Tapir Travels – Guatemala

June 30 – Hitchhiking
Back from Tikal to Flores proved to be easier than we thought. A chartered bus with thirty female pre-school teachers picked us up, and we became the center of attention for a while after they applauded us welcome on the bus.

In Remate, halfway along the lake, the bus stopped and a bunch of them went to have a swim – with their clothes on! They justified it with that they had to change when arriving to their hotel anyway. So on the rest of the journey we had ten completely soaked teachers in the aisle, some of them dancing to the music coming out of the speakers. I’m guessing that their trip would have looked somewhat different if they would have brought along the kids with them.

Well in Flores we decided to spend a little extra money and take a more comfortable bus to Guatemala City. The bus that took us up here was a cheap and slow one, constantly making unmotivated stops letting loud, annoying vendors on the bus, disturbing the peace by shoving nuts, sodas or whatever things in our face, trying to sell it to us. On top of that, the space between the seats were too narrow for my legs, and having someone leaning back his seat in front of me as much as he could didn’t make it better. So, paying a bit more for a direct bus to get back fast and comfortable to the capital seemed to be a good idea.

I assume that the Mayan gods didn’t like us enough, because after just a couple of hours the nice and expensive bus broke down. It was one of the shock absorbers that decided to give in. After a little mending we continued, but now with a maximum speed of 60 km/h. Instead of eight hours it now took us more than eleven to get back gome. Ironically enough, we were overtaken by the same Fuente del Norte bus we decided not to take. It passed us when we were moving slowly on our way home, feeling every bump in the road. But at least we had comfortable seats.

July 5 – Going Home
Stefan went back to Sweden a couple of days ago, and I’m now on my own again. He tried hard to hide his feelings of homesickness, but it was easily noticed through his long and frequent internet sessions, especially this last week. No wonder; he’s getting married the 5th of August, and his wife-to-be has been waiting for him for a month now.

We did the last interview on the Saturday before he went, so he left with a heavy load of notes and recorded cassette tapes. It was an interesting research project, but I think I felt almost more confused afterwards than before we started. There are many different ‘truths’, depending on who you speak to, and that’s not because all of them are lying or trying to deceive, but simply because they experienced the war differently. We spoke to one man born in Guatemala City and living there during the conflict. He went to the States for a vacation once, and was surprised to read about that there was a war going on in his own country!

For many Indians it was surely a real and hard fact what was happening during this time. One of the attitudes that were common, at least outside the capital and among victims, was it’s better not to dig in the past or try to find out who killed who. What happened, happened, better to leave it that way, or a new conflict might start again. People want to live in peace and get on with their lives.

Over to something completely different: I’m going home soon. The past couple of weeks I have been arranging the flight home and everything that has to do with it. I didn’t buy a return ticket because I didn’t know really where I would end up. I tried to purchase a new one here in Antigua to Sweden, but it proved to be difficult; the high season is not a good time to find flights to Europe. I should have booked a ticket a long time ago, but going home seemed so distant and unreal that I did it at the last minute instead. The only ticket I could find from here, was an expensive one to London. Kilroy Travels in Sweden did a good job finding me one that’ll take me to Stockholm on the 11th of July.

It’s cheaper, but I’m flying out from Costa Rica, which means that I’ll have to do a three-day bus ride all the way down again. In the end it probably turned out to be more or less the same cost, but at least I’ll get to see almost all of Central America again through the bus window…

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