Point A to Point B

   Guatemala is a nation approximately the size of the state of Louisiana, but it is such a mountainous country if it were somehow ironed out perfectly flat while retaining every acre of it's landmass, it could easily cover half of the lower Midwest. This makes the Guatemalan highlands a majestic landscape of  jagged emerald cloaked mountains, rushing twisting rivers and steep ravines. Small villages periodically cling like barnacles to the hillsides, their buildings painted in candy colors of pink, tangerine, salmon, robin's egg, rose, lime and canary. Among this picturesque riot of color, there is inevitably a church, usually an immaculate and gleaming white, prominently presiding over the center of the town. All of this unfettered geography makes for breathtaking views that it would take a much better photographer than I to capture through the window of a moving vehicle. It also makes it virtually impossible to build a straight road.

 The mountain highways are masterpieces of engineering, and justifiably a source of national pride. Even remote sections, the roads are meticulously paved, lovingly potholed, painstakingly enlumpened and artistically adorned with arrangements of the finest selection of boulders, loose stones and fallen tree branches available. This level of  exacting craftsmanship is difficult to maintain in the bowels of the deepest and furthest flung valleys, Here for the sake of expediency and economy the initial paving is often dispensed with. This apparent lapse from the usual standard can be easily forgiven when you consider that the people who live in these regions have busy and difficult agrarian lives. This feat of astonishing civil engineering is perhaps best reflected by the fact that chiropractic realignment is a completely unknown profession here.

A local man, employed in Guatemala's burgeoning "wandering into photos" industry.

For the tourist looking for overland transport within the borders of Guatemala, there are several alternatives. Notably most of these are painted as merrily as carnival wagons. This evidently stems from a widely held belief throughout the tropics that if a public transport vehicle is not painted in vivid bright colors, the driver does not really care about it and is likely to drive this conveyance and all those aboard off of a cliff due to sheer carelessness. The resultant paint jobs are often quite striking and attractive.

...although there has been the occasional slight misunderstanding

The most well known of these are the "Chicken Buses". A Chicken bus is a decommissioned school bus from the U.S. that is sold at bargain basement prices, repainted garishly, fitted with luggage racks on the roof and loaded with paying passengers until the sides buckle outward and the axles creak. They are often the cheapest and most readily available method to get from one city to another for local families, their attendant baggage and livestock (thus the name). During the course of all the renovations to prepare such a bus for public service, the seats are not moved. The passengers upon one of these vessels are afforded roughly the same amount of legroom as your average ten year old, provided no one is already keeping a goat there. Chicken buses are a common sight trundling along the roadways of Central America on their long haul journeys. They are easily identifiable at a distance due to their blaring music and towering mountain of luggage on the roof. On this journey I did not ride any Chicken buses for the simple reason that other alternatives existed.

For short journeys there is always the onomatopoetically named Took-took. These odd three wheeled covered cabs are about the size of a golf cart. Usually they can be found swarming near town squares, markets and anywhere there's likely to be a crowd. Your average Took-took driver believes that the best way to attract a fare is by shouting directly into your face. There also appears to be a commonly held belief that Gringos are incapable of walking more than ten feet unassisted. Any attempt to do so is met with horrified disbelief. These little cabs can be a convenient method of getting from one side of the village to the other, if you don't mind participating in some no-holds-barred bartering and your destination is likely to have a restorative cocktail to help you repair your shattered nerves from the harrowing ride. 

   The most popular method with most seasoned tourists is the private shuttle. These shuttles are preferred by most long haul travelers for the simple reason that they are more comfortable and reliable than a Chicken bus. While this is true, thanks to good old-fashioned capitalism there is invariably three more passengers aboard than is comfortable and extra seats are installed in the aisles 

so that speedy and efficient exit is rendered impossible.

You book passage on one of these transports through a travel agency or the front desk of your hotel. At the appointed time (or at least within the same day as the appointed time), your chariot arrives. This is usually a gray or white passenger van with the word "Turistas" emblazoned across the top portion of the windshield. This is possibly to warn the local inhabitants about what is about to descend on their homes. It is interesting to note that "turistas" is also a common colloquialism for the effects of gastrointestinal illness travelers sometimes suffer from the local food and water. Once your ticket is inspected and your luggage is lashed to the teetering pile on the roof, you are free to board. The next twelve hours are yours to watch the scenery through tinted windows, wrestle for legroom with an unwashed German and pray to whatever deity that will listen that all four wheels are no longer hovering over the edge of the cliff. During the course of one of these journeys, I remember coming around a bend as we descended towards our final destination. The first thought that crossed my mind as we began the turn was "Oh thank God, there's actually a guardrail!" It may have been the most American thought that I ever had in my life.

   Luxury buses are also available, These are spoken about in glowing terms by travel agents who are really just interested in your safety and comfort and are in no way receiving a huge commission for this at all. They just really personally like you. Honest! These luxury buses are touted as the ultimate in opulent bus travel. Just lie back in your soft fully reclining seat, the travel agent tells you with a wistful sparkle in his eye, and drift off on a perfumed cloud to dreamland. When you awaken from the refreshing sleep of an infant, you will be at your destination and ready to greet the adventures of the new and exciting location relaxed and rejuvenated. What is not mentioned during this pitch is that the seat in front of you also fully reclines, usually far enough into your lap to cut off circulation. Combine this with the fact that the drivers in order to stay awake in the course of this long overnight sojourn crank the air conditioning to volumes that could be used to preserve a side of beef for months and aim for every available pothole. The ultimate in comfort and convenience in travel is evidently also found in the interior of a maraca. You are also generally transferring at Guatemala City Bus Terminal at four in the morning. The designers of Guatemala City Bus Terminal had clearly wanted to model their creation after New York's Port Authority before regretfully realizing that they didn't have the budget. Upon my most recent arrival there, the first thing I did was to remove an apple from my bag and proceeded to cut slices from it and eat them because there are times when you wish to make it clear to everyone surrounding you that you have a knife.

    Surprisingly, hitchhiking is a viable and safe option. Just pay the driver the equivalent of what the trip would cost on a local bus and you have purchased a standing space in a pickup truck bed fitted with a cage of metal bars for you to cling to for dear life. While you and your bags are jostled against your fellow passengers, you are given ample opportunity to practice apologizing in Spanish to local farmers and workers who all speak the local Mayan language and are picking up on your meaning mostly by the medium of pained facial expressions. It is certainly not the most comfortable method of travel on my list, but it might be the most authentic. 

It is worth examining the Guatemalan professional driver because as a species they are remarkably uniform in their behavior to the point where you find yourself wondering if there is a special school somewhere.  These drivers are the undisputed and benevolent rulers of their wheeled kingdoms which they pilot through the hills seemingly under the twin influences of industrial grade amphetamines and the psychological pressures of being in the midst of a messy divorce. They choose the setting on the air conditioner, the location and duration of the rest stops (which they are admittedly very adept at choosing) and which radio station you will be listening to, the one with the wailing lovelorn ballads or the thumping Spanish hip-hop/dance station. I never learned if there was a third option available. They choose whether they want to socialize with their passengers or drive in meditative and moody silence. If any unwelcome overtures are made or unscheduled bathroom stops requested, this rebellion is firmly and immediately suppressed. 

  The Guatemalan driver operates on his own private timetable. When he is late according to the officially posted times, the general reaction is a halfhearted shrug and a noncommittal expression that could be mistaken for apologetic to the uninitiated. In the driver's mind so long as he arrives within the same calendar date on the ticket, no harm has befallen and he honestly cannot understand why you're upset. This lackadaisical attitude unequivocally does not extend to a delayed passenger. If a passenger is tardy, the driver's entire demeanor changes. he paces nervously checking his watch and scanning the horizon for this missing person in the despairing hope that they will miraculously appear. A flurry of increasingly desperate phone calls are dispatched to anyone who might have information or any family member capable of offering the emotional support needed during this trying ordeal. Pleas are made to the unfortunate missing person's friends for permission to leave them behind. The crown weighs heavy on the head that has to decide whether to deviate from their personal schedule or face the apparent write up that comes as consequence of losing a Gringo under their charge. Finally, an eternal six minutes later, the panting dripping passenger heaves into view gasping apologies and explanations which are met with a stony unforgiving silence. The wayward soul is left to wheeze out his rationale about being unable to extract himself from a temple complex that was much larger than it appeared on the tourist's map. Meanwhile my friends filled me in on the finer points of the drama that I had inadvertently caused and made it abundantly clear how close I had neatly come to being left behind to my own devices at the gates of Tikal.