A way too long bus ride, bad directions, a forgotten camera, in need of a tetanus shot and a broken down truck, or: How I spent my 26th birthday.

Eighteen days in, we’ve been able to execute this trip near flawlessly – today, on my birthday, all our bad luck caught up to us, providing a series of misadventures. But, on the road, even the worst day is nothing to frown about.

I woke up to a package, sent down by my girlfriend via Express Mail. Donning the shirt (and I was in need of a fresh one) in the courtyard outside of our room, I felt good about the day. Reminders of home are welcome additions to days when we’re not sure about where we’re even going to sleep for the night.

Our daily routine always starts off by trying to find a café with wireless, where we connect back home, upload our latest dispatches and fire off various emails. When we were planning this trip, we were fairly sure that at least twice a week we’d be able to jack into the web, even in the most remote parts of our trek. So far, the tiny wifi menu on our MacBooks has consistently shown numerous wifi routers (we’ve probably seen as many as 50 different ones so far) – even in the jungle near Palenque. The only café with internet we could find open today, had a pricey menu, but alas that’s the cost of doing work here. Thirty minutes of trying to connect to their router to no avail, we were out a couple dollars on a costly meal.

Such is life.

Today’s jaunt was to the coffee farms of Nueva Alianza, which we were told was a mere hour and a half away. Rattling away in a minivan to the bus station, I patted my bag to find my camera, only to realize that the weight of the bag was a result of bringing all my lenses, but not the oh-so-important camera itself. Yelling to the driver, we prematurely got out and I bolted the 10 minutes back to the guesthouse to get the camera. Rinse, wash, repeat. It was then, back to the bus station.

So it goes.

On a chicken bus to Reu, an hour into the trek, we see the road to yesterday’s adventure–Fluentes Georginas–go by. The only thing is yesterday, it took us a little less than 30 minutes to get there. The bus took a roundabout route to load up more passengers, adding a good 45 minutes to what should be a 45-minute, 27-mile journey.

Onward ho!

A sense of time or direction is a nebulous concept here. Consistently we’ve been told things should take an hour, when it really takes two, or simply 15 minutes. Other times, we’re told a place is four blocks away, when instead, like following breadcrumbs, we go from street corner to street corner asking directions, till 10 blocks later we find it. In Reu, we learned that we had thoroughly overshot the plantation, and instead should have jumped off at the main junction before it. On to another chicken bus, 30 minutes back.

Lovely.

At the next junction, Brian puts it best: “We were told that we would be able to find a ride to coffee plantation up the road, which we wouldn’t have believed were we not sitting with three locals also waiting for this phantom ride to the finca.” After a stretch in the searing heat, and watching packed camionetas after another zing by, one slows down and waves us on board. Five hours later, we were on to the plantation.

Finally.

Along the tour of the plantation I slink off to the side to get a different view, ducking under a beam and snap a photo. Standing up, I experience a sharp pain on my head. Ducking back, I realize that my bloody hair is a byproduct of a sharp–and rusty–barbwire fence. Cursing myself, I remember that despite the cocktail of vaccinations I underwent before starting this jaunt, tetanus wasn’t on the menu, and I can’t remember the last time I had one.

Happy birthday.

The last bus to Quetzaltanango, leaves at six. The coffee plantation is a good 15 miles down curvy mountainous roads from the highway where we would be able to hop on a bus. At five, we were able to get a ride down. About three miles in, the Toyota pickup stalls after a turn. “Problemo,” Javier, the driver says. From the way he deals with it, this has happened before, and he starts pulling fuses from under the dashboard – before trying to wheeze the truck alive.

No dice.

“A problem,” he says to me. The issue has escalated from Spanish to English. I have my head in the hood, Brian’s hat is off and he’s scratching his head, Javier is trying to engage the engine, and the sun is waning.

Ting-a-ling.

High up on the road behind us we hear another truck banging it’s way down, and stops to help. Soon we add another two more to the crowd gawking at the engine. By the night is out everyone is going to know Javier’s truck broke down when he tried to give a odd non-Spanish-speaking brown fella and his gringo friend. Javier looks at the darkening sky, looks at us, and points to the other truck. We’re off, leaving him behind and able to catch our bus back to the city.

By the time we get back, it’s well past the prearranged window I have with my girlfriend Alicia to video conference for a birthday hello. I’m pissed at the day, the misadventures, and that I may have missed what was going to be the highlight.

The story does have a happy ending; I was able to blow out my birthday cupcake in Boston, via iChat. Sitting in a café, with a delicious hot chocolate in front of me, my girlfriend – though I wish she was there with me – smiling at me on my laptop, and a male guitarist off to the side playing a horrible rendition of Britney Spear’s “Hit me baby, one more time,” I had to smile; this is life on the road – and it ain’t that bad.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 and is filed under travel life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.