I don't even know where to begin. I will tell it backwards, in segments.
Tuesday 12:00pm:
We have explained to Jimmy what happened, we got our money back, and we walked to my apartment.
Tuesday (today) 11:30am:
"Who the h*ll are you?!?!" echoes over and over again in my head as I jump off the colectivo and begin walking quickly towards the hostel we bought the tour from. The voice won't go away. It brings tears to my eyes everytime I let my mind take it further than the voice. We get to the hostel, filthy, no makeup, wet, haven't slept since 3:00am, and I ask for Jimmy.
I wait and remember the scripture in Psalm 91 that I memorized right before I came to Guatemala on Sept 1. "You will not fear the terror that flies by night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness..."
Tuesday 10:00am:
The tires on the van are squealing against the wet rocks on the steep incline and our van begins to roll backwards. There is too much weight in it. The driver hits the brakes, but the van rolls backwards and down and the back tires start slipping. We are in the backseat, in the clouds, on the unpaved muddy, wet, rock road which is about 15ft wide. There is no guard rail, and the only thing I can see is the top of the banana trees in the valley and the side of the mountain across from us.
Tuesday 9:00am: (bus 2- from Lanquin to Coban)
We breath a sigh of relief as we think we are finally on our way back from a nightmare. We are the only ones in the colectivo and are headed back to Coban. Two american lesbians hop in the seat right in front of us, and they kiss. Next thing we know, the van is filled tightly, with barely enough room to sit, foreigners from all over the world talking about how drunk they were the night before and how they shouldn't have smoked as much as they did. I thought to myself, "It can't possibly get worse than this."
Tuesday 8:15am: (bus 1- from Semuc to Lanquin)
The driver driving us from Semuc Champey keeps looking at me in the rearveiw mirror. I'm sitting next to two girls from France and in the front is a really nice lady and her young son (maybe 10 years old) from California that we ended up spending quite a bit of time with in Semuc. The driver finally turns and asks me in Spanish if I am scared. The two girls turn to look at me as I respond in Spanish, "I was scared earlier, but not now." This sparks the very discouraging conversation between myself and the two girls which ended with one of the girls cursing and saying, "I hate Guatemala, this is the most dangerous, crime-filled country in the world, and Guatemala City is the number one most dangerous city ever." I just sat silently and tried to remind myself of Psalm 91, "If you make the MOST HIGH your dwelling-- even the Lord, who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent..." Geoffrey stood in the back of the pickup, getting tossed around and soaking wet from the rain and the rocky mountain ride.
Tuesday 7:00am:
The hostel manager softly and gently tells me not to worry about anything, he will call Jimmy and arrange our transportation out of here. He can tell I am trying hard not to cry. I walk over to where we are waiting for our ride out of the hole and I realize I am still in my pajama shirt. I shift through the bag and get a shirt and manuever myself into it and out of my pajama shirt right there in the restaurant. I didn't care. I wasn't going to go into the bathroom away from everyone. The poor lady from California is trying so hard to explain herself to the man. They feel so bad for her. They give her a pair of shoes she can take with her so she doesn't have to wear mine anymore.
Tuesday 6:00am:
I finally turn my flashlight off because the sun is coming up. After 10pm at night the hostel has no electricity and it is pitch black and raining in the valley of those mountains where we are. My flashlight had been on for hours, I wasn't fixing to turn my only weapon off until the sun was fully up and the flashlight served no purpose. We listened intently for a cell phone alarm to go off. We heard nothing. Meanwhile the woman and her boy walked up to the office part to see if they could hear anything, nothing. We had been sitting outside since 5:30.
Tuesday 5:00am:
We stood dripping wet in the rain with all our stuff, and tears were running down my face. We were not getting out of here. The 5am bus left and we weren't on it. It was dark and we couldn't see a thing.
Tuesday 4:45am:
It is pitch black, it is raining. Someone shines a flashlight into our open-air bungalow and asks if we are taking the 5:00am bus out of here. I shined my light back at him and said with desperation, "No, but we want to!!" He told us to come now. Geoffrey and I packed up our stuff and ran out in our pajamas as fast as we possibly could in the black night with only a small flashlight. Meanwhile, the young man shined the light in the bedroom next to ours where the woman and her young son stayed. The bungalow is the roof of a two room habitation. The roof is made completely of thatched, dried banana leaves and has a thin wooden divider-wall that turns the attic-like habitation into two sleepable rooms. Each room has a ladder going up into it with a heavy sliding door that you reach up and slide open when going in and you bend over and slide the other way to shut it when your up inside. The woman yells furiously at the young man shining his flashlight in, "GIVE ME MY STUFF!!!" even louder she screaches, "YOU FREAKING IDIOT, I WANT MY STUFF!!!" It was rage. We found out later that the guy went back to the place where the employees sleep and he was crying. As we hurried to throw our things into the backpack, I could barely breath. Everywhere I shined the flashlight there was a roach, or two roaches. I set the back pack on the bed and a huge cockroach scurried across the comforter. I grabbed my purse and a roach fluttered off it and landed on the covers. They were everywhere. How could I have slept in that bed? The roaches were all over the blankets on the bed and our stuff!!
Tuesday 4:15am:
I lay there shaking, clinging tightly to my little flashlight, crying and crying. Geoffrey laid beside me and put his arm around me trying to calm me. I couldn't sleep, there is no way I could sleep. How could I live here? I will never survive. I knew it was dangerous...what was I thinking? Geoffrey leaves next Tuesday and I will be all alone. I can't do it, I will not make it. I will be too terrified to leave my apartment in the day and too terrified to move at night. I could not stop crying. All I felt was terror.
(We will skip to Monday night now, the night before)
Monday 5:00pm
We walk to the office/restaurant part of this pretty cool hostel in the bottom of the jungle. We were in the most beautiful hole in the world, surrounded by hidden treasures that other people don't even know exist. How could God put something so awesome and incredible in such a poor, desperate, raunch place? These people have nothing, but they have something so amazing in their land that nowhere else in the world has. I came here two years ago with Emily and stayed in this same hostel. Unfortuneately, a hurricane came through and hundreds of people died so we were not able to enter the park to see the beauty of this place. But I was excited as Geoffrey and I walked to dinner because I remembered how good the food was here and how friendly the people are. We placed our orders and were instructed to wait until 7:00 to get our food.
Monday 5:30pm:
The nice California lady and her son that we met at lunch earlier came to sit with us. We were all smiles to listen to their stories and talk to them and share ours. They had been staying in Semuc for the past 4 days and had plans to leave Tuesday morning at 7:00am. We told them we were going to leave at 3:00pm Tuesday to go to the caves in Lanquin and explore. We wanted to spend the morning going back to the natural water pools to swim in the crystal clear, bright blue water surrounded by waterfalls and rapids.
Monday 7:15pm:
We put our deck of cards to the side and the four of us began to eat our delicious dinners. We hung out and talked for about an hour more.
Monday 8:30pm:
I ran to our bungalow, up the ladder, slid the door open and went up inside to grab my camera and flashlight. I couldn't wait to see the tarantula that the boy was going to show us. They found it in a hole in the ground right near our bungalow and if you poke it with grass, it will come out. We could only see its hairy black legs because it refused to come out in the rain. Geoffrey hates spiders. He did not know what to think knowing a tarantula lives only steps away from our room. We also discovered that a huge tarantula lives in the shared showers that we had attempted to bathe in earlier. The water was cold in the men's and the women's so we did not take our time and thankfully did not see the tarantula.
Monday 9:00pm:
We give up on the tarantula and tell our new friends goodnight only to discover that we were in the same bungalow only separated by a thin wood wall. They climbed their ladder and we ours. Geoffrey slid our door shut. There is no lighting so we searched for our toothbrushes and stuff with the flashlight only to discover there were roaches all over the table where our stuff was.
Upon further observance, we noticed roaches all in the wall cracks. So we thouroughly inspected every sheet and comforter before we were to go to sleep. I didn't know how I was going to fall asleep thinking about all the roaches around me.
Monday 10:00pm:
All the lighting outside the complex went out, it was raining, and pitch black. I put all my scary bug thoughts in the back of my head trying hard to fall asleep.
Tuesday 2:59am:
I woke up a little hot and tried to turn my pillow to get to a cool spot. I was surprised I had fallen asleep and laid my head back down on my pillow to return to my dreams.
Tuesday 3:00am:
My cheek touched the cool spot of the pillow and not even a second later I heard the shrill sound of the voice of the woman next to us shout, "Who are you??? WHO THE H*LL ARE YOU??!" Something made a thump, and then she screamed loud enough to wake every jungle animal within miles up, "GET OUT, GET OUT OF HERE!!!!!!" I realized what was going on and chills shot down my spine. I shook Geoffrey and tried to hide under his arm. I told him that someone was in their room!! I reached down for my flashlight and grabbed it.
Tuesday 3:02am:
Geoffrey frantically scrambles up and to our sliding door and he realizes that it was opened slightly. I shine the light over there. The woman is running barefoot on the grass screaming, "Give me my stuff!! Give me my stuff! Who are you?" We couldn't see a thing. She is frantic. She comes to our ladder and looks up as we hand the flashlight down to her. She keeps saying, "He was in my room. I just woke up and he tried to hide behind the curtain!! He was in my room." The little boy, about 10 years old, began screaming for his mommy to come back. They were sharing a bed.
Tuesday 3:15am:
She is still hollering. I am crying and absolutely frightened out of my mind. She said he only took her phone, which was laying by her head and he took her shoes. He had gone through her backpack and was going through her daypack looking for money or passports or whatever when she felt the movement of the wood floor. She opened her eyes and saw a man standing there next to her bed. He noticed her movement and went to hide behind the curtains, but she could still see his silhouette. That's when she started screaming and he dropped her daypack and went down the open sliding door and took off running into the jungle.
Tuesday 4:00am:
We get the flashlight back and search our room, my camera is still there, my purse, our clothes, my bible, everything. I can't quit crying. Why was our door open? How could he open her door without her hearing? How could he just be in her room not afraid she would wake up? What if he had had a machette or a knife? What if stealing her stuff was not his only agenda? What about her 10-11 year old boy sleeping next to her? What if I had woken up and saw a man hiding behind our curtains? What will I do when I am living in Guatemala by myself? What if someone comes into my apartment and I am alone?
Geoffrey wasn't that scared, but he didn't want to be there either. It was so comforting to have him there. We wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. We sat outside until the sun came up with the woman and her boy. I gave her my shoes to wear, we happened to wear the same size, for as long as she needed until we could get somewhere where she could get new ones. She kept telling the story over and over and everytime my eyes would fill up with tears. Thoughts would come into my mind like what if no one really stole her stuff? What if this was all staged just to get me and Geoffrey alone with them? What if her and her little boy were the real bad guys and now they were going to get us? I was frozen in fear and all I could do was listen while she described the guy's shadow and silhouette over and over again.
The hostel staff were very "concerned". We feel pretty sure it was an inside job. At first, we thought that maybe they targeted the woman and her child because there was no grown male in the room. We thought they knew that this was their last night and they had been there long enough that the staff knew what they had brought. The sliding door had a stick used to "lock" or stop the door from sliding open to someone on the outside. How did the person know how to open the door? And do it so quietly?
The discouraging conversation on the colectivo was when I realized that maybe it wasn't the staff at the hostel we stayed at. The french girl who was there with her boyfriend had spent the first night at the other hostel. They woke up to find their window open and all their money gone the next morning. Someone came in their room too while they were sleeping.
They left that hostel after the staff yelled at them and accused them of lying and came to our hostel. Two days earlier a girl's camera went missing out of her purse. She had had it when she went to her room for the night. The next morning it was gone.
Apparently these are professionals, fearless ones. It upsets me to even write this. Tuesday was a terrible day. A nightmare in every aspect.
BUT MONDAY-
But Monday was an incredible day. After hiking up a steep incline for about 45 minutes and thinking we were going to die, we arrived at a breath-taking veiw of the pools.
Then we climbed down and saw that biggest fall of rushing waters I have ever ever seen in real life.
It was crazy. Five tourists have fallen to their death because of their curiosity. It was absolutely stunning. Then we swam from one blue pool to the next. All natural waters.
Then we went into a cave, pitch black, ice-cold, just me, Geoffrey, and our guide. We had one small wax candle and it was such a crazy experience.
(That's not us, but that's what we did.)
I've never gone splunking quite like that in all my life. It was so dangerous, but it was very cool. I will never do it again though!
And finally, Geoffrey took me back to the bluest pools on top of the rushing river. He knelt down on one knee, in the water, and he said, "Jenna, will you officially marry me?" He held open a little blue box and inside was the prettiest ring ever! A simple band full of sparkling diamonds. I said yes!
For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. "Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him; I will protect him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation." - Psalm 91
As He has done this for us, we pray He will do it for you, and for the people of Guatemala. Amen.
