What a day yesterday.

At our Friday dinner with La Escuela it was decided that we would take a trip to the beach on Sunday. So the bus came round to everyones houses at around 7am and we were off to a little private beach resort where the director of the school Flory knew the owner. First stop just outside of town we stopped for a cup of coffee to help with the waking process. Everyone was still feeling a bit out of sorts from our post dinner birthday celebration for one of the students. But that's another story.

So we've begun the descent from 3000 Meters in Xela down to the coast where a beautiful day awaits us, filled with sunshine, swimming and some breakfast. We're about 45 minutes into the trip when we pull around a corner to two big surprises...

"Look! Look! The volcano is erupting!" shouted one of the passengers.

I was one of the people in the van looking out the opposite window at a man in a red bandana with a shotgun pointing at the car stopped, going the other direction. At first I thought it was the police and then soon realized that this was definitely not some police checkpoint. The volcano could wait.

One man was standing in front of the car wearing what looked like a bandana around his face, but upon further inspection was just his T-Shirt. The other bandido was at the car with a giant pistol shoved in the window of the passenger side. None of the people in our van who were watching the robbery on the left wanted to say anything, and the others were too busy watching the plumes of smoke erupt from the mountain on our right. We were waved through by the shirtless man with one hand while he steadied the shotgun in his other. We continued through the crime scene and as we passed the robbers ran off into the jungle with their loot. When we had gotten a safe distance away, our driver stopped the van infront of a little fruit market. Those who didn't see the bandits were now well aware of what had happened while they had eyes fixed on the active volcano. We were all a little shook up and hesitant to get out of the car to snap some photos of the smoke rising up from the gray mountain.

After pictures were taken, we all got back into the van and swapped stories of what we had just witnessed, all in the space of 5 minutes. Some people don't see either of those things in their entire lives and here we saw it all in what seemed like as long as a commercial break. Wow.

The rest of the drive was without incident and we had let it slip to the back of our minds while we spend the day swimming in the ocean, playing football with a coconut and eating fresh fish and chicken. When we all got back in the van, the conversations returned to the armed, masked men we witnessed at 7:30 that morning. We were all well aware of the fact that we would be travelling through the same pass, though this time it would be dark and we would be far more susceptible to an attack. Flory, the director of the school had phone to report the incident though, and when she did asked for the police to follow us back to Xela. We pulled up to the designated meeting point and the cops waved us through and then tailed us the whole way, switching cars three times along the route. It was actually executed fairly well as one car would flash its lights, the other would pick up where they left off. We arrived safely back into Xela with white knuckles slowly returning to their original colour and stories we all couldn't wait to share with friends around the world.

So that was our Sunday in GUatemala, a little un-nerving considering it's the same road we'll be leaving on in a week. But, don't worry I know we'll be fine. I was extremely impressed with how well the whole situation was handled by our driver and the Flory, so we're in good hands. I just wish we had a faster car. Ha.

More later...