Hello I am still kicking just not has hard as the first three weeks here in Antigua. When we were here before on our first visit I came down with Altitude Sickness. I can tell you I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. I stayed in on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week hoping to get over this and on Thursday thought I was doing better and I was but I am not over it yet. I have had a problem all my life with motion sickness and I don't have to be on a boat to have a problem. I know from experience that this queasy motion induced yuckieness can last for what seems like forever. I have on my wrist bands as I write and someday I may take them off! I do have medication but I want to hang on to it till we head for Xela which is higher up than we are here. I did take a couple of them along with tylenol. I will live.
I walked behind Don with my eyes to the ground. I warned him that if he fell into a rather large gopher whole that he needed to be ready for me to land on top. I was not watching the things around me just his big feet.
Chicken Bus Stories for this week
Thursday we got on a bus that was already nearly at capacity in that all of the seats had 3 seats (people) in them. The ayudante kept taking on passengers and we kept moving to the back of the bus. I can tell you that there is a magic hole at the back of these chicken buses. We just keep moving back and nobody falls out! But I digress.... On this day a miracle happened.....a you Guatelmalan male got up from his seat and allowed me to hang on to the special THIRD spot on a seat at the back of the bus. I bet you can't guess how we exited this bus. Yep, right out the back door! This ayudante actually assisted me to reach the ground.
Second Story happened today. We have been trying to wait for a chicken bus that is not already to full for fun or comfort but we failed again. We got on one that was not too bad as we started out the both the driver and ayudante were after as many paying customers as they could stuff into a bus! It went beyond common sense which is something the many Guatemalan's seem to be missing. Instead of making it possible to enter and exit a bus that pack it beyond capacity. There is no regularity group or faction that monitors the safety of these buses. At any rate this bus was too full for anyone to get off. Don and I were stuck and ended up riding the bus all the way into Alotenango where folks got off like they were leaving the Titanic! The bus got to the end of town (which turns out to be a long strip straight down the highway and not much else) where the bus turned around and headed back to Antigua with us still on board. We moved up to the front seat and driver turned around and looked at us with such a funny look. I told him we wanted to get off at the 'end of the cemetary at the end of Ciudad Viaja. He said we missed it-- his face said "I just drove past there". I told him that we were not able to got up or out of the bus at that stop. In their favor they did not charge us again for the ride back to our stop and he let us off at the end of the drive up to the apartment.
