5 Am we all awaken from a peaceful sleep to car alarms and a loud Mexican voice yelling “Amigos!” We all crawl out of our tents wondering what in the world is going on! We went to bed thinking we’d be having a peaceful Sunday morning and start the race at 12 noon, but the media team (they plan our races) had sneakily changed plans on us to throw in a fun twist! Our first task was to dip in the cold creek to our heads, we then had to find transportation to Antigua, Guatemala.
We ran to the nearby town to call a bus driver we had met back in Pelenque, and he graciously came to get us at 6:30A. We loaded all our luggage on top- wow! that’s a lot of stuff- and prayed for safety! We lost one bag almost immediately around a curve, so our driver (Rufo) resecured our stuff and we were back on our way. We were actually the last team to leave by 30 minutes. The first 3 hours of the journey were all curves through the beautiful lush green Mexican mountains. Despite the Dramamine, my stomach couldn’t take it. My teammate Sarah insisted on a picture! We had estimated as a team our total number of vomit episodes for the year to be 8, but considering we’re already at 4, I don’t think we’ll make the 8!
This is our first driver, Rufo, who caught on to the idea of the race and went very fast so that we actually passed the other teams! Here we are at the Guatemala border, where we had to get visas and trade drivers. The Lord totally blessed us with our next driver as well, because he was the media teams driver the prior day so he new exactly where we needed to go in Antigua (we were to meet at Higher Ground- a Christian run coffee shop).
We were the first team to the coffee shop (@ 12 hrs later), where we got our next instructions. The following morning we were to race to the top of Cerra de la Cruz (a cross at the top of a mountain overlooking Antigua). We were blessed with a church for all the teams to camp out in, and the following morning our doors were opened at 7A to race to find and climb to the cross.
Overlooking Antigua, we had an hour to pray for the city as a team! We prayed, sang and shouted from the mountain top that Jesus is Lord!
Our final destination was back in the central plaza at the fountain! We ran back down the mountain and were the first team back! Yeah!! Leg #2 completed! We will stay here a week before heading to Nicaragua!
