A friendly reunion in Guatemala

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  Huehuetenango, Guatemala
Wednesday, October 11, 2006

We had a leisurely last morning in San Cristobal, then packed up and took a couple of mini-buses to get to the Mexico-Guatemala border, soaking in the beautiful rural Chiapas landscape as it flew by and trying to wedge ourselves into the most comfortable position that the crowded vans would allow. We crossed the border without any problems, and shopped around for the money-changing man that would give us the best rate since this was apparently our only opportunity to get rid of a good deal of leftover pesos. Eventually, we got on a nearly empty bus bound for Huehuetenango, which would drive about 10 feet and stop to recruit passengers all the way through town until the bus was acceptably full enough to leave. This was our first ¨chicken bus¨ of the trip, a term referring to the brightly painted school buses that our often transporting small animals and produce in addition to LOTS of people. Our bus was specifically a ¨cup o noodles bus¨ since all storage compartments were filled with cases of the stuff. Late that afternoon, we arrived in Huehue, booted off the bus in the middle of a chaotic bustling street. Bienvendidos a Guatemala! I bought a phone card to call Alleya, my good friend from college that is currently a Peace Corp volunteer stationed near Huehue. Of course, the only public phone we could find nearby was broken, but a nice lad in a cell phone store let me use his for free. Considering we didn´t give Alleya any warning that we were showing up that day, things worked out remarkably well. She was already in town and all we had to do was take a local bus to the ¨parque central¨ to meet up with her. It was so awesome to catch up with Alleya again, since the last time we had seen each other was a year ago. She took us back to a Peace Corp volunteer apartment and met Dan, another volunteer hanging out there. As usual, Matt and I hadn´t eaten all day, so we all headed out to a Mexican restaurant for giant burritos (much bigger and tastier than any we ate in Mexico I might add). Back in the apartment, we had our first Gallo, the ¨national beer¨ of Guatemala and huddled around a laptop to watch a pirated copy of The Constant Gardener, barely able to hear it over the rain hitting the metal roof. Alleya very generously let us drop off some extra gear to lighten our loads a bit. (Thanks Alleya, I don´t think we will be needing our snorkel gear for our loop through the Guatemalan highlands!) The next morning we packed up and treated ourselves to a full breakfast at a funky cafe, then headed out of town to Quetzaltenango. We will be meeting back up with Alleya somewhere in the country when she can do some traveling with us in a couple of weeks, and we are also anticipating spending a riotous Halloween-Day of the Dead with her and various Peace Corp accomplices in a village called Todos Santos.

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