Add to the list of chains I've seen here, this time on my bus ride out of Guatemala City (towards Xela): Taco Bell, Ace hardware, Little Caesars, and Hooters. That's right, Hooters. God BLESS America!
Also, let me tell you how a 4 hour bus ride becomes 5 hours: the driver spends an hour tooling around town, trying to fill up the bus before he leaves. While we did that, people came on board to sell us stuff (par for the course in all of Latin America apparently), although the vendors were probably dissapointed to see just 5 of us on board. But we did have the lovely opportunity to purchase newspapers, sodas, notebooks, gum, coconut wafers, hard candy, or tip the guy who got on and blessed our voyage with his Bible.
The bus was an old Greyhound, and in fact the company seemed affiliated with the US version, judging by the office. I chose it based on proximity to my hotel. It was a first class service, but I wans't about to spend two hours looking for a cheaper service, arguing with taxi drivers, and getting a ride that takes twice as long (second class buses stop for anything: random people in the street, the driver is bored, clouds), and then save $2. It was only a $7 ticket, and I got a bathroom and a dubbed Jean Claude Van Damme action movie to watch. Before I fell asleep, I saw billboards advertising shwank suburban housing (the type 94% of the population will never see, let alone afford), and one for a local cola brand that is, apparantly, 'the official drink of everything.' There was also one with a bunch of white girls in bikinis, who may or may not have had Halls cough drops in their mouths (colds are sexy when you have Halls!!)
The scenery was nothing special, although I did notice that farm plots tend to be at 50 degree angles here in the highlands - can they irrigate those? They're sure not getting a tractor up there. Even if there was something special to see, I wouldn't have been able to since I don't think the windows on the bus had been washed since the last rainy season. The buildup of grime was undoubtedly from the under-construction highway, which alternated between spanking-new blacktop and bone-rattling washboard dust the entire ride.
Oh, I should lay this out: my plan is to get to Xela and find a Spanish school where I can start Monday, and take a month of lessons, and do daytrips up the volcanos and to other places like hotsprings and markets in the meantime. Then I'm planning on going to Lake Atitlan for a few days, a huge lake with several small towns around it, and probably a night and two days in Antigua, the old colonial capital, and then head to a small town on the Pacific coast called Sipacate to surf for a month. That month might get divided between Sipacate and La Libertad, in El Salvador, depending. Then I have a month to check out Mayan ruins and the Caribbean coast of Honduras before I fly home. Bueno?
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Bueno!
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