dimension unknown

it didn´t look familiar and then it did, and then it didn´t. it definitely didn´t. but the attendant kept shouting ¡trebol, trebol!, so i knew i must be headed in the right direction, in a direction that would dump me at the "terminal" called trebol which is basically a merging of bus routes on two sides of a freeway. there is no building where a traveler enters, considers companies, times, services, and prices. no, there is no construction of sorts, just momentary convergence of red metropolitan buses and multicolored rural-bound buses.

we did arrive at the trebol and i knew it because the attendant was changing the signs on the long front window of the discarded american school bus, and everybody was getting off. but, i didn´t get that familiar sense of oh, this is it, or oh, just around the corner. instead, oh shit, was the sensation i couldn't shake. just when i thought i could sit back in my pride on the bumpy, yet known route back to antigua on public transportation. sure, i could have paid $15 for a a direct-tourist-bubble-shuttle, but i live here now, and this is what i must go through to learn about this place.

i make my way to the bridge that takes my up and over to the other side that looks a bit more familiar. however, all the buses only say GUATE-ESQUITLA or GUATE-SANTA. i walk a bit looking for the one that says GUATE-ANTIGUA, like yesterday. but here there are no direct buses to antigua from here, the young man tells me with his head down as if he is telling me a secret.but i know there are.

i just made this trip yesterday, i respond trying to see if he is lying. and he explains, like so many others, that he will take me to a place where i can transfer to a direct bus. either i trust, or i roam. and roaming in this seemingly chaotic crossing with that look of i don´t know where i am, nor do i know how to get to where i need to go, means i am a target. i conclude, it is better to be in a bus going somewhere.

i take a window seat in the sun and keep my eye on the young man who told me about the connection to make sure that he too will board the same bus. he does, and in five minutes, just like he said, we are off.

instead of cursing myself for not taking the 63 bus, but anyone that said trebol, i try to imagine this as a sunday drive in a new city where one inevitably gets lost, but then finds his/her way back home. it happens almost every sunday, somewhere. i comfort myself considering this as a random walk and mathematicians say that if i continue on my path i will "almost surely" make it back home, just like the drunk who "most certainly" will make it home from the bar. but, this isn´t a square city grid. then, i consider the concept that a given path in one direction and one in the other direction are equal, if the graph is regular. but what is regular?

we travel up and down out of the valley that houses the capital. we pass warehouse upon warehouse; factory upon factory, and i don´t know which are out of use and which are being built or which are abandoned projects like the statures of easter island still sitting in the quarry. guarded subdivisions on one side reveal hope for some and grafitti on the other side reveals the critique of others: ¿por qué gobiernan los ricos si los pobres son la mayoria?

i do my normal looking for land marks, making sure we are heading toward the volcanoes. I check the signage of buses going the other direction, assuring myself that the Q50 in my pocket could take me back to guatemala city and out again, if it comes to that. there is an element of reversibility, since we are not following the signs to villa nueva where this year, 80 families left their homes because of gang member harassment. esquitla, my transfer, would be 36 kilometers away, if we didn´t get off the freeway to pass through the town of palin where the mayor was reelected recently and his house and municipal building burnt in response.

after passing not one, but two water parks, i see the mcdonalds and make my way to the front of the bus to wait for instructions for my next move. it is when the attendants guide me as an older brother or uncle, even as the bus slows, but never stops, and i jump, and they shout, que le vaya bien, that i feel bad that i ever doubted them.

and now i am with others in a standing room only, back-door-still-open direct bus to antigua. after the sister of the kid with the greasiest hair and the biggest brown eyes that won´t stop looking at me, give me their seat, i can observe the terrain again. it soon reminds me of california wine country with tourist buses twisting through golden hills and spanish hacienda walls enclosing the goods. but this is coffee country during harvest season, and the smell of separated coffee berries rotting like sweet diarrhea, doesn´t let you forget it, doesn´t make you want to stop for a tasting.

but we soon stop and it is the market. it is antigua entered from behind the volcano on a new road i will explore tomorrow.

after rehydrating with a 75 cent papaya, banana, and pineapple shake, i flop on my new twin sized bed laughing to myself. it is 3:00 in the afternoon, and it seems as if santigao left days ago when he is in fact only ten minutes in the air headed south to head north. and i don´t know how to answer the señora of the hostel regarding when i will see him again. how to explain that we both are on our own random walks, or maybe we are birds who forever wander in the sky, never to find our nests.


note: trebol in spanish means three leaf clover
30 deciembre, 2007