Night Bus Guatemala City to Santa Elena

We arrived in Flores safely. Room is very nice, but the rooster next door has decided to greet us. Could be bad in the morning.

Have made inquires about a poultry assassin.

The room was perfection: private bath, TV, no bugs, very clean, ten dollars a night. I had just sent Darren to pay for the room when the rooster chimed in. I should have known to move, but hoped he'd pipe down after announcing the day, but he's as bad as FOX News in a yellow journalism loop.

We braved the dreaded Zona 1 last night to get the night bus. We had some confusion about the tickets. As we waited for the shuttle to pick us up at our hostel, which happens to be across the street from the travel agent, the agent came over to tell us that the semi bed that we requested was not available-only reclining-as Darren understood him. No partial refund was offered. We had read that sometimes buses were in the shop and you got whatever is available.

We wondered why we didn't receive any tickets. When we exited the shuttle, the driver gave us an envelope, sort of went over the info, which we didn't understand, and pointed at the Maya de Ore sign. The envelope had money, but no ticket. We approached the ticket window and passed the envelope over and received tickets.. Looking at the tickets, it seemed they were $40 for both and we stewed a bit thinking we'd been cheated - when it occurred that the difference was for the shuttle, although $60 for a shuttle seems steep. We had to wait and see what bus we got. When we first arrived at the bus station, we saw a beat up old chicken bus and thought that was what we'd be spending the night on. It’s probably time we improved our Spanish.

The bus station didn't look abnormally dodgy, but all bus stations are dodgy. Zona 1 has a bad reputation. We sat on the floor in the corner, which wasn't overly clean, while we waited to see if we were getting a comfy sleeper bus or a colorful chicken bus. The only thing we knew for sure was that it left at. 9 pm.

The double decker red bus arrived. We were relieved that it wasn't a chicken bus (they aren’t known for comfort on a long haul). It looked nice. We hadn't gotten the sleeper, but the reclining seats were do-able. I had read from several sources that these buses get really cold, so I was wearing my thermal bottoms and had a jacket handy when I prepped for our journey into the jungle.

We successfully found our seats on the top deck near the front and settled in for the 9 hour ride. As the bus started out, someone turned on a video on the little TV at the front. We both groaned- thinking it would be blaring all night. I'd taken some Benadryl and tried to tune out the dreadful (American with subtitles) film.

Did sleep, but woke up around 2 am freezing my petuddie off -even with my jacket and thermals. I woke Darren to let me up to get my rain shell out of my bag. He gave me his. We stopped once, didn't bother to roll over. Teeth were chattering when Darren woke me outside of Santa Elena where the bus was to drop us at 6 am.

When we got off the bus, we were mobbed by tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) drivers wanting to take us to Flores. Flores is an island in the lake 3 km from the terminal. We wanted to walk it as we'd been sitting all night - and really - what else you going to do at dawn in a strange town just waking?

We exited the terminal - still groggy- with 2 choices. Were fairly certain which road we came into town on, one dead ended. Sort of eannie meanied and chose one. Lots of tuk tuks were headed that way, so we assumed we were going in the right general direction.

Locals were starting to set up the market.