Santiago de los Caballeros de Antigua

The rest of my class are trapped in the in the final dwindling moments of their much dreaded poverty and health paper. Luckily, I am not bound by the same paper, so this was an adventure weekend.

Aside: I became violently ill on thursday night, puked my guts out. First time on this trip, so I consider it a minor victory.

Santiago de los Caballeros de Antigua

I was woken up on sunday by a call from Sasha. She was getting on a bus in 45min to go across the country to play in a soccer game, she asked me if a wanted to go, I said yes.

So we grabbed some coffee for Caesar at his little shop, and then hopped in a Tuk Tuk. For the record, Coffee in tuk tuk on cobbled streets is a bad combination. Coffee was everywhere, including the driver but we all had a laugh.

The ride to the match was long and quiet, but. We hopped off the bus to have the traditional pre-game meal. Fried Chicken, courtesy of Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan answer to KFC. The fried chicken didn't help the stomach. Back on the bus for an hour or so before reaching the town.

After unloading into the stadium, I quickly realized we were no longer at altitude and that pants were a terrible choice for the hot muggy tropical climate of the low lands. After swating out what little water I had left in my body during a Hack session with Nico, we set off on a quest for Water. The quest was short lived as water was really easy to find, so we returned to the stadium, disheartened.

We were entertained by the warmup drills, and then the match started. Locals flooded into the stand...

About 5 minutes into the match...the sky openend up. The rain was deafening on the tin lamina overhead. They usually stop the game when it really starts pouring...but no one here seemed to care, so the game went on. It became a shit show, the fouls seemed all the more epic as tackled players skipped across the puddles on their backs, like stones on a pond.

As if the first aid stretcher didn't get enough use during normal matches, the rate of injury picked up a lot after the rain started. It was a...for lack of a more polite word...a veritable shit show. Santiago lost 3-nil and the home crowd loved it.

On the way back home, the spirits of the team were still very high and we decided to celebrate with... more Pollo Campero. There was a dance party on the bus ride home, unforgettable.

Info on the Cielo Grande Ride coming up tomorrow!

1000m of elevation gained over 48km (So that was what exertion at altitude feels like!)