Lake Atitlan

"Tim, time for breakfast!" Seeing as it is only 7:30 in the morning after a long night of drinking and I haven't woken up before 11AM in the past four months, this must be the malaria meds talking. A light turns on in the room, but not the figurative "Aha moment" one. This is the light that so many hungover soles have cringed and hidden from in vampire-like fashion for hundreds of years, but here in Guatemala it is indeed time to start the morning. In my defense, I have only slept a total of six hours in the last three days and the adrenaline is running on E. Mr. Highschool then assures me that there is nothing that a freezing cold, limp-pressure powered shower head can't help to kick-start the ol' travel turbines! Thanks.

Mi amigo and I shuffle over to the breakfast spot to meet up with our mischief makers from the night before and I struggle with a game of Spanish scrabble in my head in order to communicate to the cash register cutie what I will attempt to force feed my stomach so early in the morning. A classic Guate Grand Slam breakfast of eggs, bacon, tortillas, and refried beans is the go-to. I roll the dice and order a smoothie, which is an apparent no-no since it uses the tap water ice, but mango-papaya sounds too tasty right now. The IMac is passed around the sypher and I groggily grind out a few emails to inquire about the hostel management internship I am trying to land in Uruguay, along with a few other loose ends I forgot to square-knot up before I left. Los Tres Muskateros and Co. lock down our bags for travel mode and hit the next chicken bus to our next destination, Lake Atitlan.

I strategically pick out a window seat for the three hour drive so I can avoid straddling the aisle for the whole ride. After a few sporadic stops, we rendezvous with our new addition to the touring tandem who I will call Axle Shakur (For his passionate love of Gun's N' Roses and West Coast hip-hop) from the great city of Walla Walla, Washington. We are greeted by a jolly John Belusci/John Goodman/Peter Griffinesque gringo with a shit-eating grin on his face, chowing down on a hamburguesa con queso. Salutations are exchanged and we get the show on the road for our last leg into Pana, the jump off point into the lake community. The bus slowly descends around the rim of the lake and I srtuggle to hold my chin to my mouth to keep from drooling on my Ipod as the lake begins to unleash bullets of beauty into my gawking gaze. Lake Atitlan looks like a scene from Jurassic Park; it's majestic horizon begins to whisper stories of wandering waterfalls and vivacious volcanoes that coalesce me into wanting to listen closely to what this enchanting wonder of our world has to tell me.

Scurrying off of the bus into Pana, we play a game of "Jackpot!(or 500! depending on geography)" with the bag runner on top of the chickenbus as our bags start raining down from the heavens. My nimble frame along with my street skills I picked up from the countless "Jackpot!" games I played in elementary school enables me to go 2 for 2 on receptions for the day. Our galavanting group finds comfort in their usual chowspot to nourish our bodies with a bit of beer and belly filling food. I scan through the menu that is a tri-brid of Latino, American, and Italian eats and stop half-way through as I see a sandwhich with prosciutto. Sold. Prosciutto, Gorgonzola, and authentic hot sauces are my kryptonite, the key to my heart, the apple to my Adam, the spinach to my popeye; not to mention my favorite savory and stimulating tastebud tantalizers for my eager appetite. The waitress brings us rounds of Brahvo litros (the almost 40 oz equivalent for the homies at home) that acts as a Drain-o agent to wash out the dust from the bus as I follow the cooling current of cheap beer from my mouth, through my throat and down to rest in my stomach. Bliss.

After a few more complementary cervesas, we begin to make our way to the dock and find our Capitan who will be taking us to our hostel at one of the tiny towns patched in around the lake's shore. The views of the volcanoes are soul inspiring and I gasp as I force myself to remember that it is imperative to take a breathe once in a while. It is about 6 PM and the orange, purple, and green hues from the magestic mirage of the oncoming sunset proudly dance off the lakes body as I reach my hand out to the water to join in the "Dance in the Dusk" that is happening right before my eyes. It is said that Lake Atitlan was once polluted with sewage and toxic waste because they only had one of the four water treatment plants on-line. You would not believe that now because it looks as if the locals shock the water and filter each ounce of liquid that might happen to enter the lake every day. El Capitan kicks on the motor and we are off into open seas. The hovering horizon surrounding us is sprinkled with cornfields, hand-heaved rock houses, and your occasional mansion that reminds me that money is still among us no matter where I go.

After a few engine blowouts and choppy wave maneuvers we finally arrive at our destination's dock. There is a rubble raised pathway that guides us up the steep hill where we can see a few cabanas nestled in the middle of the jungle that we will call home for the next few days. A stoic Merlin- bearded man is calmly rocking in his chair and greets us with a german-toned "Ah-loh." Hanz hooks us up with a dormitory for eight and I get to speak to his wife to get a little bit more history of the hostel. She has written a few books about, well, "Life" she says and could not be more happy with the decision she and her husband made to trade in their high-profit/high stress lifestyle in southern germany for a humble abode in Lake Atitlan. Hanz' wife explains that she wants to start a blog about "living off the grid," which has always been an anomaly of an idea to me, since it is hard to be totally "off" when you are communicating to the outside world through cyberspace. I think "straddling" the grid would be the more accurate definition in her situation...nonetheless, I can relate to her ambitions. I also notice that it only costs about $200 American to stay here for a month...back-up plan?

Axle spearheads a game of Kings to jump-start the night and kick on some classic rock to set the tone for the night. Cigarettes are illuminating like lighting bugs and drunken "I love you man's" are tallying up as the night stretches on into the morning. Three of us stay up until 4AM laughing, thinking, sulking, and unveiling stories as different levels of each unique individual begin to emerge. It is an enlightening change to be able to exchange my beer goggles for 3D glasses tonight .

The next morning we gather our souls back together and head out on a boat to a surrounding town that boasts a 35 foot cliff jump. The trail up the mountain sends us through a shanty town that still looks inviting with indigenous smiles and home-made fires prepping pots for the ensuing family lunch. The path finally opens up to a clearing the locals cleaned out and we see the wooden structure that will be our launching pad into the lake. The troops start flailing their clothes off and we hesitantly race to start leaping like lemmings into the 2.5 second freefall. Axle Shakur wants to make a little money with a few of our amigos by placing a bet that he won't to a backflip off the freestanding dock for 100 Quetzales (about 13 bucks). A few handshakes are exchanged and the leap of faith is precedented with the famous last words, "Dude, I'm totally going to over-rotate this jump." Shakur gives a shrug, checks the camera that we are rolling, and shoots himself backwards into uncertainty. Half-rotation...full-rotation...........one more half roation, and SMACK! Axle forshadowed his fate spot on and, in fact, could not have landed more parallel with the water. An eerie silence is felt on top of the mountain as we nervously look at one another, down below for a sign of survival, then back at each other. Axle is floating on his back and finally gives us a slow-motion thumbs up like the one you have seen too many times from the injured football player being carried off of the field. Then we see three mouthfuls of blood being hawked into the pristine water. Uhh-ohh. Our beloved acrobat assures us that he just "knocked a little something loose inside," but the australian couple in kayaks below and the girls that are accompanying us start to freak out. Axle Shakur laughs it off, as he claims this has happened plenty of times before, and the father who is visiting his Peace Corp daughter grunts, "I hope he doesn't think we are taking him to the hospital"....epic.

The rest of the day is spent village hopping and constant reminding of how lucky I am to be with such genuine new-found friends in a very special place that I have read and re-read about in Lonely Planet's Top 10 lakes in the world. We return to the dock into Pana so we can catch the S. Carolina v #1 ranked Alabama football game live; a little taste of home with my fellow Gamecock roomie. Our time spent at this captivating treasure of a location definitely left it's mark on all of us, some spiritually, and some physically. The entrepreneur in me starts to come out as I start dreaming of a life spend on jet-skis, helping to inject new tourism money into the micro-economies around the lake, and sharing a few more beers with Hanz up the hill. I hop off the boat, but before we turn to head up to the city, I give one last look, take a humble bow, and acquiesce in gratitude towards the lake for allowing me to etch a few of my own memories into the bedazzling essence of all that is, Lake Atitlan...

The Chicken Bus

Whoever came up with the one-liner, "We're packed in here like a bunch of Mexicans" was not only PC-challenged, they clearly never traveled a bit further south to see how the Guatemalans get down on the Chicken Bus. Most locals use the chicken bus as their prime resource of transportation around the country because it is cheap, but more so because they have no other option.

A chicken bus is a stripped American school bus that is driven down to Guatemala, then decked out with extra bus seats to fit the most travelers possible, make-shift overhead baggage compartments, disco balls, loudspeakers, and prayer-posters. Partybus meets tacky taxi cab. All of these "well planned" and "strategically placed" additions are haphazardly screwed, taped, and welded together to make for an hodgepodge fiasco of a sight. After the inside is so seamlessly remodeled, the bus is taken to the Latino Xzibit to go through a crash course Pimp My Ride episode where it gets tatted up with the country's indigenous symbols, Christian Saints, bright crashing colors, and indiglo lights in order to one up another and let their presence be known. Many of the names of the buses are "Saint Something" or "God's Children" which I thought was a marketing ploy to play off of the extremely saturated Christian presence here, but later discovered it is because we all need to be reminded to say a little prayer before we step foot into one of the most dangerous and unsafe modes of transportation in Latin America.

The chicken crew is a two-man digi run operation. One takes the wheel, while the other collects money and runs (literally) baggage back and forth from the top of the schoolbus to the backdoor. There is a sort of organized-chaos feel to the whole operation because once the bus pulls up to the stop, people shove themselves on to seats where they can, seven people across, twenty rows back, a bit of a squeeze. I am amazed at the memory of the money-collector as he keeps track of who came on when, and sporadically will hop over people to get paid. This bus-buddy also would then disappear out of front door, while the bus is barreling down the mountainside at 50 mph, climb on the roof spider-man style to untie luggage on top, then fly back in through a window (Indiana Jones theme song ensues in the background) with your bag when it is time for you to be pushed out at your stop. These guys are nuts, I like their style.

I should take this moment to point out the extreme variable that adds to the unreal/everyday experience of the chickenbus; Landslides. Guatemala has had a huge problem with landslides after such a heavy rain season and a well-directed tinkle from Hurricane Agatha. There is one main road that connects all most major cities that is molded into hundreds of miles of switchbacks that will take a vehicle hours to navigate when the next destination may only be a forty-five minute crow flight away. The Pan American Highway scalps its way along the rim of monolithic vegetation-rich mountainsides where one side of the road is taken out by boulders, debris, and trees every few miles. No wonder the bus drivers are hammered the whole time sipping on a little Jesus Juice to quiet down the nerves. Ohh yeah, many of the drivers drink on the really dangerous routes to calm them down/ dumb down the conglomeration of countless close calls between every stop, makes sense right? Without guard rails or a buffer zone between the end of the road and the cliff, I start gazing down the edge of the cliff and quickly snap back to reality with the stench of melting rubber tires and tortillas that the vendor from last stop hustled to the burnt out farmer in front of me.

With bruises on my bum from the rusted out suspension and rickety frame that carries us from mountaintop to mountaintop, I am a bit worn out. The chicken bus system is wild, frantic, and uncomfortable, but like most aspects of daily routines I am beginning to see here in Guatemala, it works.