When a 3 hour drive takes almost 9...

I hate Friday traffic in Guatemala.  Hate it.  With a passion.  From 3pm until about 8pm, trying to leave the city is horrendous and takes twice or three times as long as it would with no traffic.

On Friday afternoon, a group of us left right after school to go to the beach for the weekend.  I was one of the drivers, and I was adamant that we would leave the school parking lot at 3:02pm and we would make no stops until we were out of the city. 

We did leave the parking lot by about 3:05, but after that my master plan to arrive at the beach early in the evening started falling apart. 

First of all, we didn’t make it fifteen minutes before we had to pull over because my car was making odd grating sounds with every turn of the wheel or bump in the road.  We deduced that there was too much weight in the trunk, and we were able to transfer some of our load to one of the other cars.  Back on the road again.

Traffic was unusually slow leaving the city, but we finally were picking up speed, had left the capital behind us, and at about 5:30pm, we were looking forward to being at the beach by maybe 7pm.

And then, out of nowhere, we came to a standstill. 

And when I say standstill, I am not exaggerating.  I turned off my car and we spent an hour or more in the exact same spot.  Up and down the road, people were out of their cars, stretching their legs and getting a bit of air. 

Still early on; before people turned off their cars AND their lights, to
conserve their batteries.


At 8pm, we were still at Kilometer 36.  It had taken us five hours to go just over 20 miles.  We were beginning to go a little insane.  

It turns out there’d been a major accident, killing at least one person, and severely messing up traffic. 
(Quote of the night, after we'd been parked in the road for hours:
Jared: "There was this huge accident.  So, that's why traffic is slow."  
Jestina: "Um...this is not 'slow'.")   

It was about 9pm before we really started moving. 
After the traffic jam, we had to deal with a town feria (festival) blocking traffic, a street that more closely resembled a lake, and 79 speed bumps.  
It was 11:40pm by the time we reached our beach house.  


That, my friends, is a new record.   But being there, and waking up to the ocean at our doorstep, made it all worth it.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive thing was that as soon as the plane got to al
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and decided that if the team qualified for Glob
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming to terms with the fact that as a US teacher, I wil
Read more