Long Travel Days

Travel Day #1

Oaxaca to El Panchan, Mexico. At 5:30pm we hopped on what would end up being a seventeen hour bus ride. Thats a long time to sit in a chair. We’ve had longer days of travel, but never the same vehicle for that long; not being able to sleep due to the blaring loud movies being played didn’t help the situation. Finally just after 10:30am we arrive in Palenque. Starving, we sit at the first restaurant we find and stuff ourselves with an amazing breakfast that included a platter of meat, tortillas and an assortment of salsas and condiments. I cant think of a better breakfast after such a long, uncomfortable ride. Soon after we hopped into a taxi to take quick twenty minute ride into the tiny jungle community of El Panchan, grabbed a couple of nice cold beers, and a shower. It was heaven.

Travel Day #2

El Panchan to San Cristobal: First thing in the morning we hopped into a collectivo (a shared van that will pick up anyone along the way) from El Panchan for a twenty minute ride back to Palenque. After choking down a stale bus station sandwich, we boarded our bus that rolled out of the station around 8:30. The ride itself was full of beautiful scenery, something we had missed with the previous overnight bus; and arrived in San Cristobal a seemingly quick nine hours later. What shocked us most at this altitude, was the near-freezing temperatures. As Canadians visiting Central America, we hadn’t packed for 4°C. I ended up wearing most of my clothes to bed since the place we stayed in was made of concrete and had no insulation. Ironically enough, our hometown in Canada was warmer than we were that week.

Travel Day #3

San Cristobal to San Pedro la Laguna, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. This was the interesting one. A collective picked us up at 6:45am, dropped us off at another part of town where we transferred to another, picked up about ten more people, and we hit the highway crammed like sardines. Shortly before noon, we arrived at the Mexican boarder, coughed up 500 pesos in order to leave the country, hopped back in the van and drove several kilometres farther to the Guatemala customs office. After a short wait in line, our passports were stamped and the customs official told us we owed him money; knowing from research that this was simply a scam, we simply said no and he returned our passports.

Over an hour sitting in the hot sun, we waited for the Guatemalan collectivo to arrive. One eventually showed up and took half of our group, while the rest of us waited another half hour for a second to arrive. Nearly seven hours of questionable driving on windy mountain roads, several stops to transfer passengers to other vans, and a ton of confusion as to where everyone was actually going, we made it to Lake Atitlan - just after the last ferry. The company ended up having to hire a private boat for us and we followed two teenagers down a dark alley towards their dock and eventually embarked across the lake in total darkness. Thankful to have made it to the other side, we hired a tuk-tuk to get us to our hostel. The total trip was supposed to take 9 hours. It took 16. Needless to say, we still managed to track down some street food and cold beer before having one of the best sleeps of this trip so far.