Rio Dulce and back to Guate

The next morning we caught another lancha up the river to Rio Dulce, a yacht-encrusted and rather dingy place situated around a major river crossing. We made our way up to the Litegua station and had just enough time to hit up a Dispensa for sustenance before our on-time (yep, you read right) departure!

We made it back to the behemoth Guatemala City just in time for rush hour. While mom used the bathroom, I found us a cab driver that looked like he meant business. The next half hour is a jumble in my memory of drivers blaring their horns and sprinting around one-another through red lights and passing on sidewalks. Our driver was no exception, even taking us through a Burger King parking lot to cut a corner at a busy intersection.

We checked into my usual airport-area digs for one last night before Mom was whisked away to the land where I long to be.

Visa Rigmarole III

At whatever time some protesting jerks decided to lock up the Inter-American Highway, the traffic had been about the same leaving the capital as it was going in. This meant I had only to walk a little more than half a mile up the road beyond the manifestación before I found buses that were in the same position as the one I was in when it decided to turn around. I found a bus for whom turning around meant going back to Guatemala City. A few minutes later about a busload of people came who had had the same idea and in no time at all I was on my way again to renew my Visa.

A cab ride from the bus stop in Guatemala City, and I was at the immigration office. It went off like butter. There was almost no line for anything but the photocopier and I had all my documents in order. I don't think I was even there an entire hour. I've read that the holdup at Immigration in Guatemala has to do with obtaining a lawyer's stamp. Perhaps the limited traffic into town that morning meant the Immigration lawyers had more time for things like my tourist Visa.

Having set aside an entire two days for the task, I didn't know quite what to do with myself. I stood on the steps of the immigration office pondering my options. I could try to get back to Santa Cruz and save the extra day, but I didn't know how long it would be before buses were running again, or even how to determine whether or not they were, without just hoping the nearest Tecpan or Encuentros bus and seeing how far it took me. Better to run for Antigua and wait to the thing to blow over.

Visa Rigmarole II

Travel is strong medicine. I think, in a large way, I felt the travel aspect of going to Guatemala was largely in the past when I departed for Guatemala City yesterday morning. To some extent I felt I had lived that out when I was first arriving in June and also last month from when Lori arrived to when she and Beth departed. So when advice finally moved me in the direction of the Guatemala City visa option, I decided to take it.

Phase one of said Guatemala City trip went decidedly haywire. At about 7:30 am, five-sixths of the way into the three-hour bus ride from Santa Cruz to Guate, my bus ran across an obstacle. About thirty kilometers Northwest of Chimaltenango, mid-morning traffic on the Pan-American Highway ground go to a halt. After a brief cell phone conversation, the driver informed us he was turning around and going back to Santa Cruz. "Well, I'm not," I thought to myself.

Hopping off the bus, nearly without my bag (kindly passengers fished it out for me when, outside the bus, I noticed I didn't have it), I began to hike up alongside about a half-mile of gridlock traffic. After a little while hiking, I came upon what was causing all the backup. In the middle of the road, a bonfire was burning, hewn tightly with men with bandannas over their faces holding what looked like police-issue billy clubs. Perhaps one or two hundred people milled about on the road alongside it as well on a crossing bridged erected at the bus stop for Patzicía.

I put my head down and tried to look clean and discrete as I made my way through the crowd to the other side of the obstruction. "Que está pasando?", I asked of an onlooker ("What is going on?"). "Es una manifestación," he responded. A demonstration. A banner facing down the road toward Guatemala City read something about Tecpan not allowing something. I would have tried to read it better, but I would have had to ask some people to move from in front of it, and I reasoned that that was probably not a good idea. Besides, I was in a hurry and I kind of felt like a walking symbol of the discontent being expressed by the people on the roadway.

On the other side, the police were slowly arriving. As I neared them along the road, I noticed I was the only person venturing within perhaps five yards of them. While well-equipped and acting civil, they were clearly outnumbered and unready to confront the demonstrators. I didn't want to hang around for whatever was to come next.