Mexico to Guatemala in too many hours…
Twelve hour bus ride from Pochutla, Oaxaca, Mexico south to Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. Eat breakfast in grimey bus station while people watch. Light-speed taxi ride to the Guatemalan border. Walk across border, which consists of a bridge, in stagnant heat. Sweat furiously. Get forced/scammed by 3 Guatemalan men to pay them a couple hundred Queztales to get our passports stamped. Damn. Spend an hour in Ciudad Uman trying to find the least sketchy bus to take us East. Zero English. Finally take a seat on a semi-sketchy bus that stops every half hour for at least twenty minutes and sits in the scorching heat while children shove bags of chips and soda pops in faces. Give fake american one dollar coins in exchange for a cold orange soda. Divide soda by four. Thirst Quenched. (p.s. at this point we have no real money. no joke. ATM? Where?). Finally make it to Cocales in time for the very last chicken bus to depart for Lago de Atitlan. Sit in crammed chicken bus on top of large backpacks as herds of cockroaches do the congo around our legs. Make it to the lake. Stoked.