When you see all the pretty places on instagram that long term travelers inevitably post, you get this ideal image that everything is always perfect and fun, right? Wrong. We have gone through funks where seeing new things actually gets monotonous and dull. We find ourselves searching for productive projects or activities to dull the numb feeling of, “what the hell are we actually doing on this trip?” It doesn’t help that James and I both are fairly introverted, and thus meeting people is sometimes difficult. This was a major issue for us while on the Yucatan and through Belize where we missed our community back home, landscapes were flat and uninteresting, and the weather was horrendous. Needless to say, we were excited to move on to Guatemala.
Like we mentioned in our last post, we had some friends, Stacey and Darren, who we originally met on the Oaxaca coast in Mexico that were hanging out on Lake Atitlan in San Pedro La Laguna. They teased us with phrases like: “cooler weather” and “large overlanding community” and “cheap beer”. Well that last one is universal anywhere you go down in Central America, but you get the point. So, once we saw the necessary sights in the Peten region, we took the long trek southwest to promised fun!
After the longest two days of driving ever (see previous post), we were happily greeted by smiling faces and about 15 new instant friends. Commence the fun! We quickly adjusted to life there by signing up for Spanish classes, drinking beers like regulars at a local pub, getting to know the maze of alleys that connect the town, and of course partaking in local events including a futbol match. Basically we filled our time with lots of friends while we were able.
Bump In The Night
A large influence on why we stayed so long in San Pedro was La Feria (The Fair). Down in Central America there are traveling fairs that will post up in a town for weeks at a time and entertain the locals with fried dough, ferris wheels, and local artisan vendors. The trick is fitting the fair in a town, and in very small San Pedro, that means blocking off an entire section of the town to all car traffic and filling it with booths and rides.
When we arrived in San Pedro we were aware there was a fair happening, as Stacey had warned us that they had been trapped in their camping spot for over 2 weeks. We didn’t realize the extent until we had driven down at least 2 wrong streets and made a 1000 point turn bumping and scratching the van up on a large curb to avoid driving straight through booths of fruit and fabric. However, once we found a decent parking spot out of town, we really enjoyed the liveliness that La Feria brought.
One evening we decided to go out on the town with a group of our new friends planning to get fair food and perhaps get on a few rides. Now, these rides are SKETCH. Most were very rusty, squeeked…. no, wailed when moving, and none really had safety features that we could see. Safety third, right? We walked through a section of kids rides that whipped past the passersby within inches (no safety fences here), and came to the bumper cars. We had to put on our game faces for this one.
First task: get tickets. We waded through what felt like hundreds of people throwing phrases like “perdon” “disculpe” and the local favorite “con permiso”. Until we realized no one really cared and if you wanted tickets just push your way up there. First task complete.
Second task: Find the bumper car line in the mass of people. We all pushed our way up to the ride and felt a bit dumbfounded. There was a large mass of people with no semblance of organization, so we sent up a reconnaissance team. Turns out there was no line! Second task… complete?
Third task: Get a bumper car. This by far was the most difficult of tasks. Without a line, it was basically a mad dash free for all of chaos whenever the riders were swapping out.
We shuffled up to the front lines, and observed for a number of rounds cracking up as kids and parents shoved other kids and parents aside to get in a car. You could see the satisfaction in the faces of those who won and the defeat of those that got so very close. There were 10 of us, and at least five cars. So we were gonna go for a big blow to the kids and Gringo out the ride for one round, if we could snag the cars. Attempt one was a fail and no one got cars. Attempt two however was a slight success! About two people in our group got cars. But Attempt three, that was the round. Including myself, there were three others in our group that got cars. I am only slightly ashamed I had to mean mug a child and push my big butt in the way to get the car I wanted. Luckily everyone seemed to have good humor about the process, even though it was a bit cut throat. And thus, we giggled and rammed our cars into others feeling like kids for about four minutes not having a care for anything else. Following our round we were able to help out the rest of our crew by giving up our cars to them and completing the circuit. Third task complete.
Good news is no one was electrocuted by the large number of odd hanging wires and loose connections from the makeshift bumper car court. I would call the evening a success.
The San Pedro Legacy Caravan
San Pedro quickly felt very homey, and the time we thought we would spend there doubled to nearly a month. It really felt like we were part of a community which was seriously needed after months of solo travel. Plus, staying in one place for longer than usual helped us to get excited about seeing new things once again. Before long we were making travel plans with our new overlanding buddies!
We became an unstoppable caravan; 2 Chevys and a Delica off to see new places! We were like gypsies traveling in groups, everyone bringing something different to make it one solid force. Kyle with his handyman skills, Jimena being our translator, Georgie was comic relief, Ryan with his persistence, Rita’s unwavering chill, James’ logic, and my… I don’t know… knack for finding scorpions (more on that in the next post…)? Point is, it was a great crew and we had some fun!
The Feast
Our first adventure was the mass exodus out of Lake Atitlan. We practically drained the city of gringos by leaving all at once, but it felt good to have friends that were all watching out for each other on the treacherous up hill climb to get out of the massive crater the lake sits in. It was a doozy, but we made it happen with no issues.
Once we all safely made it to Antigua that evening we celebrated by hosting a dinner party in our van. We hardly ever have a reason to convert our bed into a table, but I gotta say, it’s so worth being able to do so! Our group of six for our party increased to 8 when we arrived to town and Laura and Joel randomly were camping next to us. Party time! We ended up fitting 8 full size humans comfortably around the table. I was so stoked because since we built the van I had been dreaming of hosting dinner parties on the road, and this was the golden moment! I cried a few happy tears and ate a lot of delicious food to celebrate.