Two New Modes of Transportation

1. The ciclo. We got a lift to where the buses stop on the highway past immigration (there's no town there, and not much traffic of any kind...) from a guy who pedaled us in his little bike taxi thing, he called it a Ciclo. It's got the bike in back and the seats in front. He waited with us and flagged us a...

2. Chicken bus (who knows how he knew which one, some say the destination on the front and some say other words whose meaning I have yet to figure out) and it whisked us away to a crazy, dusty, packed, dirty bus lot in Coatepeque. This being our first chicken bus sans chickens, but very crowded, very loud, very raucous, old, brilliantly painted USA school bus. Buses, like the U6 I used to ride. But brighter. And fuller. Full of women wearing traditional Mayan garb, which is psychedlically bright, and old men, and kids, and mostly everyone has gold or silver teeth. We were going to stay on that bus which had a little layover and then continued to our destination city, which most people call Xela, the Mayan name. But our neighbor-passenger insisted it would take too long to wait for that bus to leave, so he hauled my bag off the bus, and I ran frantically after it, lost Dirk, as my pack was passed off to another guy, the conductor of the next Xela bus. My mochila was heaved on top of another chicken bus, and then I noticed everyone here is way less tranquilo than in mexico, they're all yelling, come on! come on! venga! venga! and I'm still looking for Dirk. He and his bag make it on the bus, and then we wait as it fills up three to a seat while vendors of fruit, chips, french fries in little paper cones, water, soda, fried plantains walk the length of the bus. Then we leave for a 3 hour ride up into the windy, cloudy mountians. The road is twisty, occasionally on a ridge and the drivers are crazy, passing other buses going up hill on curves, as they're stopping, and they honk at them as they go by. We got the wheel seat, so I was eating my knees for three hours while my ass fell asleep and I bonded with the window. We arrived in the terminal minverva in Xela, basically a big dusty road full of chicken buses of all hues. The best one had rainbow-irredescent glitter all over the grill, wings painted on the bumper and read, proud...and pretty (orgullosa ...y bonita). This was after 15 hours of buses, so it was totally surreal. Then we walked into the center, which meant we had to go through the market, which is a dark, narrow, alley covered from the elements by cloth, tin, cardboard, etc, and stalls on either side selling fruits (lots of citrus), vegetables, clothes, cloth, shoes, beans, pasta, herbs, chilis, all piled in big baskets, smoke filtering the light from the many comedores, scents of woodsmoke and people and dust. Welcome to Guatemala! Andele!