Then all in a rush the captain told the flight crew to prepare for arrival. Everyone fastened their seatbelts and we descended from the clouds. A low, sprawling city unrolled beneath us as the plane dragged slower and lower, hanging suspended over the plataeu below.
Suddenly the plane dropped. People gasped and gripped the arms of their seats as the ground came up to meet us. We sank beneath the volcanic peaks, the plane wobbled abruptly before straightening out again, then wheels hit pavement with a thud. I looked around, and except for Dan, no one else seemed phased in the least. And as the plane taxied toward the terminal, the captain's voice calmly welcomed us to Guatemala City.
Notwithstanding the short runway and exhilarating landing, everything else about flying into Guatemala City was perfectly normal. You wouldn't know you were in a developing nation just by looking around the airport: it was shiny new and clean as a whistle, upscale duty-free shops sold fancy rum, and familiar comfort food was readily available at the nearby McDonald's.
When we got to customs, though, things got a little uncomfortable. It was the usual scenario for VOSH on these trips: they wanted to know why we were bringing so many eyeglasses into the country. In the US, eyeglasses are generally thought of as medical devices; in Central and South America they are a commodity, and thus subject to commercial import taxes. I remembered in Buenos Aires how tough it was getting the donated glasses through- after much heated debate, one of our local hosts eventually gave in and paid them off.
I stood eyeing the customs official whose only job it seemed was to stand at the door and intimidate airline passengers. His AK-47 gave him the authority that the young, pretty official we spoke with did not. Fortunately, after a few polite exchanges, we were let through without further comment.
Outside Eli and Dieter, our local guides, were waiting with the van. In fifteen minutes they expertly stashed our bags and whisked us away along the road toward Quetzaltenango, or Xela (pronounced shay-lah), as it's called locally.
Three hours later we stopped for "lunch". It was 4:30pm. We quickly learned that in Guatemala lunch generally meant a full-course meal in the late afternoon, sometime just before we would be getting ready for dinner back in the States. It was typically more food than you really needed, way later than you wanted it.
But the food in Guatemala was delicious. It was mostly simple fare: homemade tamales, refritos (refried beans), bananas in various sauces and fried up as plantains, fresh local pineapple, fermented fruit beverages and beer. Good beer. This particular restaurant also featured wiener schnitzel and kielbasa. Turns out it was started in the 1950s by a Swiss woman and her Guatemalan husband, and today their children still offer an eclectic mix of good roadside fare.
Buying snacks from a roadside vendor:
"It's only another two hours," Eli told me after lunch. "But the road gets kind of rough."
He wasn't kidding. For the next four hours (Eli must have miscalculated by just a bit) we bumped along rutted asphalt, beside a twin ribbon of dirt road cut into the mountainside. Luckily Eli managed to avoid the occasional truck coming straight at us in the passing lane- which is to say, the west-bound lane that we were in. The van chugged sluggishly up the long grades, loaded down as it was with fourteen people and many pounds of baggage. No wonder it was taking us so long to get there.
As night fell, we were treated to a glorious sunset. Then it got very, very cold. My down jacket didn't feel like such a nuisance all of a sudden. Most of us dozed. In the darkness, under the beaming moonlight and winking stars, I choked on road dust coming in a side window and smiled to myself, happy to be back on the road.
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