5am. The car horn won’t stop honking.
Confused and disoriented, I try to think through the possible reasons why a car would be honking at 5am.
Then I heard the banging of pots and pans, and Samuel yelling “Amigos!” as loud as possible.
Michelle, my tentmate, opened one eye and grumbled, “Do we have to get up?”
I assured her that I would do everything possible to make the noise stop and crawled out of the tent.
Samuel (our friend and host) was waving envelopes, one for each team.
I knew it was trouble.
Apparently the race instructions we had received the day earlier (stating that we were leaving at 12noon)
were rendered void with these new, 5am instructions.
The first task was to get all (but one photographer) team members into the river up to our necks and take a picture.
(I will spare you the sight of me in a river at 5am… it’s not pretty.
Please enjoy the other pictures).
Then we had to race to
Antigua,
Guatemala and find a coffee shop called Higher Grounds. We took about 10 hour (?) van ride. Agapetos had a van to ourselves, which was God-ordained, because we ended up having some amazing bonding and prayer time.
Our arrival in Antigua came down to a neck and neck footrace between Agapetos and Nessa. Unfortunately, none of us realized that Zeo had arrived two hours earlier! Fortunately, the race did not end at the coffee shop! We received further instructions that informed us that we were to finish the race starting at 7am the next day. We had to get to Parque Cerro de la Cruz, a beautiful spot that overlooks the city of Antigua. Each team then spent and hour in prayer for the city. The race ended at a park in the center of town.
It was an amazing morning, even though we ended up coming in second (Team Zeo walked away with a well deserved win). We are spending a week in Guatemala before continuing on to Nicaragua for a couple days, then Coasta Rica! Check out the World Race YouTube site for a sweet video of the race!
