A Weekend Adventure in Guatemala

By: Artis H. – Guestblogger from Antigua
At the close of classes on Friday, our group of five donned our backpacks and headed to the bus station alongside Antigua's central market. Two of us stopped to buy sandwiches for lunch, and as the wait turned from five minutes into twenty (this is Guatemala, after all), we received a frantic call from the advance party that our bus was pulling out of the station. We pleaded for our sandwiches and finally received two foil-wrapped packages, warm and smelling of ham and melted cheese. We ran through the market, sandals slapping against concrete, and made it to the bus just in time.
Called “chicken buses” by the locals, this mode of transportation is definitely the real-deal. The buses are imported from the United States and date back to the mid-1980s. My Norwegian and Dutch friends struggled to maneuver the tricky push-pull for opening the windows, something American public school students master on their first bus ride home.
As the bus wound through villages and down out of the mountains, we began to shed layers of clothes. First scarves, then outerwear and finally overshirts, until we sat in our tank tops and watched Antigua's trio of surrounding volcanoes fade into the distance.
At a pause in the route, food vendors climbed onto the bus to sell their wares: fresh pineapple juice and sugar-roasted peanuts, husk-wrapped tamalitos and handfuls of sweet milk candies. We bought one of each and munched on the treats throughout the long trek.
The climate grew steadily warmer as we neared the coast, passing through fields of sugarcane and palm trees, until we could smell the salt in the air. We descended at Sinpicate, where we boarded a flat-bottomed skiff that trolled the waters of a mangrove estuary before dropping us at our destination. There, the black sand beach stretched in every direction, unmarred by the hotels and restaurants that have consumed much of the world's beachfront real estate. The Paredon camp itself included only a handful of palm-thatched cabanas fronting the pounding Pacific.
The camp's owner, Rafael, gave us the grand tour – our bunked sleeping quarters, the outdoor shower stall, the open-air eating area – before suggesting we slip into our bathing suits and head into the water. The sun dipped towards the horizon as we plowed into the waves, thankful to have reached Guatemala's beautiful coastline.