Best bus journey in Guatemala.

I`ll get Ian to do an abbreviated version and I`ll do a proper blog post with all the fun stuff we`ve been doing, but this deserves a post to itself straight away.

I want to tell you about our more recent bus trip which took us from Coban to Huehuetenanengo if you fancy looking it up on maps. (You should find Google maps conveniently located at the bottom of the blog for such a purpose.)

To the point, myself and Ian spent €7.50 on buses yesterday. We travelled 150km in 9 hours which took us 4 buses. The average speed to go anywhere in Guatemala seems to be about 20k an hour if that!

This bus journey will be the yardstick for all future bus journeys.

The bus: this was a Toyota hiace (smallish one) designed to take maybe 12 people inside. There were 25 people inside with more on top. We could literally hear the side panals of the bus creaking under the pressure and you could feel the supports giving way. Buses in Guatemala seem to be kind of semi-privatised with the result being, they will never turn down a fare. Which means you can always get a lift! Another result is that buses tend to kind of race each other so that they`ll get the next fare, so overtaking other buses on a corner is just so commonplace you start not to notice it after a while.

We were very cramped, I had a nice young fellow fall asleep on my shoulder. (Guatemalans can sleep anywhere.) I sat on one arse cheek for a solid 4 and half hours. Ian`s knee was level with his shoulder the whole trip and he kept on banging his head against a spike sticking out of the side of the bus.

The Road: this wasn`t really a road for the first 4 and half hours of the trip. It was a dirt path that was mostly washed away in places. The rain had cut gullys about a foot deep into parts of the road. You haven`t seen a pothole until you`ve seen the ones in Guatemala. Less of a pot hole and more of a small sinkhole in the ground.

There were landslides dotted along the route which are really only cleared if they block both lanes, other than that you just kind of have to drive around it. We were stopped for a good ten fifteen minutes at one point while we waited for a JCB to clear half the road so we could get through.

At one point we realised we were driving on a mining track which was hairpin bends on a mud track. (I might remind you, no four wheel drive on this bus.) There was a sheer cliff drop down either side of the road, we were driving along a ridge of mud really. It was pretty intimidating.

The lonely planet recommends this journey because of the spectacular breathtaking views. We drove through cloud quite a bit, so couldn`t really see where you were going, not to mind the view for the most part. Although, what we did see was beautiful.

I`d recommend the journey for a little perspective - Bus Eireann isn`t really all that bad.

All that said, we`ve both agreed that it was the best and most terrifying journey ever. Anyone going to Guatemala, you need to take this bus.