Bus stop practicalities 101

El Tucan

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Travelling the world, as anyone will tell you, is a learning experience. Countless associations with mythological tales and fictional adventure dispersed throughout our culture liken the phenomenon to a kind of spiritual passage into adulthood or, if this is already achieved, some sort of deeper understanding of self.

There is a particular situation that a traveller experiences with regularity, however, from which I, personally, am unlikely to acquire any form of worldly wisdom. It is a situation akin to that of a breadcrumb, being thrown, in slow motion, into a flock of starving pigeons and it generates in me a kind of primitive, Gollum-like mentality that is by no means illuminating. It involves arriving at a Bus Terminal, Airport or Train Station in a state of delirium and having ten hawkers vie for my attention with various types of cooing, hissing sounds and poor attempts at English.

While travelling in northern Guatemala, my girlfriend and I arrived one night at a bus terminal in the town of Santa Elena, joined by a bridge to the tourist town and small island of Flores (from which one takes a short bus trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal), to find ourselves, once again, presented with this very situation.

Bleary eyed we exited our aging coach. Curling up inside, I focused intensely on some very specific information that I hoped would be my salvation. We had done our research and in so doing had decided on the hotel at which we wished to stay. Swaying into the fray I held on to this anti-digestive device like it was my veritable precious. We would not be consumed and shat out on the doorstep of some overpriced bacterial breeding ground by those nasty pigeonses (I was Gollum you understand). We would go to a place in the ‘cheaper’ Santa Elena (as opposed the more expensive Flores) that the Lonely Planet had advised us was passable.

Before any of this was possible, however, we needed to visit the amenities and acquire some food.

Whilst seeking a temporary base for our luggage, my inner Gollum struck out with violent guttural noises at the bus stop menagerie. This worked for all but one, an unsavoury-looking character with muddied wings and a possible chemical affliction. In my search for the restroom and food I was accosted at least five times by this same character. To my amazement and growing chagrin no assortment of audio symbols and distorted facial features could sour his salivating taste buds.

After having eaten we walked outside.

“Hotel, you want hotel?” There he was. “What do you want?”

“All we want is a taxi”, we replied a little sharply.

At this he sought out a fat, equally sleazy looking, friend who was standing and talking with someone in front of what we assumed was his taxi. After an exchange that seemed to indicate that the fat man was experiencing a degree of confusion as to what was being asked of him, it was agreed that he would take us to our desired destination.

Now it was at this point that we were presented with the option to decline. We did not take it – our new friend, it seems, was master at a persistence gambit of which we, tired and disorientated, had easily fallen prey (this may or may not be the application of some kind of linguistic law, but I think that we had said ‘no’ so many times that we simply could not say it any more).

Having mindlessly acquiesced, the fat man, stone faced, like Hitchcock in a cameo performance, picked up one of our bags, walked past the taxi and kept on walking. He walked, with my girlfriend and I in tow, until we were suitably situated in a dark and dirty part of the street and opened up the boot of a run down car that was most certainly not a taxi. At this point, yet again, the unofficial car presented us with an option to decline. We did not take it.

He started driving and it soon became apparent that this man was certainly not accustomed to the role of taxi driver, let alone driver, and that he either suffered from some severe form of brain damage or was drunk. As we set out on our way, fearing for our lives, with the car swerving side to side, we gave him the name of the hostel and the name of the street it was situated in. Neither of them was recognisable to him, so we took it upon ourselves to guide him using our Lonely Planet map. Despite very clear instruction to drive straight and a little faster than 20km per hour, he continued to drive slowly and would turn left or right regularly, suggesting, off the cuff (as best as the intoxicated can) that we stop out the front of what were obviously his friend’s hotels. With much kicking and screaming on our part, he would move on, again slowly.

Once we were out of ‘friends with hotels’ zone he continued to flounder, turning the wrong way into one-way streets and the like. Appearing to be close to the hotel on our little Lonely Planet GPS system, we finally came to our senses, got out, paid him half of the agreed price, which he didn’t notice, and walked.

We found the hotel we had been seeking after having walked a sufficient number of long, deserted blocks to determine that there was something decidedly unsavoury about Santa Elena (dark alleys seemed abundant and few faces provided signs of welcome). By that time, despite going through the motions of inspecting a room, I believe we had already decided, on a deeply spiritual level, that we did not wish to stay in Santa Elena, no matter what. We got a taxi, this time an official one, and went to the cheapest place in the adjoining tourist town of Flores, ‘EL Tucan’ hotel.

Flores, with its cobblestone streets and colonial architecture, has a beautiful Ye Oldie European look to it. It is a tourist town, but not in a very bad way and El Tucan is far enough away from anything offensive so as to make it a very attractive option. The Hotel has a restaurant on a large U-shaped platform that looks out on the tranquil waters of Lake Peten Itza. The thatched roof on the wooden frame that covers the platform is pleasant, the lush plant life that populates it is refreshing and the jungle mural that covers the walls is surprisingly tasteful. There were only two rooms, which no doubt thanks to the Lonely Planets inaccurate description of them as cramped and dirty, or something to that effect, were both empty and more than satisfactory. We paid 50 Quetzals (AUS$7) for a twin room, ordered a large pizza for 25 Quetzals (AUS$3.50) then settled down, finally, to a nice relaxing evening eating (the pizza was more than satisfactory), drinking (a long neck of the local beer ‘Gallo’, costing 20 Quetzals (AUS$2.75)) talking, reading and watching the water. Later we walked around the town and arranged an early morning bus for Tikal before retiring to bed feeling decidedly more human.

Since this incident I have been slowly becoming expert at a technique my girlfriend has taught me. It involves walking through that pigeon throng as if it simply were not there. It does seem a little rude, but I would hardly call pestering someone to pay for a hotel room the height of civility. Anyway, it’s fun, like acting. I don my dark sunglasses and do my best George Clooney.