Backcountry Guatemala

   Getting through the northern reaches of Guatemala was harder than we had expected.  It felt as though we spent the better part of 6 days on micro-buses only to move a very small distance across our map of Central America.

   As well as the highlights of the Mayan ruins at Tikal (the rebel base in Star Wars) and the stunning natural beauty of Semuc Champey, we were also afforded insights into some of the finer points of human behaviour.

   On our way to Semuc Champey (Q: how do you keep a beautiful place from being overrun with tourists? A: really really bad roads.) we met the delightful Herb and Becky from Sacramento, California.  As Becky pointed out: not only would folks back home not believe some of their travel stories, they would have trouble even comprehending them.

   Over three days we spent 22 hours travelling in "micros".  Not mini-buses as such, but mini-vans converted to seat 12 to 16 people in the fashion of over-crowded people carriers.  While travelling with Herb and Becky, our micro, nominally kitted out to take 16 people, squeezed 26 on the inside.  Herb answered his own question, "You know how many people you can fit in one of these? Always one more."

   Travelling in this manner vitiates all notion of personal space.  On one journey, Kizzy found the lady behind her intermittently reaching out and playing with Kizzy´s hair.  And why not?  Some bloke had just squeezed on and without a backward glance promptly sat down on someone´s lap, because people do that here.

   The most absorbing (i.e. uncomfortable) leg of our journey was from Coban to Uspantan: three hours on terrible roads with 29 people in a vehicle with seats for 12.  Admittedly two people were on the roof by this stage.  Unuusually Kizzy and I hadn´t managed to sit together.  She was flanked by a man and a woman happy fall asleep on her shoulders.  I had two boys of perhaps four and six years of age squeezed in front of me.  They spent the first hour trying to eat their breakfast of rice and chicken, although this mainly consisted of the older boy occasionally forcing a handful of food into his brothers mouth.

   The youngest was patient and coped well in the circumstances but still managed to drive the rest of us a little bit potty with his antics.  These included all the things one might expect of a four year old boy:

  - not knowing what to do with his chicken bones so surreptitiously dribbling them onto the floor;
  - wiping his greasy hands on the trousers of the man beside me;
  - constantly fidgetting and thus slipping off his perch on the ledge behind the driver´s seat;
  - bouncing up and down vigorously in the manner of someone in desperate need of the loo;
  - absently stroking my calf or pulling out my leg hairs while reaching his other hand up the shirt of the lady on my lap (she was not amused).

Finally he and his brother fell asleep wedged between my knee and that of the bloke beside me, resulting in cramping muscles but otherwise some relief.  Their mother slept through it all, squashed behind me with her head on Kizzy´s shoulder.

   Kiz and I staggered away from the journey determined never to ride another micro again once we got out of Guatemala.  but now in Mexico things aren´t so bad.  They have a strict one seat one person policy it seems.