Coffee break for traffic and other curiosities

Today was a particularly odd day for Guatemala city. It was foggy, raining, cold (50F) and windy as all hell. Normally, it would be a welcome respite from the heat, dust and smog that chokes the city. I didn’t even want to think what it would do to the traffic in one of the worst traffic congestion-prone cities I have ever been it. I mean, between the traffic circles, idiotic drivers, two-lane roads that turn into one-lane roads with two-way traffic, plumes of diesel, it’s great fun.

Today we had to walk to the nearby gas station to meet Danny to carpool to work. It was misting and not so bad. But, Andrew had to lug his suitcase down the road as he was going on the advance team to Solola. It’s big and unwieldy but it’s got wheels.

So we’re lugging all this stuff down the road and eventually we need to cross the street. Normally you just pick a break in traffic and frogger your ass to the other side. However, since it was raining, traffic was just a stream of cars racing by. We waited. We waited. After about seven minutes of waiting for a break in traffic Andrew turns to me and says,
“This is probably what Purgatory is like.”
We laughed, waited another minute and managed to race to the other side.

About 20 minutes, later as we neared the office, the traffic was at a standstill. The road was a parking lot. Our lane was not moving at all. A massive red bus with, I swear, its bumper trailing and scraping the ground, simply went down the the other lane into oncoming traffic. Naturally, we followed it. Turns out, the traffic was backed up because a chicken bus had broken down and instead of moving it they had gotten out and made coffee. The driver and his buddies were literally standing in front of the bus sipping coffee and having a grand old time. I guess it never occurred to them to, you know, move.