I have not been doing very much searching for nice places to stay. Mostly I follow along with other travelers, listen to their comments and borrowing guide books as well as doing some searches on line. I ended up in Los Amigos hostel in Flores by following other travelers, and it was a fine place to stay. The group I was with has decided to take the night bus to Antigua, and that is where this story takes off.
After talking with a couple travelers 6 of us decided that taking the night bus to Antigua would be a good idea, and that we were unlikely to find a lower rate than booking through the hostel. We paid 240 Quesatales each (exchange is 8Q=1CD) for first class ticket. The tourist agent said the bus left at 8pm, and was due in Guatemala City at 5 am with a transfer there to a smaller shuttle which would take us to Antigua. The bus was far too big to make it to the front door of the hostel on the narrow streets of Flores, so we made the 2 block walk to the bus. Once on the bus, it felt very much like hurry-up-and-wait. We scrambled behind the bus agent, got our luggage stored, sat down and went all of one kilometer to the main bus station where we waited for ten minutes to enter the depot, followed by waiting another twenty minutes for people to slowly board. The air conditioning was working just great. Maybe too great. After 3 weeks of never being in an air conditioned space it was a little too cool for me in the long run.
While on the bus talking with others, as well as searching on line, bus travel other than first class is very not recommended in Guatemala, with something like 30 drivers of the 'chicken' buses shot during the previous 6 months. Gulp.
The bus itself was clean and the seating was designed to be great for someone about 5' 8" or shorter. This meant that I was not very comfortable, though way better than on a chicken bus.
Finally we pulled out and were on our way. The night was cloudy to start, and the driver had a tendency to leave the interior lights on, on the 2 deck where we were and that combines with the tinting on the windows meant that the view was boring.
We stopped at four different places along the way to let people on and off, as well as one half hour stop for the driver's dinner. Shortly after that long stop, the bus seemed to develop problems. We would pull over into gas stations, where no one got on or off, wait for 5 minutes then off again. then the stops got a little more frequent with the driver getting out to open up a compartment at the back of the bus. Followed by the bus going very slowly up hills with the occaissional pull out to pause, shut the engine off for 2 minutes then off again. After about an hour of this, the air conditioning was shut off and never came back on.
We finally pulled into the bus depot in Guatemala City about two hours late.
Got off, got our luggage, and off for the two block walk to where the shuttle was. The bags were tossed up to a luggage rack on the top, all 24 of us loaded onto the shuttle, which was a very tight squeeze, and as we pulled out of the compound where the shuttle had been waiting, the luggage caught on the lintel for the gate and scraped the luggage rack loose from the top of the shuttle. After the driver and a helper struggled with the rack for twenty minutes, we were let out of the shuttle, I stretched while others went to the bathroom and two disappeared to buy breakfast. An hour and fifteen minutes after we had first loaded onto the shuttle we were off for Antigua.
I was of the opinion that as long as we were stalled waiting, we might as well have some fun with it. By the time we pulled out most of he passengers were joining in on making humorous comments on the whole situation. I started off by commenting to the guy in front of me who had a small guitar case that he needed to play the song 'The Wheels on the Bus Go Nowhere at All", and that set the tone for the comments for the rest of the trip to Antigua. A few were too tired or did not speak english well, but most seemed to feel the mood lighten. I felt we could either get mad and frustrated or roll with it and laugh.
A second smaller shuttle from Antigua took me to , Pannajachel and from there I took a water taxi across the lake to San Pedro La Laguna. I collapsed onto a bed at a hostel after twenty hours of travel with about 2 hours of napping.
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