The Extra Mile Adventure

DAY 23 – The road to Xela…
… and on a personal note, my best night’s sleep spent curled up outside Patricia on a dusty lay-by in the scruffy town of San Rafael. We awoke with the sun as usual, and while some prepared breakfast, others jogged up the mighty hill behind us and did a series of exercises. We showered in the local gas station; a single shoot of ice-cold water was a nice respite from the maturing heat. The locals all crowded around our bus with a blend of excitement and curiosity and some even came on board and had a snoop around. We have been so blessed with the hospitality and generosity of the natives on this trip and San Rafael was no exception, one particular woman invited some of us to her home and gave them a tour around and even a brief lesson in making tortillas! 
Ulises donated his tent and others gave various items of clothing and the toothy smiles that greeted us were so pure and grateful.
… and then reality dawned, our beloved Patricia would not be able to carry us up to our next destination, the green mountains were indeed too steep for her old legs, and at 10,000 ft, Xela was beyond the clouds, the only way our dear beloved would get us there was if she sprouted wings… 
No, we would have to split into groups: one to stay put and obtain new transmission fluid and pray for a gentler approach if we took the longer coastal road; the second group would go straight to Xela on local transport and make contact with the shelter for domestic violence where we were due to work, and the third group would oblige the locals who insisted we see their national bird, the Quetzal, in the volcanoes nearby. This last group would then take a local bus themselves and join up with the first group… and hopefully everything would run smoothly, we would all meet up in the evening and even Patricia would find her way to rumble up beside us come morning time…
(As I was in the first group to leave for Xela I will now continue from our own prospective -
the group consisted of Summer, Blitz, Weldboy, Austin, Tony, Alison, Amanda and Uncle Sam)

It has to be said we left San Rafael in good spirits. We boarded a local chicken bus, our bags secured on the giant roof-rack and squeezed into the narrow corridor of seats, which at first glance didn’t appeared to be able to hold any of us, let alone accommodate all nine! But the more the merrier in Guatemala! I had two young girls on my knee and another little boy squeezed down by my feet.
Up and up, higher and higher, hurtling around bends at terrifying speeds, and stopping twice to let the bus cool down, which over here means pouring cold water directly onto the engine.
 We arrive in San Marcos, a lazy town roughly half way to Xela, and here we wait for another bus to take us further into up the sky… but in the meantime we manage to do an impromptu dance performance in the local piazza which draws a healthy crowd and Blitz makes an empowering speech about who we are and the mission we are on. It is a simple show, a young DJ who happens to be in the square spins some jazzy records, summer performs a crazy clown dance while Blitz’ does head stands and Capoeira. Amanda and Alison are griped in a Salsa dance and Tony and myself add a bit of break-dancing. As we come to finish amid the whoops of the locals I feel a sense of achievement, we can arrive in a sleepy town in the middle of Guatemala and in 20 minutes we have performed and gathered a sizeable audience, indeed I look up and see smiling faces on the balconies and rooftops!
We finally arrive in Xela in the late afternoon, the sun has been replaced by swirling clouds and as the light fades so the temperature quickly drops. The terminal can best be described as colorful mayhem, as dozens of brightly painted buses scurry here and there, horns blaring and bags being thrown from the roofs to the waiting passengers below. We take a taxi-bus into the city centre and locate our hostel for the evening, the crumbling old Casa Argentina, on the Calle Diagonal. It is a beautiful little guesthouses and we are shown to large room with 20 beds and all of them are empty! For 10 mins we are like little children running and jumping on the soft mattresses and indeed the first night in a real bed will be a wonderful treat.
We try and make contact with the shelter but after numerous failed attempts we are still left without an address, and seeing as we are not expected till the morning, the evening is our own.
The centre of Xela is beautiful, the ramshackle old houses give way to majestic colonial buildings and the central piazza is all lit up with spotlights. The place is bustling with street vendors and little children carry lanterns in a procession that snakes around the town. We eat well and retire to bed; the idea of spending a night on a real mattress has been watering our mouths all day. 
But with no word from the other group or indeed Patricia, we are unsure of the progress of our comrades…
As I lie in bed and close my eyes I see the green mountains and the smiles of the locals… and then just before I sleep I see Patricia flying through the clouds on her way to Xela… zzz..z
Morgan Val Baker