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.

Hitchhiking in Rio Dulce, Guatemala (Jul 2007)

It’s hotter here than it was in the mountains. I’ve been laid up in San Pedro de Laguna for the past week, slowly recovering from bus crash injuries, and have only now emerged from my mountain fastness. I’m better, but I’m not all the way better, as the enormous livid bruise that covers my entire left thigh from hip to knee will testify. Debi’s here now though, I picked her up in Guatemala City yesterday and we’re headed north to Tikal.

Of course, this being Guatemala, the way to go north is to go almost due east first, and thus here we are breaking our journey in Rio Dulce. There’s supposed to be a cool waterfall here, and a boat trip up the river to Livingston that we can squeeze in before the next long haul bus. Our hostel is accessible by boat only, through narrow waterways overhung with mangroves, and our room is in a treehouse with a thatched roof. Already Debi has had to leap to my aid multiple times, as well-meaning bus drivers or the like try to guide me into a boat or hand me my backpack. I can say “Yo soy herida!,” but usually not fast enough, and Debi has been running interference.

We consult over a late seafood lunch, and determine that the boat trip is best saved for the following morning. We’ll go out to the waterfall this afternoon, water sounds like a fantastic idea in this oppressive, tropical heat. My book tells me that it’s a simple matter, there’s a bus from right here in town that goes right there. After lunch and a stroll around town, “Donde esta el station de bus?” It’s probably not correct but it’s close enough that people figure out what we’re looking for, and we’re directed to a dusty street corner to wait. “Cuando… tiempo… jusq’ua crap that’s French…” Ok, so we can’t figure out how long before the bus shows up but we know it will be here, and one or two other people seem to be waiting as well so that’s a good sign.

The bus pulls up just a few minutes later and we congratulate ourselves on having such perfect timing, while we are simultaneously eying the battered, garishly painted school bus with trepidation. Especially me, my history with buses in this country is not good and the “chicken buses,” as they’re known, are by far the worst. It is, however, the only bus going where we want to go, so we climb on; at least we’re here first and we’ll have seats, because as this bus fills up people will end up crammed into the center aisle or sitting on top.

We’re sitting in this mostly empty bus, the metal chassis concentrating the swampy heat of mid-afternoon even more than before. We are sweating in this still air, and it is about all we are doing because sweating this much takes a lot of energy. We are going to be sweating for a while, as the bus slowly fills up. A teenage girl sits across from us, with a no-shit real live chicken tucked beneath her arm. Debi and I share a look and smother our giggles, “You weren’t kidding when you said it was a chicken bus were you?”

Sweating, and already we are running low on water and we haven’t even started moving yet. We keep thinking about getting off the bus and going to resupply, but who knows when this thing will finally roar to life and how much warning we’ll have so we decide to sit tight, our faces turned up to the cracked plastic windows trying to catch any bit of breeze that may be wandering around on the streets out there. There’s not one, but we still try.

Finally! Half an hour later and we’re on the move. The road is paved for a while but that peters out quickly, and now we are jostling over rocks and rutted dirt tracks with encroaching weeds. We’re out of water, but there must be somewhere to buy water when we get there. There better be.

The air is moving a little more now with the bus’s motion, but we’re not going fast enough over this crappy road to get anything resembling a breeze going. We are the only two gringos on the bus, and we are attracting a lot of sideways looks and stolen glances. We also, of course, don’t know how far down this road we need to go, or how we’ll know when we get to where we’re going. Guidebook didn’t tell us that. Eventually, Debi is nominated to go forward and try to talk to the driver on the grounds that she is not sporting a giant bruise on her leg and is therefore better equipped to push through the crowded aisle as the bus rumbles and stutters over the stones and muddy puddles.

She comes back a few minutes later, the bus driver has assured her that he will tell us when we get to Finca el Paraiso. She also has a beer, apparently some guy up at the front of the bus has a cooler and is selling cervezas. No agua, though, but the moisture feels good anyway. We are basted to the dirty vinyl seats in a soup of sweat and we are still a ways away, as we’ve just learned.

Two hours after the bus wheezed to life and rolled out of Rio Dulce, I am almost in a daze, forehead leaned against the dirt-streaked window, too hot to think, and I see a small outpost, a roadside café looks like, and a sign about… wait, that’s it! “Alto!” I scream, starting up from my seat and then wincing, that was the wrong way to move and my left thigh is going to make sure I know about it, but the driver stops at least. If I hadn’t seen it we would’ve been on that bus all the way over to the next town, with no way to get back.

We clamber down the steps and stagger over to the café place, agua at last, and guzzle a liter each almost instantly. It’s mid-afternoon now, we’ve only got a few more hours of daylight, and we ask the guy staffing the café when the bus goes back in the other direction.

The last bus back to Rio Dulce will pass by in about 30 minutes.

“No. No. We have not even been up to the waterfall yet, I am not getting back on a bus in 30 minutes, I do not care.” Debi, quite reasonably, asks how we are going to get back. “There has to be a way, we will hitchhike if we have to, let’s go find that waterfall.” She doesn’t want to get back on a bus either after two hours in a slow-moving oven, so she shrugs and off we go up the trail.

A quick walk and then, has there ever been a more beautiful sight than a waterfall of crisp, clear water cascading into a deep pool on a sultry summer day in tropical climes?

We didn’t think so either. Debi checked her rush for the water to make sure that I could navigate the slippery river rocks successfully, and then we stripped down to our bathing suits and waded in. There are some other people here, looks like a tour group, and we greet each other in the water, they marveling at my enormous bruise. This waterfall, Finca el Paraiso, is a peculiar natural phenomenon; the pool below is cold river water welling up, but the cascade is from a thermal spring. We are swimming with our legs stretched down into cool depths, with sauna-warm water steaming around our heads and shoulders.

Of course, we still don’t know how we’re getting out of here.

I climb out of the water reluctantly, and sidle over to chat with the tour folks a little more. “How did you guys get here, anyway?” Trying to be a casual question. Ah, their guide had chartered a boat and they had come up the channel and then walked over across the road, one of the advantages of traveling with a group being that in exchange for overpaying you are spared hellish rides in a tin-can chicken bus. Their boat’s captain approaches me, asking if we are interested in riding back, he has room in his boat and he’ll charge us less than he’s charging the other people if we don’t tell them, this is gravy for everyone and if he had any idea how fucking stranded we are out here there wouldn’t be any deals cut, but one of the advantages of traveling without the group protection is that you can do whatever you want at any time, including hitch a ride back in a boat full of strangers.

As we leave with our new acquaintances, walking down the dirt road to the river access point, I strike up a conversation with one of the solo guys. He’s young, about our age, mid-twenties or so, and also from New York. He is sheepish about being with a group of retirees and families with young-ish children, “Well, I didn’t have anyone to travel with and I’d never been down here before, and I just thought it would be better to have some structure, but now that I’m here…” Now that he’s here, he sees how easy it is to travel independently through Central America with only a guidebook for company.

We skim down the river for an hour, wind in our faces, until we reach the main dock in Rio Dulce and catch yet another boat over to our hostel, Debi helping me with every step up and down in and out of the boats.