Touch down!

My biggest fear going into this, as many of you may know, is my (lack of) Spanish proficiency. I’ve been diligently teaching myself Spanish all year but I haven’t really you know spoken to anyone yet. Here I am trouncing off to rural Guatemala where I will be expected to assess and treat patients without a translator so here goes nothing. It is true that pressure makes diamonds though so I will keep you posted on this.

I skimped out and took Spirit airlines to Guatemala through Fort Lauderdale. I was especially impressed that they were on time and didn’t destroy any of my bags, though a reclining seat might’ve been nice on a red eye international flight.

The next day, I landed in Guatemala City (aka Guate), got through security and got my bags, and looked for a shuttle to take me to the hotel. After wondering how I might figure out which one was the right one, I picked one and got in and there were two other American girls already in it—oddly enough one of them lives in Denver too and works at CU but in an MPH program doing some cool project with sugar cane workers. It definitely eased the fear of traveling alone as a female who’s barely conversational in the language but they had their own things to do so I still had to explore on my own.

I dropped my bags off and grabbed my fake wedding band (thanks Ms Keating for the advice) and mace (Guate is a fairly unsafe city to be wandering around alone) and followed my downloaded google map to go to this site recommended by trip advisor. Along the way I experienced the same dichotomy of extreme poverty and wealth side by side that seems to crop up in crowded developing cities. Let’s just say one zone had tons of run down corrugated tin roofed shacks while the next zone had marble-paved side walks, tall glass buildings, and 5 star restaurants.

It was Sunday so not many people were out and not much was open, but the flowers were pretty – they even have what look like the South African jacarandas in full bloom (I just googled and verified it is the same genus) along the mixed colonial style / mayan style architecture. I realized my planned destination was way too far away so rerouted and saw some churches and plazas. 

Then I was hungry, but I didn’t know if it is culturally acceptable to sit in a restaurant alone at a table, do you tip, how does one order? Well anyway I got hungry enough that I ate tacos by myself in a cute little restaurant with brightly painted chairs while people came up to my table and tried to sell me childrens’ coloring books. I’m not sure if I tipped cuz there were a bunch of added fees that I couldn’t translate, but I hope so.

The next morning, I had a delicious spread of eggs, meats, tamales, plantains, and tropical fruits before heading out on my day long journey to get to the clinic. I had to take a taxi 30 minutes (because traffic just doesn’t move) to get a bus that took almost 5 hours to get to Coatepeque, passing by miles and miles of sugar cane, palm, and bananas fields with a green, luscious back drop of rolling mountains. When I did arrive, a driver with a nametag was supposed to meet me but instead some random dude greeted me and I thought sure why not and hopped in a sketchy truck with him. As we sped along intermittently paved roads for an hour avoiding motorcyclists, pedestrians, and stray dogs while passing by farming villages, it finally felt like I’d arrived!