A Sneaky Scorpion & A Volcano
After a couple days bumming around Antigua our caravan crew adventured to hike a volcano with flowing lava, Volcan Pacaya! As we’ve learned, in Guatemala you want to be careful with your route planning. So after six educated adults double and triple checked the directions, we set off down our planned route. Quickly, the road turned into some really bad dirt and rock backwoods roads through the jungle that took us for a fun slow and bumpy ride for over an hour. Fortunately, we came out the other side still in three pieces and continued on the beautiful highway the rest of the way, which we later realized, would have taken us the whole way from Antigua in the first place. At least getting back was easier… Once we arrived at the visitor center at the trailhead we booked a guide to take us up the volcano at 4:30 AM to hopefully get some photos of the sunrise from the top.
At about 4:00 AM as James and I groggily made our morning coffee I noticed some movement near the stove. To my horror, out crawled the biggest scorpion I have seen yet and IN THE VAN no less. I instantly was awake and screaming when in pops Ryan instantaneously with his leatherman pliers ready to snag the little devil.
A bit of a backstory here just to keep you on your toes… While in San Pedro, James and I decided to get out of the van for a bit and rented a small Airbnb next door to Kyle and Jimena’s. Turns out, our little cottage was not “sealed”, meaning there was no barrier keeping all manner of critters or vines out of the roof. On top of that after moving in, we hear that there is probably a scorpion nest somewhere on the side of our cottage as they are frequently seen inside. After two weeks of living there, we saw at least five scorpions. One I almost touched as I reached around a corner to turn a light on, three were impossible to reach to get rid of as they hung out by the ceiling, and one was actually crawling in our kitchen sink. Antigua isn’t known to have scorpions, which means that this big guy had been making a home in our van right next to where I sleep for several days since we left San Pedro!! I was not stoked about this notion.
Back to the story though. There was a bit of an ordeal after attempting to grab the scorpion as it was in a hard-to-reach nook and it ended up falling under our bed and disappearing… Without giving up hope, the team methodically started removing items from under the bed. After what felt like an eternity, hope in finding the scorpion wavered and realization set in that it may have crawled behind the wall and thus was unreachable. This was my nightmare, knowing that creature was somewhere in the van but not knowing where it was… shudder.
I didn’t want to give up, so in a vain attempt at hope (or just my spot-on intuition) I suspected the little devil may have went back behind the stove, where it originally crawled out from. So I opened up the side door to expose the back of the stove and started to carefully move the bug net that was bunched up under the cabinet. There it was. Huge and black with claws only seen in nightmares with a long curving tail ready to sting any who dare to get close. I called for assistance and Ryan swooped in again for the goal and tossed the thing into the yard next door.
How James and I would have handled this situation at 4:00 AM without the support of our friends… I’m not sure. So thanks Ryan and Rita for the help, we owe you a lifetime of choco-bananos. Also, maybe my knack for finding scorpions is just intuition… maybe that’s what I bring to the caravan crew?
Anyway, the hike was magical even though we were essentially hiking through a cloud. We unfortunately didn’t see the sunrise but we did roast marshmallows in heat vents, walk over 6 week old lava flows, and actually saw red flowing lava. It felt like we were hiking on Mordor! Also we almost adopted a dog.
Quick Stop In El Salvador & A Rewrite To Our Plans
After the fellowship made it back to more livable landscapes off of Mordor it was time to part. Rita and Ryan adventured on to El Salvador to help on a turtle reserve and make a documentary, and the rest of us just went forward with other travels. It was down to just the two of us, a Delica and a comparably big-ass Chevy. Kyle calls her the “taj mahal”.
The five of us really had a lot of fun traveling together. We had similar ideals and goals and ended up crossing into El Salvador together for some beach time adventures. There, the boys would get their asses kicked surfing, Georgie attempted to catch the pet rabbit the family had at our hostel, and Jimena and I enjoyed the peace with books and smoothies. It was great. Time was of the essence though and we were bound to completely break up the caravan soon. Kyle and Jimena were making plans to ship to Colombia and James and I were off for a vacation from our vacation to celebrate our 3-year anniversary in a nice hotel on a beach further south.
However, fate had other plans. The night before splitting, news came from the couple organizing the shipping container for Kyle and Jimena, with the realization that there wasn’t enough space for all the vehicles in one container, and thus the crew needed to find a fourth vehicle in order to fill a second container. Basically, Kyle and Jimena would have had to pay for an entire container by themselves if they didn’t find another willing party to join in. They told us of their debacle and started brainstorming to find a shipping partner. James and I looked at each other and nodded. We were in.
Many people have asked us since then about why we chose to ship from Guatemala. Some have gone so far as to get almost angry that we were indulging in the fear of the situation in Nicaragua (basically protests and riots against the corrupt government, police murdering protesters, and most tourist activities have shut down). But the reality is: 1. We already traveled in Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the past and were probably going to go fairly quickly through those countries anyway. 2. The situation in Nicaragua still was changing day by day and gas was find because of road blocks. 3. Skipping the super sketchy city of Colon, Panama and the pain in the ass process of figuring out shipping on our own, as this was essentially just handed to us. 4. Prices were right! 5. We had originally planned to ship from Panama to Colombia at the beginning of July, so this helped put us closer to back on track, although we are still a few months behind our originally planned itinerary. Plus, we now get to travel more with the dream team.
After our relaxing anniversary celebrations, we eventually met back up with our crew in Antigua, Guatemala. We prepped as much as we could and started a new caravan east towards Rio Dulce and Puerto Barrios where we would send the van off. All seemed to be sorted out with shipping, and so we decided to spend some relaxing days on Lago Izabal paddle boarding and avoiding the hoards of ants. When we got back to some semblance of civilization, we got a message from our agent a mere 16 hours before we were supposed to be loading the vans that the boat leaving on August 22nd was no longer a thing, and we would have to wait until August 29th to ship. This was bad news.
Kyle and Jimena’s visas were up, and we all had booked flights and accommodations in Cartagena on August 21st. Ugh. So, we kicked into gear and messaged the rest of the group that would be shipping in the other container to make sure they got the same message, and called the agent to try our best to be urgent that this doesn’t work for us.
Mass brainstorms commenced as we made a few backup plans for the potential new timelines, however, we didn’t want to be rash. The decision was made that we would continue with the original plan to head to see the agent in person the following morning at 8:00 am to work it out.
Unfortunately, fate was not on our side. We planned to leave Rio Dulce around 7:00 am to make the hour long drive to Puerto Barrios where we would figure out everything with the other container crew and the agent. The one hour drive, turned to about 4 hours as we hit the biggest traffic jam on the only highway that would get us to where we wanted to go. After a few idle minutes of not moving, we followed the local cues of jumping into the left lane to get up ahead of all the trucks and buses that were backed up to find a massive semi truck crash that blocked the entire highway.
Small cars were able to squeeze past on the muddy shoulder, but we could be risking sliding down the embankment into a barbed wire fence and trees or scraping up against the crashed semi truck’s rusty metal trailer. Though the more cars that went through that small opening the more excited we got about trying. Eventually Kyle and Jimena went for it, granted their van is probably half the size of ours and has four wheel drive. But James and I watched a bit longer and saw some fairly large colectivos with inferior tires drive through and make it, so we decided to try.
We hopped in the van and signaled into the left lane again to move up in the queue. As the line of traffic died down going the other direction and we were up near the front of the group, a large semi in the front pulled out. At first we were confused by this tactic, until we noticed the semi get into position to pull the other crashed trailer to the side, which would open up the lane for traffic to move easier. The chain broke once with a little movement, but the second attempt did it. We were free and at the front of the line!
After hours of being stuck we were at last able to continue, and hoping the agent was still available even though we were three hours late to our appointment. When we arrived at the office, fortunately the agent was there and we got the news that a boat was leaving on Sunday the 19th and the agent was working to get us on it. This new plan would still get us in later than we would have wanted to in Cartagena, but only 2 days late on the 29th rather than the alternative, September 5th. We were stoked.
After a bit of a mad dash, we got paperwork done, the vans loaded and secure in a container and off they went, heading towards South America. Stay tuned for further tales of tragedy and triumph in South America after Beatrix makes the crossing from Guatemala to Jamaica (tragedy-Beatrix got delayed for a week off shore in Jamaica) and finally to Colombia (triumph!-Another change of plans from the shipping delay turned out awesome as we spent a week in Medellin before the van arrived) and back into our loving arms.