Flashback: Guatemala

Mom sent me a bunch of e-mails this week that I had written while in France and Honduras. Reading my past thoughts was like a hot breath on my face... all the noises and traffic of my experiences crowded around in my head, forcing back images I thought had been erased. 

Thought I'd share one I from my brief trip to Guatemala. I had gone during a week-long school break with the idea of attending an intensive Spanish-language program. 

Title: I made it!! :) 

Sort of. One more 4 hour bus ride to go, then I'll be in San Pedro Laguna. It's been a long trip-- 4 hours from Catacamas to Tegus, and then 12 hours from Tegus to Guatemala City, where I am now. Have a travel buddy from Iceland-- we're parting ways after breakfast but it did make me feel a little safer to be with a stranger who at least speaks English. He just came from Utila where he'd taken courses to be a dive instructor at the same dive shop I went to-- and knew the instructors I had and even remembered some people that were in my dive class. 
So glad to send you this message from my phone-- to be able to do this is so neat. However it takes forever to type so I'm going to end this here--- hope you are well! 
Love, 
Hannah

What I didn't tell mom is that my "travel buddy" was a 30+ year old man with tattoos up and down his arms. We had met on the bus. With only four or five other passengers, we spotted each other's pale skin right away. He spoke less Spanish than me and I remember being rather surprised that he had gotten so far with so little vocabulary. Later we split a taxi to a motel-- he had no plans for where he was spending the night, and I had only scrawled some numbers down from a travel book, but the place was closed. The taxi recommended another place and not foreseeing other options we agreed. I had felt safer traveling with him than getting into a taxi alone at two in the morning on foreign streets. He was friendly enough and I never got a weird vibe from him, so I (rashly) suggested we share a room to save money. He did not protest. 

We had separate beds and he watched wrestling on TV until I fell asleep. We talked a while, too... I don't remember what about. The next morning he friended me on facebook, and after breakfast we parted ways. He recommended some Icelandic bands-- this was the first time I had heard of Imagine Dragons. 

All he had was a $20 bill, so in the end I lost out on this adventure... I don't think he was purposefully trying to swindle me but his ATM card did not work. We're still facebook friends, but one day soon I plan to delete him.

I couldn't tell my mother that I'd shared a room with a stranger, but I don't know that I would do anything differently today. Something about traveling forces trust in other humans more than on your own turf.