Only on the world race could this and would this happen.
In 48 hours I have:
Been to 4 different countries.
Taken 8 different modes of transportation.
Lived off of granola cookies and peanuts.
Bribed security guards to let us sleep on a ferry because we didn’t want to sleep on the street because we didn’t have enough money for a hotel.
Driven through a river because the road was out.
Oh travel days how I love you. We left Panajachel at 6 AM via a van. We had to take almost an off road path to get out of the city because the road we would normal take out was dynamited the last Saturday in Panajachel. I sat in the front repeating the phrase in my head, “ I will not get dizzy, I will not be nauseous, I will not be sick.� It helped, but I can’t say I was fine the whole time. Thankfully you can catch up on a lot of sleep on travel days so that is what I did; a lot. We made it to the Tica bus station in Guatemala City about 10 AM. Team Pnuema arrived about an hour after that. Tica bus told us that they did not have room for 14 people, but they could switch us to another bus. We agreed and that bus would leave at 1PM. Well here on the World Race things don’t follow a schedule. We were told the bus would pick us up at the Tica bus station. Then the time got changed to 2. Around 1:30 we were informed that we had to get to the other bus station, which was 30 minutes away. We packed 14 of us and all our luggage into 4 vehicles and drove to the other station just in time. We quickly boarded the bus and were on our way to San Salvador, El Salvador. Poor Jessica ended up with really bad motion sickness and ended up puking for quite a bit of the ride.
The bus was super nice. Again I slept a lot, but we were served beverages including coffee, which I have learned to like, and snacks. As we crossed into El Salvador we were told that we would need to get our passports out and get off the bus have them checked at the station. We all got off and immediately we were surrounded by people offering to sell trinkets or exchange money. I held on tightly to my passport wishing I had grabbed my whole purse and pulled my passport out when I got into the building about 15 feet away from the bus. Paul actually had someone take his passport and run with it, but thankfully no one can out run Paul and he quickly yanked his passport back. Back on the bus it was about 2 hours later and we reached the hotel we would stay at for the night. The Lord really blessed us because we all had our own beds, hot showers, and free wi-fi. We even went out to Wendy’s for dinner! After dinner we had a worship session on the patio of the hotel. It was awesome. God told me to shut up and just listen . I’m glad I did because he allowed me to hear what people’s hearts were saying and they were loud! Matt was speaking in tongues and although I don’t know what he was saying I understood it all. It was so full of love, and joy, and praise. I wish I could put into words what it all felt like, but words would do no justice.
We had to be on the Tica bus at 4:30 AM to head to Managua, Nicaragua. The Tica bus was less nice than the previous bus, but it was still a sweet bus. Everyone pretty much had their own seat. Again we had border crossings we had to do for Honduras and then Nicaragua, but we were all pretty smart this time. We didn’t need our passports stamped for any of these crossings either apparently, which makes me a tad bit sad, but I’ll live. The bus ride was long, about 12 hours to be exact, but we finally pulled into the station at about 4 PM. We quickly figured out that we needed to get to an ATM and we needed to take taxis to get to the ferry. There was some confusion about were the ferry was, but we figured it out. The only problem was that the last ferry laws scheduled to leave at 5:30 PM and it would take about 2 hours to get there.
Clearly we did not make the ferry and my stomach began to turn when I found out that we didn’t have enough money in our budget for a hotel. I did not want to sleep on the street especially in the place we were in. God definitely showed up again for us and Bre spoke to the security guards and explained our situation. With a small bribe they allowed us to sleep on the ferry that we would take in the morning. We grabbed dinner at a small restaurant and I split spaghetti with Sarah. YUMMY YUMMY! As we left the restaurant a monkey came swinging down from the tree screaming at us. Oh man did I jump and run. The others noticed that he was chained up to the tree so apparently he was someone’s pet. Back on the ferry for the night we set up camp and wound down for the night. It was actually really fun to sleep on the ferry. The boat took off at 7 AM and by 8 we were at the island. We had about a 20 minute ride to CICRIN in Ometepe by a bus, but we finally made it.
This place is absolutely beautiful and I cannot wait for you all to see the pictures I have taken. I’ll write a blog about this place soon, but right now I need to sleep. Even though I slept a lot while travel nothing is better than having an actual bed to sleep in. Adios.
