near death experiences + shopping

gah, too much to write about, and its been what, three days? i just conned ari into writing about today's lil trip up a very active volcano, so that leaves me with two days to catch up on. let's see. i think amy left off with tikal (which, apparently means "city of the sound of the voices of evil." though i am a lil skeptical that such a small lil word can meet that much). so that tuesday night we were to take a night bus down to antigua when a huge thunderstorm came and parked itself right over the city of flores (where we were staying). the lightning was flashing about every 2 seconds, but it wasn't raining so we decided to go out and grab a bite to eat for dinner. we set off down the street just as the storm really started to pick up and lightning crashed to the ground right near us (i swear i felt the heat on my legs). this sent the whole town into darkness and us running (literally) back to our guesthouse. was very eventful, but fortunately our guesthouse had a strong affinity to candles and the storm died out before our bus departed. the trip down to antigua was uneventful. no bandits or robberies or anything of note aside from a bad night of rest. around 6.30 am we arrived in the beautiful city of antigua. the cobblestone streets are lined with old spanish style colonial houses and filled with old churches. and i must say, the random gun-totting guards in the doorway of some restaurants and stores does lend the town a unique charm. in short, it's a great place to wander around, and so that's just what we did wednesday. yesterday we caught the bus (or rather, buses) to the town of chichicastenango. we were determined to use local public transport... the so-called "chicken buses." the buses are actually old American-style school buses. some still boast the traditional school-bus yellow, but most have been painted psychedelic colors and finished off with designs such as stars, crosses, and flames. most the time the buses were filled, but not too, too packed, though at one point we were on a lil mini-shuttle which amazingly was able to squeeze about 30 people into a 13 person (max) car. but we enjoyed getting up close and personal with the locals, and everyone was really friendly about pointing us in the right direction when the time to transfer came. so finally, two and a half hours later, we arrived. chichi hosts an amazing market every thursday and sunday, and the market was indeed fabulous. we all bought many cloth items of varying uses and colors and good times were had by all.