  We descended a series of roughly 20 switchbacks into the first of three towns we would drive through along the lake just as night was falling.

Somewhere after leaving the well-paved road, Baxter involuntarily pumped his stomach a final time as the van drove on.  Atticus peacefully slept through the ordeal even as the hairpins jarred loose the contents of the plastic bags on the floor.  

Perhaps for a break from the vulgar, this is a good spot to mention that my proficiency in Spanish is less than first grade level despite online tutorials.  The boys combine an even more basic understanding with 2 helpings of enthusiasm to achieve similar conversational effect.  Shelly is our resident linguist having a number of years of Spanish study in school.  But the practical application of that study will take a few days or weeks to iron out.

Our driver announced our arrival in the town of San Pedro La Laguna and out the window greeted passersby by name.  “Cinco minuto” he estimated our remaining drive time.  We were relieved to count the minutes on one hand and intrigued by the bustling streets and lit-up merchant stalls in the center of town.  Walter backed the van up a cobblestone alley and parked.  

“I guess we must be near our hotel,” I said to Shelly as the driver got out and opened the lift gate at the back of the van.  We pulled together our belongings from the van seats (yes, plastic shopping bags included) and went to the back of the van where a woman and a young man greeted us and took our two larger pieces of luggage.  The young man disappeared around a corner.  We followed the woman around the same corner and then into an unlit, 3-foot wide passageway between two buildings.  Turn left.  Down a few steps.  Turn right.  Up two stairs through a doorway.  We’re in.

But where are we?  There are no signs indicating Hotel Sakcari like we’re expecting.  Just the woman we followed, an old man, an old woman, and a baby are in the interior of what might be a boarding house or perhaps a home.  We’re introduced to the people in the house and then shown to the room upstairs.

Though glad to see our luggage upstairs, I quickly notice that this is not the hotel room we reserved (king bed with adjacent twin bed).  Instead it’s two separate rooms each with a full bed.  I’m not feeling good at all about the kids sleeping in a separate room from us.  And then that’s when it dawns on me.

This is not the hotel we have reserved for the first week of our stay in Guatemala.  This must be the family with whom we are planning to stay after our first week.  Oh boy.  How do we straighten this one out?  Or do we?  As our host family leaves us in peace in our rooms, Shelly and I quickly confer and decide it’s best to at least spend the night here and then sort things out in the morning.  Perhaps we can find the language school that made the arrangements with the driver and the host family and have the school help sort it out for us.

But for now, we have two beds.  We have a small trash can in which to deposit our leaking mess.  We have seemingly trustworthy smiling faces.  Despite this twist of events, despite our lack of language command, despite our disappointment in not having a WiFi connection to research what went wrong or to let stateside family know our status, despite a carsick child—we have each other.  And for our first night in a foreign land, that’s enough for us.

The following morning, Atticus revisited the passageway--with light this time!