Travel day blog! We survived our second travel day, praise the Lord!
Two teams plus two other people from another group had to leave a day earlier than the rest of the squad. Our team was one of them.
First stop: The hospital gate. I include this because it is a feat in itself to get ourselves plus about 70 pounds of luggage each maybe a quarter of a mile down to the hospital gate to get to the commuter vans to get us to the plaza.
Second stop: The plaza. We managed to convince the drivers to rent out the entire van for our team plus all our luggage for Q20. It took a while because other commuters were getting in the van, and we had to travel as a whole, so we had to wait until we got a whole van to ourselves.
Third stop: First chicken bus station. This was tough. We had to walk about 10 blocks from the plaza (again with about 70lbs of luggage each), through busy streets. At one point a few of us had to put our airporters on, which made our travel packs that much harder to carry. But we made it!
Fourth stop: Chuchuoweaskjhwieuhg (probably not the real name lol). Ok. So. One of the good things about our first chicken bus was that we practically had it all to ourselves. It wasn't much of a chicken bus. BUT, it's true what they say that the drivers are CRAZY. He was probably going 40-50 miles an hour down curvy mountain roads. If I had bad motion sickness, I'd probably be chucking lunch the whole time. I mean, it was like a bad roller coaster ride. By the time we got to the stop, the bus kept moving forward while half of our group were still on the bus, while we were still getting our luggage from the top of the bus, and while people were getting off. It was an interesting experience.
Fifth stop: Second chicken bus station. Carrying our packs with our airporters was HARD, for me at least. But we only walked for half a block on to the next chicken bus. When we got there, there was a bus ready. We asked if there was any space for 16 people and our packs, and they confidently said yes, and had already grabbed our packs and started stacking them up at the top of the bus. A squadmate and I decided we should head inside the bus right away since they could drive away with all of our packs (it's happened before apparently). When we got in, the bus was FULL. All the seats were taken, and there were people already standing up in what should be in aisle, but a child could barely stand comfortably in it. We tried to tell the rest of the group that there's no space at all in the bus for another 16 people but they said all our packs were up on the bus, so we had no choice but to force ourselves into this bus. It was a feat, and one of us was practically hanging outside on the side of the bus, but we made it by the grace of God.
Sixth stop: Antigua! Such a pretty place. Once we got off the bus, we walked maybe for about half a mile to our hostel. It felt so great to be able to sleep in beds that night. I remember going to bed at 10 that night, and waking up feeling like I had the best sleep of my life. I felt so refreshed and energized and ready to take on the day. I checked my watch and it was 11:30pm LOL.
Seventh stop: Guatemala city! We woke up at 3am because we had vans that were going to pick us up at 330am to head to Guatemala city to the Tica Bus station. Smoothest ride we've had so far I thought.
Last stop: Zion's Gate, Honduras!!! Well, we did have plenty of stops along the way once we got on the Tica Bus at 6am. Another stamp in my passport woot! Oh, and we also drove through El Salvador which I thought was awesome, coz it was really pretty and I get to say that I've been to El Salvador, even if it was just for customs 😀 The whole bus ride was about 13 hours, but it wasn't too bad. When we got to Zion's gate all the boys met us out front and had already carried all our bags inside. It was a great start to the month and just set the mood I thought, and I'm super excited about it.
Next blog: Zion's Gate Ministry living! Stay tuned!
