Chiche weekending

I have just spent my first weekend in Chiché. I couldn`t face another 4 hour journey in chicken bus. Practically the only public transport available and most ubiquitous throughout Guatemala is the chicken bus; recycled school buses from the US, which are transformed into garishly multi-coloured, gleaming mean machines, always emblazoned lovingly with a female name, and filled with religious slogans, plastic crucifixes and prayers to bless this bus and carry its passengers safely to their destination. These benedictions are probably what keep all who travel in these buses alive. Usually the bus drivers act as if they are Grand Prix racing drivers, cutting corners of the treacherously steep, winding mountain roads and overtaking everything that appears in sight. My last experience, last week, coming back to Chiché after Semana Santa, kept me on tenterhooks the whole way, until the driver clipped another vehicle in Chichicastenango whilst attempting to overtake right in front of the police station! Hah! Caught red-handed! So the police ordered all passengers off the bus and detained the driver. I then took two more minibuses to reach my destination. These microbuses, which are usually crammed to over double their designed capacity with additional bodies clinging on to the open doorways, have even less legroom than chicken buses, as they are crammed with as many rows of seats as can possibly fit, leaving enough space only for dwarves or Guatemalans.
So this weekend I decided to stay here, design my garden and find out what really happens here on Saturday nights. Answer: not a lot! However, I had a lovely weekend. The scenery around Chiché is really breathtakingly beautiful; hills dotted with pine trees stretching off into the distance, amazing geological formations manifesting the vivid coloured striations of their composition, revealing tones through white, yellow ochre, pale rose pink and terracotta to grey and black. We went rambling through this scenery to pick guayabas, which were tiny and ripe, with deliciously pink centres.
The rainy season started this week. From one day to the next it changed from hot scorching sun to torrential rain, which typically falls every afternoon/night and in Chiche it is often causes a power failure, which means long evenings listening to the rain pelting on to a tin roof by candlelight. (Sounds very romantic, but in reality...!) They are predicting a hard winter, which means heavy storms and rainfall. Much of Guatemala is still reeling from the devastating effects of hurricane Stan last September, which claimed many lives and much destruction, so the idea of more and worse is worrying. The rainy season lasts for 6 months; the rest of my time in Guatemala! I was just getting used to perpetual summer. Still, I can`t really complain, after all, I have just missed the coldest winter in living memory back home, I believe. (More reason to come and visit! The rain’s not that bad, really!)