Our nine AM bus we booked out of Antigua to San Pedro the day before was 15 minutes late to pick us up and we were getting worried.  We had booked it with a nice lady who owned a travel agency across the street from our new hostel and I poked my head around the corner to see if she was open, and she was.  So I decided to go see what was up.

She explained that we were the last stop on a route around the city and it should only be about another 15 minutes or so.  Thirty minutes later, a guy comes around the corner flailing his arms at us like we’re the ones who were late urging us onto the bus.  So we grabbed our bags, showed him our ticket and boarded the bus.  We snagged the second bench behind the driver for the 6 hour drive that was uneventful until the last hour of the drive.

Our driver just stopped in the middle of the road, and got out to talk to another guy.  “I hope he’s saying ‘hi’ to an old friend and not asking for directions.” I joked.  He was just saying hi, but we got to sit there for a few minutes, roasting in the van, until he decided we could continue our journey.

We began descending the other side of the large mountain we had just climbed via a series of switchback roads that were razor thin.  The driver would honk his horn to alert other vehicles or pedestrians around the corner of our presence, and if he received a honk in response, a dance would ensue ensuring both vehicles maneuvered the corner successfully.  For those of us in the shuttle, the views of the lake distracted us from all of this chaos.

For 45 minutes, we endured this until we finally reached San Pedro. As we got out of the bus, a nice guy began asking if we had rooms reserved.  We didn’t.  He had a room for us! What luck!  I had two options from out guidebook I wanted to check out, so I asked him about those, and he walked us to both accommodations who both promptly told us there were no rooms available.  We eventually agreed to see this guy’s hotel and he brought us  up a steep hill, and then up five flights of steps to a pretty decent place that only cost $20 with a great view of the lake.  We took it.  And then he began to negotiate his commission with the owner of the hotel.  Oops.

It turns out if you show up with one of these ‘coyotes’ at a hostel, looking for a room, they will immediately say no because he’s going to ask for a commission, not because they’re out of rooms.

We only stayed one night because we were awoken at 3 in the morning by a girl screaming, “I love drugs!” and then snorting a line of coke.  I found her mirror and some white residue on the table the next morning.  Hey, it could have been sweet & low!   We had been told San Pedro was the ‘party’ city around the lake, and that turned out to be true.

A lot of people stay an entire month here to learn Spanish and party.  We met a lot of couples who were doing just that.  It was kinda funny to see them walking down the street and tell them to ‘Have fun in school today!’

We found a cute little bar/restaurant called Sublime we spent a lot of time in.  It had a great view of the lake, some pool tables, a decent bar, and a little area down in front of it with a bunch of sand where they’d build a fire pit at night.  There was also a dock you could jump off into the lake, but the water was freezing.  This is their winter after all.  This is also where we first learned about ‘volunteering’ on the road.  You can’t technically work at these types of places, but they’ve found a dumb way around it.  The workers are volunteers and get paid from whatever tips they earn plus a little more under the table.  It’s a great way to make some extra money and have something to do during the day besides get drunk.  For about two seconds, we contemplated doing this, but decided against it.

We also took a day trip to one of the other cities on the other side of the lake, San Marcos, a short 15 minute boat ride.  It was a lot more laid back than San Pedro.  We actually walked all the way through it and kept going thinking there must be more until we found another traveler who had thought the same thing.  Nope, that was it.  It was cute, but a lot of hippy types walking around, selling crystals and offering massages.  We spent about 15 minutes there and then took the boat back to San Pedro.

We would move twice more to other hostels, once because it became apparent that the party going on outside at 3 in the morning had no intention of stopping until the sun came up, and the second time was because Mandy got sick.

We think we’ve narrowed it down to a frozen ice cream bar she bought at a store earlier.  She noticed it was stuck together to the one next to it, like it had melted and then re-frozen.  It was the only thing she ate that day that I didn’t eat.  Everything else we ate that day we had split, except for her ice cream.

So I was…..instructed?  Strongly encouraged?  I was ordered to find a nicer place, away from the party and within walking..err..crawling distance.  And I did!  It was just down the street, ironically at one of the places we had tried to get into earlier with the Coyote.  No coyote?  No problem! I moved the bags, and then Mandy, up the spiral staircase, where we had to pause for station identification a few times.

I felt bad for Mandy.  We were supposed to have left that day to go to Nicaragua. We had bought tickets the day before she got sick, so we had to purchase them again.  I pleaded with the woman at the ticket counter and she was sympathetic, but we would have to buy the tickets again.

She’ll tell  you she wasn’t crazy about Guatemala, and I don’t blame her one bit….It was on to El Salvador and the craziest border crossing story we have so far.