Fear (but no loathing) in Guatemala – Guatemala

Fear (but no loathing) in Guatemala
Panajachel, Guatemala

Explosions ripped me out of an exhausted sleep at a little past midnight. It was my first night in Guatemala, and I’d crawled into the first hotel I’d found, the walking dead after an epic 16-hour, multiple bus journey from Chiapas, Mexico into the Guatemalan town of Panajachel. I’d fallen into bed about 8 pm thinking that was me for the night.

Wrong.

Stupid though it might seem now, at the time I thought it must be mortar fire, and I was certain the town known as Gringotenango (literally, place of the gringos) was under attack by guerillas. I leapt out off bed, cursing myself for ever coming to this underdeveloped piece of the world, (my mother’s dread and fear, expressed every time I had contact with her, quickly seeming rational) and got dressed, lest some mountain soldier find me naked.

Driven by pure panic, I divided my money and hid it all over my person – some in my bra, some in my undies, some in my shoes – hoping that, whatever happened, I’d somehow manage to keep enough to get me to the embassy in Guatemala City. And then I crouched near my window for probably ten minutes, peering around the curtain, trying to dredge up useful travel survival tales I had read, and cursing ever leaving my privileged Australian life.

Outside the church bells rang and rang, and dozens of people went ran past yelling in Spanish. Lights went up outside the hotel.

Finally another tourist left his room to go to the bathroom, and I ran out to ask if he knew what was happening. ‘A fire, I think,’ was his nonchalant reply (bastard!) and I slunk back to my room, cursing my lack of Spanish. Fireworks had gone off somewhere as they often do at the oddest times throughout Central America, and with little apparent reason (Central American fireworks don’t send off colourful sparks but rather just make a sound like a bomb and a lot of smoke). The roof of a nearby house had caught fire and the church bells were merely ringing the alarm. The neighbourhood quickly had it under control.

It’s a funny, and somewhat embarrassing story now, but those ten minutes of utter terror (the only I experienced the whole time I was in Guatemala) brought home to me a traveling truth. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. We can create paranoid dramas in mere seconds, before we have even the slightest idea of what is actually happening. But every time we do so we create another barrier between the world and ourselves. Caution is necessary; fear will ruin your trip (and give you ulcers!).

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