Rifles! Colorado! Explosive Diarrhea!

I gotta keep this quick... possibly leaving in the next 45 minutes to head out to Lago Atitlan in a Tercel with a couple of Coloradans and an Aussie...

So I'm sitting on a computer in Xela, Guatemala... listening to Semana Santa outside and massaging my bug bites. I'm staying at the Black Cat hostel at the moment, which I can highly recommend, aside from the complete lack of hot water (which you only realize AFTER sudsing your entire head). I had forgotten what staying in a hostel was like. The snoring roommates, the creaky bunks, the grimy showers. The reason I find myself on a computer at this particular moment is because some poor chap desperately needed to take a shit in our semi-public restrooms, and was busying himself putting about until I left. What a tragedy it is to get the shits when you are staying in a place with co-ed bathrooms...

Anyhow- the last few days have been somewhat uneventful. I've met a lot of really cool people, and have been adopted most of the places I've gone. The ride from Antigua to Xela yesterday was something of a mess though. The hostel (which booked my transport) had forgotten to give me a ticket... so when the shuttle arrived at 4am, I had nothing to prove that I had paid for the ride. This led to a mess of phone calls and some crazy driving into Guatemala City trying to make everyone's bus. When we got to G. City, I was the only one going to Xela, so at one point, they pointed at me, unloaded me off the shuttle with all my things, and left me on a dark Guatemalan street with all belongings at 5am. I would have been completely alone if not for the man with the rifle waiting for me.

I'm not sure what he was doing there.

He was, however, probably one of the nicest people I've met thus far. He found a giant canister for me to sit on, and turned on a swinging bulb over my head so I'd be illuminated as a rich foreigner with all my things in the middle of the night in the 5th most dangerous city in the world.

... while he stood there with his rifle.

Anyway, a bus eventually came to get me, and after a 5 hour drive through the winding countryside, I was safely in Xela.

Which is where I'll be for the next month. Schools starts for me on Monday-- so I'm going to try to get in one last adventure before I immerse myself in my studies. I'll keep you all up to date.