We arrived at the road to the school at about 8:10 a.m. and walked to the school. After being admitted, we walked to the library to greet the librarian. I noticed that the lights were out, but thought that it was just Guatemalan economy. It was the same when we checked in with the office, but I still didn't catch on. It was only when I entered the computer room that I realized that there was no electricity. We learned that there was no power anywhere in the area and that evidently something, possibly major road repair up the road, had caused the outage. We were told that such outages usually only lasted about an hour. By noon, we still had no power, so we decided to return to L.A.
After walking to the highway, we began looking for a bus going our way. When one finally stopped, we boarded and were surprised to discover that the entire back half of the bus was solidly packed with vegetables going to market. Even Kristen admitted that she had never seen anything like this.
We got off at the intersection where we would pick up a bus heading to L.A. and discovered why we had not found a bus on a previous trip. We were at a totally different street. We could have stood on that other street for a year and not found a bus to L.A.
After walking around the corner, we found our bus and quickly boarded. A sales pitch by a health quack was underway. It is not uncommon for vendors of all types to board chicken buses to market their wares. After he finished, he was followed by another fellow who hawked his "medical" miracle all the way to Parramos, about half way to L.A.
This bus ride was especially rough. The driver drove as fast as he could, when he could. He passed other vehicles when he wanted and braked hard when he came to village tumelos (speed bumps). Linda tells me it was the worst ride she's experienced on this trip. I dozed.
I finally woke up as we were entering greater L.A. The driver continued his aggressive driving all the way to the bus terminal, where we gladly regained our acquaintance with Mother Earth. After exiting the bus, Kristen took a picture of us standing in front of a chicken bus. This was not the bus we had ridden, but it was a safer place to take the shot.
We parted from Kristen and made our way to McDonalds for a celebratory meal. We had survived the chicken bus ride from Hell! After enjoying our lunch in the lovely patio area, we decided to get our shopping done. With a small refrigerator, our limited kitchen and the fact that we have to haul our purchases back to the apartment by chicken bus, we just about need to shop on a daily basis.
When we headed for lunch, Linda had seen an outdoor annex to the mercado that we had not seen before, so we went there and quickly found what we were looking for. To celebrate this accomplishment, we headed to Pollo Campero for one of their Q4 (48 cent) cono helado suave (soft-served cone). I left Linda there and headed over to Dispensa Familiar (the other grocery in town) and picked up the other items we needed.
Returning to pick up Linda, we headed over to the street where we picked up our buses back to the apartment. It was earlier than we usually went back and we discovered that the bus was much less congested. Fortunately, it was a bus heading for Alotenango, the next village down the road from our apartment. We had ridden this bus before and managed to get them to let us get off fairly close to our road.
Once back at the apartment, we put our supplies away and rested. Tonight we'll chat with family and update our blogs. Tomorrow we return to Socorro School, the one with the locked computer room, and hopefully will be able to begin our work there. I'm told that they have 40 computers. I wonder how many actually run. I'll let you know tomorrow.
