Guatemala ... one more time

Independent of my experiences in Belize, I don't know that I would have gone there had I known that I'd have to return to Guatemala in order to go to Honduras. At the very least, I may have gone later. It was expensive, relatively speaking, to cross the Belize - Guatemala border. I didn't enjoy border crossings as a rule, and to have to make the same one did nothing for me.

One issue that bugs me at the border is the money exchange. When my friend wired me money, it came as Belize dollars, so that is what I had to exchange, but I understood that people at the border are trying to make money, too, so you're just not going to get the best rate there. I understood, too, that the only trust-worthy option for exchanging money is a bank, but when I returned to Santa Ana, I learned that banks won't exchange anything other than US dollars, so I had to go in search of US dollars. That search included the bus station, the airport two miles out of town, and some man in Flores who did that sort of thing. I finally exchanged the Belize dollars to US Dollars at a rate not nearly as good as I could have gotten at the border but better than I would have gotten at the bus station.

I went to the bank, then. I told the man at the counter what I wanted to do and that my Spanish was not great. That's true just in general, and it gets worse as I get nervous, tired, overwhelmed. He started to speak to me rapidly in Spanish, and when I asked him to speak more slowly, he continued with no change in his tone or rate of speech. I snapped at him that I needed him to speak more slowly. I had running thoughts about the ignorance of people who can't / won't / don't accommodate the tourists who are probably the best hope they have for raising money and improving things. This man completed his part of my transaction and then sent me to another teller to actually get the cash. I was equally impatient with this second man, somehow making it his fault that I had to wait because he didn't have enough money in his draw to complete my transaction. I apologized for my mad mood and left the bank feeling ... well, like an ugly American.

My hotel room with private bath was not great. The bedspread had on it little black hairs that transferred to my pale skin. There were no sheets on the bed, and when I asked for some, I was given another blanket. I know the word for sheets. I specifically learned it when I asked for different sheets at the hostel that had bedbugs. However, I gave up tying to make that clear to the girl to whom I was speaking. A bunch of kids were playing pool or Foosball or something that made a racket, and they didn't stop doing it after I asked them to and reminded them that people were trying to sleep. The bathroom was private, but the shower was just a pipe with cold water, and no water was available in the morning. I heard four gunshots outside the hotel, and that was the note on which I willed myself to sleep and thanked God that I was getting to leave Guatemala in the morning.