I Love Adventure

I love adventure. Not the “I’m going to jump 12,000 feet out of this airplane” or the “heart-stopping plunge off a high bridge with only a thin, elastic rope around my legs to keep me from becoming a pile of mush on the ground below” kind of adventure. I just enjoy the everyday adventures that come with life…or in my case, the misadventures. Maybe that should be the name of my blog… “The MisAdventurer.” It seems that no matter where I go or what I do…there is always some little glitch that makes my adventure become a misadventure. But that’s what makes life interesting, right? Oh…and it usually happens when I’m with my sisters. I don’t know what it is about the 3 of us going on trips together…but something always happens! Would I trade my misadventures for the thrill-seeking kind? Or the stay-at-home-and-never-experience-anything kind? Not for anything!

Most of my journeys that I have taken have been stateside. However, I have traveled south of the border once or twice. It started with my church mission to Guatemala. That was back in ’96-’97. And though that was an amazing 18-months of my life (with quite a few misadventures there, as well, now that I think about it…getting caught in a flood in the jungle on a bus in the middle of the night…burning my companion’s bed down…ants…millions and millions of ants...maybe those stories will make it here too someday), what was really awesome was the chance I had to travel back there again in 2004 for a mission reunion…and this time I brought my sisters along.

Palacio Nacional in Guatemala City

We arrived in Guatemala City two days after Christmas in 2004. And our (mis)adventure wasted no time in beginning. We huddled around the conveyor built with everyone else waiting for our luggage to make its appearance. Steph's came...Katy's came...we waited...and waited…and waited. The plane left. The terminal emptied...and still we waited. That nice, bright red bag I had packed my 10 days worth of clothes and other necessities in? You guessed it…nowhere to be seen. My wonderful Latin American adventure wasn’t starting out so wonderfully. I quickly found the lost baggage desk and after speaking with someone (who, thankfully, spoke English…even though I speak (spoke?) Spanish…I wasn’t ready to test it out on something as important as my lost luggage!), we found out that my luggage never made it on the plane from Salt Lake City to Atlanta, and so missed the flight to Guatemala. They promised it would be at my hotel the next day. With that squared away…and uttering many heartfelt prayers that my luggage really would turn up the next day…we exited the terminal (passing the security guards with machine guns...you heard me...I remembered that being common and was no surprise to me...as for my sisters...) to the realization that our chartered bus with the rest of our group was...gone. 

Remember when I said I spoke Spanish? It had been about 7 years since I really had used it. And I was about to find out very quickly whether or not I still could. I approached a line of taxis outside the airport, opened my mouth to speak…and out poured Spanish. True…not the best Spanish, grammatically, and with every ounce of gringaness in me. But it worked. I was able to talk to the driver, negotiate a price, tell him the address of our hotel and get ourselves there. What’s really amazing is how, no matter how long you’ve been away from a certain element, once you get back into it…it’s like you never left. I instantly felt myself slipping into the familiar ways of the country and being able to recall how to speak and understand. It was wonderful…amazing…and it (sort of) made up for losing my luggage.

After a bit of a harrowing taxi ride through the streets of the city, we made it to our (little) hotel. It was very quaint...very picturesque...and veeerrryyy little.

I wish I had a picture of our room to show you...for some reason I never did get one. Let me assure you that it was small. Tiny. Almost microscopic. Okay...not that small. Let's just say the 2 beds were somewhere between a twin and a full...and the two of them barely fit in the room together! Steph was lucky...she got a bed to herself. Katy and I had to share. Good thing we're sisters.

Our first excursion in the Land of Eternal Spring would be the next day to Tikal National Park. One of my favorite places. I had the chance to visit it before when I was there on my mission. I couldn't wait to head back, this time with my sisters. But...that's a story for another day.