Well, the good news is that I made it to Xela in one piece (barely) on the scariest bus ride of my life. The bad news is that I, in my infinate supply of wonderful luck, got robbed before the bus even left Guatemala City (which is a toilet that should be burned to the ground). These bastards pulled a fantastic scam on me, playing on my understanding that Guatemalan police are ridiculous and poke through everything because they´re corrupt bastards. Long story short, the robbers (who weren´t cops, or posing as cops, but rather as ticket takers for the bus) told me that because we had to go through a police checkpoint, all of our stuff had to be stored on the inside racks. I saw no one else holding their bags, so I fell for it. Meanwhile, they had one guy handing out shit to sell or whatever as one distraction, and a guy in front of me who spoke English pretending to be real nice to me so we were talking and evidently while this was happening they rooted through my bag and took my knife, camera, and iPod. My 2nd camera and my iPod, GONE. Son of a bitch. I realized this, however, as I was about to take my malaria pill (after we passed an actual police checkpoint but they didn´t do SHIT), then, after a brief freakout, my attention was diverted by the fact that the bus I was on (the stereotypical chicken bus with NO safety features) was speeding up a mountain and overtaking EVERY vehicle on the highway and taking curves like a Formula 1 racer...holy SHIT it was terrifying.
The day began quite interesting as well. I barely caught the 6am bus out of Esquipulas, and then we were held up for about 20 minutes while the ticket taker got into a fight with some guy outside, and since he was smaller, he was struggling. He got in a few good head kicks, but unfortunately the other guy had a death grip on this poor bastard´s nuts. But, after a while, nobody got seriously hurt, and we were on our way. We got to Guate more or less when I figured, and then I took a cab to the bus station to Xela, and it was then that I got screwed. Fortunately, I got to Xela in one piece, nothing else was lost, and I´m hoping to get some shit together here. There´s a Habitat for Humanity opportunity that looks really cool- I get to travel around Guatemala and interview locals about what they want in their new habitats. They pay for my travel and give me a stipend for food and lodging when I travel, which is cool, so we´ll see what happens there. Other options include any one of a million volunteer opportunities and teaching English. We´ll see what happens.
It is nice to be back here, and the hostel is sort of a family- last night we had a communal dinner with 10 people and that´s normal at this hostel, so I¨m looking forward to some good times.
That´s it for now.
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