Tourist Shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel

Our shuttle arrives 15 minutes late. The driver tells us to hurry up. He should have been the one hurrying. I have been waiting for him for 45 minutes. The shuttle is already packed like sardines with white English speaking people. For some reason they all get out of the van. The driver is telling them to hurry up and get back into the shuttle. They do no understand and were standing in the street blocking traffic. Horns were honking. The man in the front opened the door precariously short of being hit by a huge semi-truck. What is wrong with these people?

Finally I get in, still not understanding what the fuss was all about even though we all speak the same language. Wade is already pissed. He has to sit in a jump seat. He is surrounded by moron whities. Is this really the luxury that we paid for? We are both smooshed, and feeling like it may have been the same situation even if we had taken the chicken bus instead. Between paying 30 Quetzales for the shuttle bus and 25 quetzales for the chicken bus, I don´t know if I got such a good deal.

(Photo of a Chicken Bus in Guatemala painted with flames)

We started off and the honkies started talking. There was a Canadian couple. The woman was pregnant. There was a family from Hawaii and some foreign lady who spoke excellent English, probably a Russian. These were all people who traveled but they were not travelers. They had adventured all over the world but somehow not gained any common sense from their trips.

The Canadian man was so nerdy and such a pushover milktoast that I have no idea how he ever left Canada in the first place. His girlfriend was a little better, but had very strange thoughts about her end-all and be-all “back-packers” trip through Asia. I give her points though for being so adventurous while pregnant, but I think it is stupid to go on an “oh so strenuous” vacation while pregnant.

The family were upper-middle class pseudo-intellectual liberals. Their daughter was going through a stage and decided to spend a year off in between highschool and college traveling through Central America. This was a smart move. She needed to escape from her parents.
They were trying to be open and worldly. They were the kind of people that go “Oh wow” to the dumbest possible things. They are the kind of people who spend too much money and raise prices so it is hard for a tramp to travel. This ride was hardly bearable. The babblers were loud. The babble was bad.

The scenery on the other hand was beautiful. Winding through steep mountains, scary roads and slash and burn farms. Coming upon Panajachel there is a spectacular view of the sparkling blue lake and the gigantic volcanoes.