Every other night at Casa Latina seemed to be nacho night. No, really! Thank you Sarah, Monique and Robbie for welcoming me so opened-armed into your humble abode. It felt as if I had family in Xela! And the nachos just kept getting better.
Cutey Monique from Australia. She'll be in Xela for another month and a half...and perhaps will return to Uni to study international relations with a focus on Latin American Studies. Monique is traveling through Central America for six months, with a longish, spontaneous stop in Xela to learn Spanish. She is 23 and my role model.
Our ultimate night: Nachos night at Casa Latina, then a masquerade party at Ojala...the best place to go on Friday nights (in my humble opinion). Sarah's cat mask was far superior to my five minute half mask...maybe next time I'll go all out. Oh, and if you hadn't figured it out by now, this is Sarah from San Fran...my traveling buddy for the next two weeks.
Jimmy, one of the mixers/djs happened to work at Los Chocoyos, where I was staying for the week, so he was in essence my neighbor. I had "kitchen talk" daily with him. He's a modern cowboy. He taught me some Latino dance moves and twirled me about. Being a dancer (I'm not talking about club grinding dancing either) is a semi-secret passion of mine. It got to come true for ten minutes on Friday. Gracias, Jimmy!
After dancing til 1am and not sleeping because of fear of missing the taxi to take us to our 4am transport, we groggily passed the next four hours in our direct first class Linea Dorada bus. The curvy roads through mountains, around Agatha rock slides, and through the pink hues of the sunrise rocked up back and forth in a zombie-like lullaby.
At 8am, we did our Guate City transfer onto the Monja Blank line to Coban. Besides having to take turns sleeping because of the two large women sitting across from us who were obviously eyeing our bags, the ride went smoothly.
There is a constant reminder that if you would like to torture me, put me on a bus with only fried chicken and french fries to eat for eight hours. Then put me on another one the next day. Long bus rides with bad food = torture for Miriam. The smile in the photo is one of insanity.
As we approached Coban the mountains got greener and the trees got lush. Dry turned to wet and tropical. The cool air of Xela turned to hot, humid, thick sweat. I suppose that's one beautiful aspect of many countries...after a day in a bus you find yourself in a completely different land. The magic of travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment