Las lanchas (y... se fue la luz!... y... no hay internet en el bus!)

Hola amigos! It´s probably best to pretend this was written a few nights ago. Alas, a lack of internet access (or the energy to hunt it down) while on the road, and a pair of power outages in Managua last night kept me from writing it until today!

The topic? One of my new favorite forms of travel: La lancha. A lancha (there are many) is sort of like a chicken bus for the water, complete with conductors running up and down the beach loudly advertising their boats and subtly ignoring the question of price until you bring it up. Fortunately, the lanchas don´t seem to be quite as packed as the chicken buses. Each seats about 20 people in a few rows of bench seats, and drivers seem to realize that to put too many more in would result in putting the little motor boat at the bottom of the lake.

I took my first lancha Saturday afternoon, en route to Santiago Atilan on Lago Atilan, Guatemala´s stunning candidate for wonder of the natural world. The lake earns it´s reputation: A giant crater lake, surrounded by volcanoes and a lush green forest, all many thousand feet above sea level, resulting in a pocked of the world filled with natural beauty and (what I have been told is) an eternal spring.

On my first ride, I somehow managed to find myself the only passenger in the boat of a Guatemalteco on his way home (although, I´d be lying if I didn´t admit to wondering if this might be an elaborate plan to mug me... more on criminal acts later). As a general rule, I don´t think I get sea sick. At least, I´ve never before been sick on a oat. So, I have to guess that the queasy feeling in my stomach came more form the sounds of cracking wood I heard each time the boat crested a wave than it did from the waves themselves! The next ride was much smoother. Riding a chicken bus a few days later, I came to really miss the happy, spacious lanchas!