Bus Go Crash, Antigua, Guatemala (Jul 2007)

It’s starting to rain as I cross the main square to meet Dana and Assaf. Not hard, but it will get worse and I don’t have a raincoat or an umbrella, at least not with me now, and there’s no time to go back to the hostel to get gear so I guess I will just get wet. Assaf and Dana are waiting for me, a bit anxiously, and when I arrive Assaf gives a dubious look at my footwear and distinct lack of weather-appropriate clothing. A tone of disbelief, tinged with the kind of concern you’d hear about a mentally challenged child, “You’re not wearing those shoes, are you?”

“There the only ones I have, so I guess so.” I had ultimately decided not to pack my heavy-duty boots for this trip, it wasn’t going to be worth the weight and it’s steamy and tropical here. My runaround shoes are slip-on Mary Janes, not really qualified for hiking but the hike is supposed to be fairly easy, then again all the hikes here are supposedly easy and almost never are, they have a different definition of an easy hike than I do. Mainly my definition involves wide, smooth paths that incline gently. The hike is not the point of this little excursion, however, the point is the caldera of Volcan Pecaya, a spectacularly scenic active volcano just a few miles from Antigua. We are anticipating explosions of lava showering up into the sky, and as we confer we are disappointed that no one remembered to bring marshmallows, someone told us that you can toast marshmallows over the lava flows up there and that would have been awesome, if we had remembered it.

We are all here and accounted for, a group of around ten tourists from all over the world, there’s a Spanish couple and an Italian couple, a Canadian guy and someone from Germany, the Israelis Dana and Assaf, and of course me representing for the U.S. I met Dana on the flight from New York yesterday, and that has turned out to be quite a fortuitous meeting as we got delayed in El Salvador and ended up traveling to Antigua from Guatemala City late at night, since we had both independently made reservations at the same hostel. She has come here to meet her brother, Assaf, who is rounding out his year in Latin America, and he met us at the hostel last night. He’s been in Antigua for a while and knows his way around, and he took care of making arrangements for all three of us to join this tour, he is one of those guys that gets things done even for strangers that aren’t his sister.

We clamber into the van, or minibus, or “tourist bus” as they are called here, Dana and Assaf first in the back row and I end up teetering on the edge of the second row, odd man out and the only tourist not paired off in some way or another. We pull out of the square and head up the road out of the city, and its raining harder now as conversations spring up awkwardly amongst the group of disparate strangers who share only an origin that is Not Here. We chat about where we’re from, where we’ve been, how long we’ve been in Guatemala, the things that travellers always talk about with each other, getting cozy in this sweaty little vehicle where we’re practically sitting on top of each other and the idea of a seat belt is laughable.

One of our number ended up in the shotgun seat next the driver, necessary to fit everyone in, and breaking through the rising babble of cross-conversations is a crisply accented “Watch out!,” there’s such urgency in it that it grabs everyone’s attention and look forward and see the wall of the cliff sliding towards us, or we are sliding towards it and its looming so close so fast it shouldn’t be that close and

Impact

The van stopped moving but we moving within it are still going, I am flung forward and end up in the console area between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat in the front and thunk something is on top of me and we are moving for a long time even though it’s only a couple of seconds at most and everything is shuddering to a halt and it’s silent now it was so loud a moment ago I guess everyone was screaming but I didn’t scream or at least I don’t think I did but I probably was. The weight on top of me shifts, Dana has landed on me from behind where she was flung over the seat, everyone move up one peg, like musical chairs but not really and we are collectively struggling to move back one peg, we have to get out of this van because we are on the shoulder of a road that doesn’t really have a shoulder and I can’t really think yet but what if another car slams into us while we’re trapped here we have to get out, someone next to the door is trying to slide it open and it’s jammed and he shouts “It won’t open” and we’re trapped here, but before I can even begin to panic Assaf has levered himself out of the broken window and climbed around to the door and is prying it open from outside, we tumble out into the pouring rain and traffic veering around us and my feet hit the ground, wobbly, I have a vague notion that I shouldn’t move because I might be injured and in shock and I could injure myself even more but we had to get out of that van and my knees are shaking my whole body is shaking and quaking and I step to the side of the road, Assaf is making sure everyone gets out safely and I am so glad he’s here to do this, that he hasn’t even paused to panic or think about it he just did it, I feel my muscles turn to water and sit down abruptly and I shouldn’t be moving or at least not this fast I should be moving slowly and carefully and testing and examining everything but I sit down fast before I fall down and just barely manage to lift my feet above the rill of water in the gutter and Assaf sees me and immediately steps towards me, “Are you hurt?” “Shock,” I yell back over the noise of the traffic and the rain and the buzz of the world that is receding and advancing in distorted waves, I am cogent enough to let him know that he can triage others before he gets to me, I drop my head between my knees and I shouldn’t move my back probably but fields of gray geometric triangles are swarming in on the edges of vision narrowing down to a tunnel and if I don’t get blood to my head I am going to faint here and that is not going to do anyone any good.

I breathe deeply for a few minutes, or maybe less than that or maybe more I have no sense of the passage of time right now and in part of my awareness my body is still accelerating forward towards the window and the wall in front of me looming closer than it should be and so final in its proximity. By the time I look up everyone is gathered around the back of the van, the hatch is open and the driver is sitting there, nobody is sure how badly they are injured, we are shaken but moving and huddling out of the rain and waiting for someone to come, surely someone has to come.

Someone does come, because Assaf got a cell phone from the driver and called it in. A police car arrives, and two policeman swagger warily over to the group of first world tourists with ashen faces and shocked open eyes. They talk to the driver, and then there’s a long conversation with the Spanish tourist about what happened, and then he talks to Assaf for a while. The policeman steps back and looks at the van, and the wall, and us. His eyes run that circuit a couple of times, settling back on the wet huddle of tourists who are all waiting for him to do something, we come from places where once the cavalry has arrived they take over and do things.

He comes over to us and flips open a little notebook, holding a very small pen awkwardly in a rather dirty hand. He asks us what countries we are from, and laboriously records that we are Americans, and Spaniards, and Italians, and Germans, and Israelis, and Canadians. Then he closes his notebook and asks if anyone is hurt. We are all hurt, we clamor, but we are all moving and functioning or so it seems. I can feel that something is wrong in my left thigh, but I don’t know how wrong and I’m scared to look. I tried rolling my pants leg up to get a look at it, I could see the bruise coming up already and it’s enormous and if it’s already starting to come up mere minutes after the impact it is going to be really bad, but maybe it is just a big bruise, it will hurt but is that enough reason to subject myself to a Guatemalan hospital on the first day of my trip?

Danna and Assaf go with the cop, Dana’s wrist is hurt and Assaf is going with her to get it checked out, he asks me if I need to go too and I say no. If he were my brother he would probably make me go anyway, the way he’s making Dana go, but he’s not my brother and I’m not his sister and his sister is hurt, and everyone here has been triaged. I tell him how grateful I am that he’s here, that he’s a good person to have around in an emergency, and he shrugs it off, says “I’ve been through worse.” “What’s worse than a third world car crash?” I ask, he stops for a second to see if it’s a real question and then says “People shooting at you.”

Oh.

I forgot, he’s Israeli, not only does he live in Jerusalem itself but he has of course had to serve his compulsory term in the army.

So they’re gone with the cop now to the hospital, and soon after an ambulance shows up to pick up two other people, the driver who probably has some broken ribs and another woman who thinks her back may be injured, they strap her to a backboard and load her in, we are a diminishing quantity here waiting in the rain, the only ride out so far has been with serious injury. We were told that the tour company was sending another bus to pick us up, raising the new question of whether we want to get in another vehicle by this company because in the hours that we’ve been waiting here I took a look at the van and found to my horror that tires were completely bald, no tread whatsoever to grip the slick asphalt and hold it on the tight mountain curves.
It is about three hours from impact until when our ride shows up. We climb gingerly into this new potential vehicle of death, and my leg is talking to me now and louder but it’s not disabling, I just suspect that it will be once the shock wears off. I feel sick, now, and increasingly uncomfortable as all the water I drank is sloshing back and forth in my body, still moving towards the window and the wall beyond the window so close closer than it should be.

The driver gets lost.

It takes us twice as long to get back to Antigua, and we want to get back as fast as possible to put some distance between the helpless group cowering in the shelter of a crashed van but we also tell him over and over to go slow, go slow, be careful, take his time, any illusion we had of safety has been shattered along with any further illusion that anyone here cares if we are safe.

It’s fully night when we arrive back, I am helped out of the car by the Spanish guy and rush for the bathroom first before doing anything, I shouldn’t be rushing anywhere because I still don’t know how badly I’m hurt. When I come back the remaining members of our group are arguing heatedly with the tour operator official representative. She is blatantly uninterested in our complaints and our pain, she blandly offers to refund our tour fee of $5 each. We protest, we are first worlders and we can protest like nobody’s business, I am fully prepared to go all kinds of Ugly American on this woman, we will sue, we were injured, gross negligence, bad driver, unmentioned vehicle, but she knows our threats are empty here. She gives us all business cards with a number we can call tomorrow to file our complaints, and then informs us that she is shutting down the office for the night.

I am not limping, exactly, as I navigate back to my hostel, but I probably should be. The Spanish couple is escorting me, they are a little concerned that I am more badly hurt than they or I at first realized, but I assure them that I am ok and they accept my assurance without too much convincing required, I wish they hadn’t swallowed it so easily because I probably do need help but I don’t want to ask for it, I don’t want to need help here I am traveling alone because I can handle whatever happens all by myself I don’t need the security blanket of others to get through these adventures and misadventures, I am brave and resourceful and competent and strong and if Assaf hadn’t climbed out that window maybe it would’ve been me instead.

I let myself into the Black Cat hostel and go to reception. I ask if Assaf and Dana have returned, explain the crash and that they went to the hospital. I ask her if she has a private room available, that I’d like to switch out of the dorm if possible because I hurt my leg, but they are all booked up. She suggests I ask the other girls in the dorm to switch and let me use the bottom bunk, no way I can climb that ladder tonight or maybe I could but I shouldn’t be moving so much, I am still moving towards that window and the wall beyond.

I thank her, and slowly climb the stairs to my room. There’s a group of British girls in there now, they just arrived today, and I tell my story again and of course someone will swap bunks with me, is there anything they can do to help am I sure I’m ok? Oh yes, I’m fine, laugh it off, what a story and at least my laugh isn’t shaky and hysterical anymore. I finally have a chance to take off my pants and see how bad it is. A bruise the size of a serving platter is stamped on the outside of my left thigh, a bubble of purple blood rising to the surface of the skin with vessels not just ruptured in there but likely flat out obliterated. Everyone gasps in sympathy, I lean over to pull a dress out of my bag and suddenly scream I didn’t even know I was going to scream didn’t pull in extra air for it but oh my god the pain is radiating and knifing out from deep, deep inside the muscles of hip and oh god its not stopping I’m not moving anymore I’ll never move again I promise I swear and I am still screaming and tears are exploding from my eyes my tear ducts violently and suddenly evacuated and it is subsiding a little its not gone but I’m not screaming anymore but I can’t move either, I have finally stopped moving towards that window with the wall looming too close closer than it should be and I am not going to move again I will be still and solid like the rock wall and never move again because moving hurts it hurts so much and how did it not hurt in the hours before this, climbing in and out of cars and sitting on a toilet and up stairs and bending and sitting and rising because I will still moving then I was ahead of it and I have crashed through that window and into that wall at last after all these hours in motion, the shock-induced adrenaline has drained out and left agony in its wake.

One of the British women is a nurse, she tells me I have torn at least one muscle maybe more, and rummages through her med kit to dose me with heavy duty codeine. It’s altruistic for sure, but also the only way anyone will be able to sleep tonight otherwise I will scream I can’t help it, I have no control over it my body dictates that screaming is the only possible response.

I still don’t go to the hospital.