Almolonga, Zunil, and the Chicken Bus (¡por fin!)

So, last week I attended one of the trips to two nearby villages.  Xela, being the second largest city in all of Guatemala, is not exactly representative of village-life, so I thought that this would be a great excursion.  Unfortunately, I didn´t exactly count on the monsoon.  Okay, it may not have exactly been a monsoon, but to be honest, the rain was so thick and heavy, that it might as well have been.

So first, we took the chicken bus (more on that in a minute) to Almolonga, a small farming village.  I promptly bought a nice umbrella for about four bucks so that I could take pictures without ruining Elizabeth´s camera.  But to be honest, it was so wet and miserable that I really ended up taking more interesting pictures of the rain and its effects than the town.  Here are a few samples.

I know that it is rainy and foggy, but look at the beautiful mountain in the background...

And maybe a couple of the "road"...

We then hopped back on the bus to visit the other town, Zunil.  There, we made three stops: (1) to a local women´s cooperative where various handmade clothing and objects are sold; (2) the local Church, of which a few pictures will follow; and (3) the current home of San Simon, and trust me, I need a whole post just on that.. stay tuned.

First, a few general shots of Zunil.

The river looks awesome for kayaking down!

maybe not so much...

The Church in Zunil was really pretty magnificent.  I´ve forgotten the dates now, but I think it was constructed in the mid 1500´s, and is one of the oldest in Central America.  Some of the pictures are pretty dark, but look at the magnificent decorations.

And, of course, more rain in the streets...

Okay, now just a moment to talk about the chicken bus.  Sure, it´s an old school bus which stopped passing emissions twenty years ago, and probably hasn´t had its oil changed since then either.  But that´s about all you´d recognize.  Just a few quick hit observations...

• It cost us about 2 Quetzales, 50 centavos for each leg, which works out to about 30 cents. 
• You know those cartoons where a vehicle goes full speed over a bump, and all of the cartoon animals go flying up out of their seats into the air, and you see the animated WHOOSHes, yeah, that´s actually real.
• People are crammed onto the bus, and enter both from the front and the back, you know, the emergency exit.  It´s really fun when they are exiting as the bus is moving, as they don´t necessarily have time to shut the back door.  I got pretty good at closing and latching it on-the-go.
• The bus doesn´t stop.  No, it can´t.  If it does, it may not get going again.
• Other buses that have stopped pay a steep price.  Not totally sure, but it looked as if when our bus was driving by these stranded other buses, there were about three guys trying to remove parts from our bus in order to get theirs working again.
• The road winds A LOT, and especially during the monsoon, is very difficult for a normal-sized car to pass.  Somehow we made it.
• The horn is used a lot.  As in "I am a big chicken bus and I am coming, get out of my way."
• I don´t know if it was because we were extranjeros (foreigners) or what, but the bus got to the edge of Xela and told us to get out.  Apparently the bus driver decided he didn´t want to go the rest of the way into the city.  So we had to walk the last twenty minutes.  One of the guys said, "That´s what happened to us yesterday too!"  I guess the routes are more "flexible" than in the U.S.

Anyway, I know that there´s tons more I haven´t reported about the chicken bus, but if I don´t leave now, I´m going to miss my dinner.  There may have to be a "Chicken Bus II: Revenge of the Chickens" post if I remember much more.