Getting into Guatemala

We finally made it out of Mexico. The trip to the border was without incident. On the Guatemalan side, the only option for travel outside of VERY expensive private shuttles were the "chicken buses" - beautifully restored and painted American school buses. Very nice to look at, but a bit less to ride. They stop anywhere someone raises their arm to them to pick up or drop off passengers, and they'll keep piling people in until the suspension gives out. (And then keep driving...) At one point we spied our backpacks being hurried away from the top of the bus, and ran out only to find that we needed to change buses. (No one bothered to tell us, though they knew to transfer the bags. We'd asked before getting on if the bus was direct to Quetzaltenango - "Xela" for short, and were told it was.)

Once in Xela, we wandered for a while, dodging traffic, sucking in fumes and dust while looking for a hotel. There was not much on offer, so we took the most economical option, which was 50 Quetzales/night - about $7 or so for the two of us. Despite finding some really good street food, such as the huge open-air breakfasts on the central square, the noise, dust and pollution were too much for us, and we moved on after only 2 nights. Originally we planned to go next to Lago Atitlan and then to Antigua, but were warned of the impending "Semana Santa" (holy week) madness in Antigua the following week. Thus we changed our plans and did the geographically non-sensical route of Xela-Antigua-Lago Atitlan, which means passing over the same mountain pass 3 times...