– Guatemalan bus driver telling us that yes, this bus stops at Esperanza bus stop.
– Three gringas in a bus full of Guatemalans (quite unusual for Antigua, truly)
– Bus taking a completely different direction than the usual one that goes to Esperanza bus stop
– Never seeing a street or stop that looks remotely like the Esperanza bus stop
– Bus driver looking at Stephanie (in the front, who speaks the least amount of Spanish among the three of us) and asking, ?Donde vas?
– Lisa managing to find out from her seatmate that the bus is not going to stop at the Esperanza stop we knew about, and that it won’t ever.
– Bus emptying and bus driver telling us to get off and get another bus
– Standing in a street in the middle of (not Antigua) without a clue as to where we were really going
– Finding some amigas who let us use a cell phone; speaking to a YWAM contact and finding out we should either (get another bus) or (get a tuk-tuk)
Part 2: Tuk-Tuk Trials
– Still daylight. Piling into a tuk-tuk, which is the type of vehicle we wanted to try sometime anyway
– Pulling onto the highway and seeing this sign: “Antigua–15 km” and wondering how the heck we got that far away from Antigua, that fast
– Fit #1 of hysterical laughter.
– Pulling out the YWAM business card to show Carlos, our tuk-tuk driver, the address (for the first time)
– Thinking “what?” (for the first time) when Carlos pulled over to ask directions (for the first time)
– Fit #2 of hysterical laughter
– Carlos stopping at an intersection and looking carefully each and every way because he’s just as lost as we are
– Stopping multiple times to ask for directions…the street vendor, the tienda owner, the random guys hanging out on the street….no one knows where the YWAM address is
– Having locals ask if we’re looking for “mas gringas?”….”SI!!! SI!!!!”
– Feeding ALL the change we had into a payphone to call Estuardo (YWAM contact), only to have him not be able to hear us and pass the phone to Shanda (World Racer who has no idea where the YWAM base is, either) before getting cut off because we ran out of money
– Carlos asking Lisa to sit in the front of the tuk-tuk with her foot on the brake to keep the engine from dying…and the engine dying anyway
– Carlos gesturing to us that we needed to help push the tuk-tuk to help it get started
– Pushing the tuk-tuk and laughing hysterically (at the same time) until its engine started
Part 3: Home Sweet YWAM
– Finally getting more change for the payphone
– Carlos determining where we were and where we needed to go
– A flashlight blinking from a balcony
– Rolling up to YWAM approximately 2.5 hours after we boarded the bus (and 2 hours late for dinner)
