Two weeks later, while on my way to Semuc Champey, my shuttle driver pulled over to a little hotel on the side of a dirt road so that we could use the bathroom. I didn’t have to use the bathroom, so I stayed in the shuttle. Of course, as I was sitting there, I could hear one of those songs playing inside the hotel, but I thought nothing of it because I had given up. However, after 6 hours at Semuc Champey, we passed through the same hotel, and I heard the other song playing inside. Deciding that this would be my final attempt, I got out of the shuttle, ran inside, and asked the teenage kid behind the counter if he knew the name of this song. He replied, “this one? This is ‘Te Amo’ by Makano.” I was shocked. I then had him play a few other songs that were on his playlist, and before long, we had found the other song as well. I was grinning from ear to ear, and this poor kid was VERY confused.

I have always been fascinated by a song’s ability to transport me back to a particular time and place. Sometimes, when I particularly like a certain place, I will listen to a song over and over so that the next time I hear that song I will be immediately reminded of being in that place. Before coming to Guatemala, I downloaded a lot of new music in the hopes that one of those songs would eventually be the song that could bring back all of my memories, good and bad, of the time that I have spent here this summer.

Continued…

Continued…

I was neither optimistic nor excited about having to spend 4 days and 4 nights in Guatemala City. Normally, 5 weeks spent in small towns and villages would leave me absolutely craving some big-city action, but I had heard enough horror stories to leave me utterly dreading having to research in Guatemala City. “Well, my friends and I figured that it would be okay to walk where we needed to go since it was broad daylight and we only had to walk a block—unfortunately, seconds after we stepped outside, someone was shoving a gun in our face and screaming at us, so we just started running in the opposite direction.” “Oh yeah you definitely shouldn’t take a chicken bus into the capital…they’ll slash your pockets in those terminals faster than you can say ‘dinero.’” “Make sure that you stay far away from the red intra-city buses—I heard that there are at least 2 armed robberies every day on those buses.” Needless to say, I was anxious. But, when the time came, I hopped onto the shuttle that picked me up at my hostel in Antigua, and 45 minutes later I was standing in front of the Xamanek Inn in the heart of Guatemala’s safest district, Zona 10 (also known as “Zona Viva”).

Continued…