I am writing to you from Nebaj, a town in the middle of nowhere in the Western Highlands. I've been up here for the week working with students from the States who are in Guatemala with us until the end of April.

The trip from Antigua to Nebaj involves seven hours of travel on three different chicken buses. My trip up on Monday began without excitement. The leg from Antigua from Chimaltenango passed quickly, with only one other person in my seat for most of the trip (quite the luxury here). The second bus, from Chimaltenango to Quiche, was driven by one of the craziest drivers I have encountered to date. We spent most of our time in the other lane on hairpin curves that had me wondering which way to best position my backpack to act as an airbag during the crash that was sure to be coming. But, as things generally go here, somehow we arrived in Quiche safely, allowing me to embark on the third, and most interesting, leg of the trip.

At first glance, the bus from Quiche to Nebaj looked like a normal camioneta - old, dingy, some Looney Tunes stickers. But when an hour or so into the ride, the ayudante flipped on the DVD player to SCREEN A MOVIE, I knew I was in for it. And I was. The sometimes bizarre cinematic taste displayed by Guatemalan men resulted in an entire camioneta packed with indigenous Guatemalans watching a dubbed Spanish version of Rest Stop: Don't Look Back.

Go look this up on IMDB. Do it.

As you might expect from the title, Rest Stop: Don't Look Back is about people who, while driving through remote country, stop at rest stops and proceed to get into VERY bad situations, generally involving death (for the lucky, mutilation for those less fortunate). This movie was disgusting. Foul, bloody, awful, disgusting. People were getting nails driven through their legs, eyeballs ripped out, etc, etc, etc, etc. Under normal circumstances you would have to pay me to watch such a thing. But here, in the middle of nowhere in Guatemala, it was like a train wreck. I sort of couldn't look away. Until the bus broke down. In the middle of nowhere. In Guatemala. While watching a movie about people who die in the middle of nowhere on the side of the road.

Luckily for all of us, a few rusty tools later, we were up and running and on our way to Nebaj. And luckily for me, I reached my destination before the part of the movie where there are "tongues shown that have been cut out," as IMDB tells me.

Just another day of travel in Guatemala.