If you haven’t read part one of this story yet, you should head over there now.
We arrive at the hotel and José (Karin’s Manager friend) welcomes us warm heartedly with some drinks and a sympathetic ear to our situation.
“Let me see what I can do!” He replies.
In the meantime, Karin and I head downstairs where we get changed into our swimwear and slip into the hot tub. Beers in hand, we start chatting (en Español of course) to another Colombian couple, and a couple from the United States and Spain. I’m working hard to understand what they are trying to say and interject with good commentary in English every once and awhile.
The beers aren’t helping.
After about an hour or so, José comes back with some news.
“Good news you two! I have one room left for $200GTQ.”
I do the quick currency conversion in my head, and reply: “That’s perfect! Does it only have one bed, or are there two?”.
A smile opens up on José’s face: “There is only one bed in the room”. We both look over at Karin to see her reaction.
“It’s up to you, I have no issues sharing a bed”. I say in her direction.
What seemed like an eternity of awkward silence passed before José started laughing.
“Hahaha! I just wanted to see the look on Karin’s face. Don’t worry you two, its a double suite”.
Awesome! Now we can relax. I order a few more beers and we melt into the hot tub. Time passes and people come and go. Karin and I are having a blast under the stars when I see a tall blonde looking over at us.
She has that “I want to go into the hot tub, but don’t want to interrupt anything / be the third wheel” look on her face. I reach out first with a friendly “Hola!” and invite her to join us.
With fresh blood in the tub, the three of us chat for a few more hours while munching on pizza.
Bellies full and with wrinkled skin, we make our way to the room to retire for the night.
We get up the next morning early and hop on the boat back to Panajachel, where our car is waiting for us.
The lot attendant instantly recognizes us from afar and starts yelling in Spanish to us. Oh no. He’s pissed!
Karin sorts out the situation and explains to me later that the attendants waited for us until 7:30pm or so last night. She explained to them that we didn’t have a phone number to call to let them know that we weren’t going to show up.
The kicker? The phone number was on the receipt they gave us yesterday! Whoops! I pay the extra fee for keeping the car overnight and the two of us pile in for the ride home.
With our silly adventure behind us, I drop Karin off at her place and we say our goodbyes.
This is what travelling is all about: The spontaneity, adventure, and the people. I finally feel like I’ve gotten into the “travellers groove” of giving zero-fucks and rolling with the punches. If this little two day adventure is a foreshadow of things to come, then I can’t wait to see what the next ten months will deliver.