My first "stranded somewhere I can´t get out of!" experience

The title says it all. Today, I woke up all chipper and ready to bus the 7 or so hours from Río Dulce to Semuc Champey. On the way, I had to stop at El Estor, which is a small town where I would catch a connecting bus between the two spots. Seemed easy enough, right?

After 4 hours of waiting for a bus that never came (I later found out that there were problems with the roads), I resorted to asking random pickup trucks (that´s an actual mode of transportation here, folks!) and anyone with wheels (I was tempted to ask a little kid with his training wheels bicycle, too) for a ride. No luck today. No ride in sight. With half my traveling day gone, I got a little huffy and whiny about the situation, which doesn´t do much good now that I am traveling alone again.

Anyhoo, I decided to enjoy what was left of my day by going to a local finca which is famed for a pretty natural waterfall. It was really lovely, actually. Lookeee!



But the bad luck continued when I realized that I forgot my towel and swimsuit to go swimming in the waterfall (which is the point of the whole trip, after all) and I missed the last bus going back to El Estor. DANG. So I had to hitchhike. Luckily, people here are significantly nicer about the whole "I´m going to pick up hitchhikers to rob and rape them!" type of thing than they are in the States. The guy who picked me up was actually really nice, and we had a neat conversation about Guatemala, what he thinks about the country, etc. More importantly, he did not rob or rape me. Actually, most importantly of all, his truck had air conditioning, which was much appreciated after a sweltering hot day. Thanks, Enrique!

El Estor ended up being a lot nicer than I gave it credit for, too. The town is on the shores of Lake Izabal and very lovely. Everyone is so nice. I walked on one of the docks and encountered some dude swimming. He spoke English and was eager to practice, although we just ended up chatting in Spanish. Good practice after more than 2 weeks of not speaking any español!



So now I am just biding my time until my bus at 12:30 AM (that´s right! AM!) to finally get to this darn Semuc Champey! It better be worth it! Many of my teachers in Xelá have said it´s where they dream of going in Guatemala, so I´m hoping it is. Wish me luck, folks!