I actually wrote this on the 6th, but was unable to post it, so it is going up now!
Well, I am sitting in a great fast food
chicken joint in Antigua, Guatemala, having enjoyed my meal
and using their free wireless internet.
I haven’t had a chance to really blog yet, so I wanted to let you know
how things are going down here!
Debrief went well in Jeruselen with Samuel,
our contact there, and Selena’s brother.
Friday night, our day of arrival, he threw us a party!He is a chef and
cooked up an incredible meal of chicken cordon bleu, with steamed veggies, and
cheesecake for dessert! We then danced
the evening away with fun Latin musica!
Before the night was over, Chad handed each team a letter that told us our
destination for the Race on Sunday was Lake
Atitlan, Guatemala,
with a departure time of 12:00pm.
Saturday was a laid back day of playing in the river, taking naps,
hiking, and hanging out with friends from other teams. It rained for a short time, but good and
hard, so our tents got wet and some of our clothes and swim suits were wet as
well. But it was a great day over
all.
5:00am Sunday morning, I am sleeping in
Tana’s tent (I didn’t seal mine well for the rainstorm so it got wet), and I am
awakened to incessant honking of a car horn.
Well, in my sleepy stuper, I mumble, ‘shut up – how inconsiderate.’ Now, this really doesn’t make sense since we
were out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t neighbors as my brain
originally processed. HA!! “AMIGOS!!!!
AMIGOS!!!” Again, in my sleep, I
think someone is telling the car to stop the honking. Tana rolls over and says ‘He just called my
team name!’ Yeah, well, go find out what
that’s about, I’m going to sleep… Oh,
shoot!! What?! Who is!?
He just called out my team name!
What is going on!? I throw my 2
day old clothes back on and climb out of the tent. Ahhh!!
Chaos rules the campground. Samuel is at the top of the stairs of the
patio, yelling out our team names and giving us new letters. We should have known this was coming! Guess what!?
Departure time is NOW, and destination is actually Antigua! But, before we could leave, we have to find
transportation to get there, as well as all jump into the river, submerged up
to our necks and take a photo.
ZEO isn’t super competitive, so we took
some time and just figured stuff out. We
got a ride set up in a van with a Squad A team, and left about 7:20am. We were a good 20-90 minutes behind the rest
of the teams, but weren’t concerned. We
just wanted to make sure we enjoyed ourselves and didn’t stress about it all. We
load our 11 people in the van with our packs stacked several feet high on top,
and head to Guatemala. Within the first 15 minutes, my pack flew off
the top of the van. We stopped to pick
it up. It seemed all right, but turned
out that one of the most critical parts broke.
The hip belt that makes it possible to carry busted in half. I am still working on how to get that
fixed. That’s a big prayer request if
anyone thinks of it!
A few of our team suffered a bit of motion
sickness, though the greatest symptoms were felt by Amy. Despite having to stop
for sickness and stopping on the side of the road to take care of business,
(there are no rest stops in Mexico – we just climbed through the barbed wire
fence and down the hill a bit) we passed up the other teams. We had an amazing driver who really got the
idea of the Race. We were the first B
team and third A team to arrive at the Guatemalan border, where we had to pick
up a different van to take us to Antigua,
another 7 hours away. We found another
van, and turns out that the driver was the same guys who drove the Media team
and Chad to Antigua the day before so he knew exactly where we were going,
Higher Grounds Coffee Shop. He also was
a good speedy driver. After practically
flying through Guatemala on
curvy mountain roads, we arrived about 7:00pm, greeted by Chad and the
Media team. We jumped out and took our
picture to mark our arrival time. We WON
this part! We knew there was more, so
when Chad
handed us a new envelope, we excitedly opened it to see what came next.
We enjoyed an absolutely fabulous Italian
dinner (I can’t say how much I treasured Italian after a month of native
Mexican every meal!), while watching the last 15 minutes of the Super Bowl, and
then retired on the church floor with the rest of teams, awaiting the coming
leg of the Race.
Next morning, another step of the Race
began at 7:00am – foot race up a mountain side, about 350 stairs to a massive
stone cross over looking the city of Antigua
(Cerra De La Cruz), an hour of prayer there, then back down and into town to a
fountain on the square. ZEO is a team of
athletes, (and me), and we also won this leg!
Fun times. I really did enjoy
that. The time of prayer at the top,
though ‘required’, was definitely an amazing time of prayer and worship with
our team. So much so, actually, that we
went back up there today for fun!
