So off to the local market to find the chicken bus that would take us to the macadamia farm. Behind the local market is the "bus stop" and there are about 50 buses at any given time. It is complete chaos. Chicken Buses are independently owned so it is always a race to get the most people and get out of there. They are not making any money if they don't drive people to their destination.They are all brightly painted like the Partridge Family bus. We ask where the bus to the farm is and the man responds in Spanish the names of 2 women. Many of the buses have female names. So instead of looking for the name of the town on the bus, we were searching for a bus named Esther or Maria or something like that. So we start walking in a very crowded area, 15 gringos, sticking out like a sore thumb. We walk by this flat bed truck and the driver offers us a ride. He doesn't know where we are going but I am sure it is worth the gamble because he is trying to earn a living. He agrees to take us there for 10Q per person, which is about $1.20. We all look at each other, trying to decide if this is the way to go, is it safe....we all agree we will take the truck. We load in the back of the truck and as we pull away with our driver Luis, all the natives in the area are laughing because it is not often you see this. In Guatemala trucks are usually filled with Guatemalans not gringos.
About 5 minutes after we board the bus, and get on the road the driver stops the truck on a side road. We were a little nervous, but the driver jumped out of the car and pulled a rock out of the tire so we could keep driving. We drove about 15 minutes with the wind in our hair, laughing at ourselves the whole way and we came to the Valhalla Macadamia Nut Farm. We pulled into a dirt road and there is was. We invited our driver, Luis, to have breakfast with us because we wanted to be sure that eh would wait and take us back to town. He was happy to do it. The first sign we saw was telling us that they count every nut. Fifteen had just arrived...
It looked really interesting a as we wind our way down the dirt path. There were macadamia nuts everywhere. It was a quirky little place, however we found our way to the restaurant and found a table big enough for all of us under the trees with the sun shining through. Most of us ordered our pancakes, we ordered BLT and a plate of pappas fritas (french fries) While we waited for them to prepare 36 pancakes plus we wondered around the property, it was really pretty!! They had a store where we sampled some macadamia nuts plain and with chocolate and they had soaps and lotions all of course made from macadamia nuts. Our pancakes arrived looking like they were prepared by some famous chef, the "plating" was perfect. They had macadamia butter on them in a striped pattern with a dollop f fresh blue berries in the middle. Everybody enjoyed them as we sat and talked with our bus driver, Luis. I am not quite sure what he thought of this group of gringos that were willing to hop in the back of his truck and take a ride, and like the song says, "laughing all the way" but he was equally as willing to get to know us. the owner of the farm sat and down and joined us...a quirky American dude who came here from San Francisco 30 years ago for 3 days and says," I am a day and a half in." He and his wife own the farm. He was, uhh, a little bit strange. A 3 day beard with a baseball cap, he really just seemed to be a little cuckoo. I can't quite put my finger on it. He did tell us though that is we told our bodies to stop feeling badly they would, and that if we ate a tablespoon of red beans everyday it would be good for our health and that there is no talking to a liberal.
We finished up our breakfast at 2PM and realized that we had managed to combine breakfast and lunch together. On the way out to the truck we spotted an old amusement ride, probably from the 1920's. It was the swing ride, individual swings hanging from a chain. I loved these when I was a kid, they had them at Bertrand's Island and they went out over the lake...loved!!!I wasn't sure if my parents put me on them to enjoy the swing or in hopes that I would fall in the lake and they would have a good laugh. The bus driver put Marissa on them and here is the funny thing, he then turned a big crank to make them go around , it was really cute!
We climbed back onto our bus and off we went back to Antigua talking and laughing about this experience. It is interesting when you drive through the small towns in Guatemala because you not only see the lifestyle of the Guatemalan people you see signs from the past. For example, we stopped at an ESSO gas station to get gas...bringing up memories of "having a tiger in your tank" and the furry tail some people had hanging out of their gas tank so many years ago.
It was really a great time..we laughed because if climbing into the back of that truck turned out to be a bad idea everyone would have said "what the heck were they thinking?" but as it turned out it was a great idea!
Glad you went! Totally worth it, right! Nuts EVERYWHERE.
ReplyDelete