Tres Dias ( 3 Days) Londres - Guatemala

I was supposed to fly London – JFK – Miami – Guatemala City – bus to Panajachel - boat to San Pedro.... in a day, impossible you say, even with gaining 6 hours time difference, well yeh, it was a bit of a long shot….

I arrived at JFK very excited just to be standing on New York Soil firstly coz I hate being in the air and secondly as I have never been to The Big Apple. Anyway, no time to be excited I had 2 hours to change planes and terminals and get through the notorious immigration process with my new chipped passport and all on 10mg of Valium!! So, full steam ahead.

Once I got to the gate an announcement told us that we had to change gates and it was a 30min walk to do in 15mins. Grabbing a very confused but very smiley German girl who didn’t understand the announcement I hot footed it to our new allotted gate. It was kind of a bit like a comedy assort course as we had to negotiate people in wheel chairs, doors leading nowhere, wrong way escalators, various other hazards and as I very quickly discovered the New Yorkish are very unhelpful so it took a while but eventually after 15 mins of running we made it to the new allotted gate. We needn’t have bothered as they delayed the JFK - Miami plane indefinitely meaning that I would miss my connection (of 1hr) in Miami to Guatemala.

It was fairly chaotic loads of unhappy passengers shouting and gesticulating madly to deal with so the American Airlines staff did the best thing they could, they hid, leaving us all to ponder our futures together at gate number 12.

When they eventually turned up to check us in 3 hours later it was madness. I decided to opt out at that point and sat at the back with the German girl who could only speak pigeon English. We managed to find out we had one thing in common though, we had both met Robbie Williams. I had worked with him and she had won a date with him, well I say a date but it turns out that they weren’t really alone as 26 other girls had won the same 50min date which took place at the sound check to his Berlin performance of his Intensive Care tour. She got to look at him in a small room but they were not aloud to ask for autographs or take pictures and his management were worried he would be too exhausted if he talked too much, so pretty uneventful really but hey she was happy enough.

I decided that instead of flying to Miami and doing an over-night there I would stay in NY and see the sights. I gave my seat on the plane to a hysterical girl on standby and off I went luggage less to the sky train!!

The hotel was OK nothing fantastic but I was really happy to be on the ground and in NY so didn’t really care. After a few enquires into taxis to Manhattan which were over $110 for a return trip, I managed to persuade George the ‘off duty bell boy’ to take me in his Cadillac to see the sights for free. Bless him, he did and he did the whole tour guide talk too! We went over the Queens Borough Bridge, to The Rockefeller Center, Time square, the Empire State building and 5th Avenue it was great and so was he, I didn’t realize until the following day though once I was without the effects of Valium, exactly how fuzzy I was the night before and how cheeky I had been. Oh well se la VI.

Off I went the next morning to the airport just 30 mins before boarding as I already had a boarding pass, gate info, and no luggage to check so it was quick and 2 plane rides later and some lost luggage too, I arrived at 8pm in Guatemala City. I was met by my hotel shuttle bus and driver which was then escorted by 2 armed public security guards to my hotel. I asked Rodrigo my driver why they were there and he simply replied "it’s for your safety Mam".

The next morning, a bit nervous about the stories I had read and the previous nights escort, I took my bus from the City to Panajachel. I was told not to go through Patzun as the roads were very isolated and prone to Armed Bandits so I practiced my 2 sentences about not wanting to go that route over and over and conveyed this to my driver several times. He told me to calm down ‘Tranquilo’ and that all was ‘Bueno’. After 2 hours of driving we came across a huge sign in the road as big as a building so you couldn’t miss it, welcome to Patzun. I spent the next hour and a half with my heart in my mouth watching out of the window men with machetes walking along the road (obviously workers) with their heads covered (to avoid sun stroke) feeling like our bus, full of 13 tourists was taunting and tempting them as we passed.

Anyway we made it to Panajachel eventually and I jumped out of the bus so quickly and happy to be out that I left half my stuff inside (none of which I have now). A small sacrifice for the feeling of security I gained from no longer being a sitting duck in a truck.
It took about another 2 hours to make the 30min crossing in the boat as we had to wait for it to be absolutely full to bursting point before they would leave. A full and almost sinking boat makes about $12 I worked out which I wanted to pay myself just to leave there and then but thought it best not to get out my back up cash which was strapped to my leg under my clothes at the time.
Anyway I am here now and happy to be alive and well!!

Finally in SAN PEDRO LA LAGUNA and what an Awesome, Magnificent and Spectacular view, a lake completely surrounded by Volcanoes, Wow, this is what its all been for and it was definitely worth every single second of my journey so far!!

‘It’s really too much of a good thing. It touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque.’
Adolph Huxley