Familiar Faces; Tourist Trail Places

Lights, camera, action! The world came out of the mist of a heavy drunken sleep, slapping us in the face with the harsh reality that after waking stupidly early, popping for a bite with Alex and Stina and then returning to tend to our banging heads for a while longer, we were now 20 minutes and a very messy room away from checking out and getting on a long distance shuttle bus to Antigua. The sense of urgency provided us with a momentary distraction from what can only be described as a Category 5 hangover, and we managed, in the nick of time, to get out and on to the road for midday. Or did we? Half an hour passed with us barely surviving by the side of the road before I called the agency to be informed that Emily's iPod was in fact an hour fast, and that precious, special, delicious hour that we could have spent sleeping was instead spent by the side of the road sitting on our bags. Fortunately for me I was still pretty drunk and couldn't have cared less, so happily trotted off to purchase a big sandwich. After returning to a brief but satisfying frenzied attack on the sandwich, we waited for our bus to arrive. I managed to pass the time by sharpening my knife and singing Bohemian Rhapsody to passers by (including a couple of children justifiably scared of the lunatic singing man with the blade). The bus arrived and we hopped on to be greeted by a friendly group of girls, who before long were joining in on a sing song of unbreak my heart. Emily was notably quiet, which meant one thing: she was a burp away from filling a plastic bag, and I prepared for the worst. What I was not prepared for was my stomach going first. Two stops, two large messes and an icecream later (against the advice of the rest of the bus) I was feeling fine, and with Emily's understandable silence we passed the rest of the day bumping along towards Antigua. We arrived late (again), ate and passed out to the gentle sounds of the barking dog right outside our door. Bliss.

Antigua, the next day, was packed with tourists, clad with their fanny packs (bum bags), professional camera equipment set to automatic (pet hate of mine) and their entourage of people trying to sell them crap. In our typically dishevelled state we avoided harassment and moved to a super cheap but very basic hostel, and split off so I could watch Lewis Hamilton make history, and Emily ambled around getting to know the city. After missing each other a few times we ate, watched a DVD at a cool local hostel and passed out fairly early. Antigua uncovered a myriad of truths while we were there, I'm not sure how much this was the case with Emily, but while we were there we did nothing. The town was a volcano nested, colonial, cobble stoned haven that, in spite of the large U.S. population, was absolutely beautiful with so much to do. This, however, didn't really seem to matter as although we could appreciate the aesthetic draw of the area, doing anything just seemed like too much of an effort. It was pretty clear that we were missing the familiarity of home, whatever that was. With the benefit of hindsight I'm not too sure how much of that was due to me, and how much was Emily, but regardless, it was very clear that I was, in my mind, nearing the end of my tolerance towards travelling.

This was until we both received a more than welcome dose of familiarity, an old friend who we hadn't known long but who we had both wanted to spend more time with. It's funny how often people cite the term “it's a small world”, you hear it when people bump into each other at their local shops and it's probably so, but when travelling, the world gets a lot bigger and the supposed chances of bumping into someone decrease dramatically. This was the case when bumping into an old friend in an internet café. We had met Scott in Montanita, Ecuador, when he came down to see a friend of his who we happened to be partying with. He was only staying for a few weeks and we parted company around two or so days after meeting. Scott had then returned home, decided to go travelling himself and set off in a camper van from Canada through the USA. He had then carried on through Mexico to Guatemala, Antigua on this particular day, and was happily using the internet when he heard his name. The person saying it was me. Months after meeting in Montanita, Emily and I had travelled North through Ecuador, Columbia, sailed to Panama and smashed through Central America at a rather hard pace, and here we were in the same internet cafe. At the same time Emily was in a coffee shop using WiFi literally just about to write to his friend / ex wife, Kelly, to tell her that she had just uploaded the photos of Montanita. At that moment Emily received a message from me down the road saying that I had just bumped into Scott and began looking around the café to see how and where I could be to know this before realising that she hadn't actually started writing the message and that there was no way of me knowing. As it happened, after meeting Scott and parting after a short amount of time Emily and I had, on various occasions, said how it would have been nice to spend more time with Scott and to get to know him better. That chance had now arisen on a different continent, moving in different directions in a random internet café on a side street in Antigua.

Now I don't believe in fate, I don't really believe in anything like that, it doesn't make sense to me and I'd happily prefer to think of myself as the master of my future moving in my own direction on whatever stepping stones appeared in front of me. I can't really imagine myself taking comfort in predestinations or things being in the control of something that I can't see, touch, taste or smell, but sometimes you find yourself in the situations wondering how and why on earth things had come together in the way that they had. This was one of these moments when a sliver of doubt left me with questions. Emily and I had met because we had both chosen routes different from that expected, me seeking solace and new friends instead of going with a group of people who I had known for a fair amount of time, Emily branching away from the people she was travelling with, and being forgotten the day before when she was supposed to do her trek. When meeting Scott, Emily and I had been experiencing some tension considering our immediate proximity after meeting, uncertainties over the future and my natural inability to adapt to terrifically uncomfortable bus journeys and mundane food for long periods of time. If I had believed in fate then maybe, perhaps, I would have seen it as so and our unlikely meeting with Scott as a reminder of this, and even a push in the right direction for us, who knows. I certainly considered it and, in spite of the fact that there has never been a moment when I haven't wanted to be with Emily since meeting her (soft but resolutely and undoubtedly true), maybe a stark reminder that I had found something special and should treasure it more. Either way, fate or not, questions had been asked that had needed to be asked, and answered with clarity.

Emily and I were delighted to see Scott, we arranged to meet later on for food and drinks, and went our separate ways (well, Emily and I obviously didn't). We converged later that evening, ate and made our way out for drinks, catching up with Scott was brilliant and later on that evening we popped into the hostel we ha been to the previous night, sat under the stars drinking happy hour beers and had a deep, yet inebriated, conversation around a burning fire. A chilled, but really invigorating night for all concerned. We had discussed the possibility of going on to San Pedro, a cool chill out place on a lake with Scott once Obama had taken the White house. After another lazy day we met with Scott, after bumping into Alex and Stina from the previous post, to sit back and watch the election. Obama stormed the elections, and Emily and I retired for an early night planning to meet with Scott the next morning. The next morning came, however, and after waiting for Scott for a long time he had obviously slept in following another heavy night. Both of our minds were watching the calendar and although we wanted to travel on with Scott for a while, we decided that we didn't really have time if we wanted to visit Tikal and spend some time on Mexico's coastline. We decided, packed and began walking to the bus station. As we turned the corner to the station we luckily bumped into Scott and bode farewell sadly before going our separate ways. We had had a really good time in Antigua, along with some very welcome surprises, yet, as was always the case, the clock was ticking and it was time to move on.