We have had such an adventure the past couple days. It all started when we realized that our flying turtle van´s transmission was pretty much shot! It would take 2 days that we didn´t have to get her fixed. Wednesday night we sat down to pray about what we should do. After some diliberation and words from God, it came down to selling our friend and faith builder. The Tortuga Volondo now rests in the hands of Bob Waag, FYM director Matamoros. Hopefully she will get some good ministry use!
Thursday morning we found out the South Africans had arrived. They were also carless so we hopped a covered truck (the typical means of transportation around those parts) with them and all our gear to get to the bus station. From there we took a bus to the border of Mexico and Guatamala arriving about 8pm. After going through immigration, getting visas, and changing money with some guy at the border (apparently the only way to change money right there), we searched for a bus to get us to Panahachel so we could take the ferry to San Pedro.
The Guatamalan bus station just consists of what they call ¨chicken buses¨that are much like school buses painted brightly. After finding out that the bus we needed didn´t leave till 1am, we searched for other means of transportation. We found that a taxi could take us to the next town (by bus 3 hours away), for very cheap. We decided to do this and catch a bus from there to Panahachel, which supposedly ran all the time.
We arrive about one and a half hours later, after some very quick driving on the taxi cabs´part, and find out a bus doesn´t leave till 2 am. We waited, as it got colder, to ride a packed bus with many people in the aisle. I don´t know who these Guatamalan are riding a bus at 2am! The ride was very interesting as we discovered most Guatamalans drive pretty fast. We were just thankful it was dark and we couldn´t see outside.
About 4am the bus attendant starts to call for the people who want to go to Panahachel. We climbed over all the people in the aisle to get to the front, where they quickly made us disembark and told us to wait by a store on the side of the road for the bus to Panahachel. The locals were very helpful and told us where to stand and wait. After about 30 minutes a shuttle pulled up and took us to Panahachel.
After arriving, we searched for the dock and hiked through the streets with all our gear. We found the dock and hopped a boat over to San Pedro and the volcano. We found the hotel our contact was at and checked into some rooms. We made plans to hike up the volcano tomorrow morning, but did make sure to take our time stamp picture to stop the clock. It is nice to finally be here and be able to get some sleep and rest before our big climb tomorrow!
