We woke up early on Chichi market day and watched the fog roll through the cemetery.

We aren’t accustomed to tablecloths and multiple forks place settings at breakfast, but we were getting the full treatment at this hotel.

Some of the Mayan women are so tiny that eight-year-old Lowe is eye-to-eye with them.

The market is a labyrinth, but always seems to end up pointing out at the church, which was the most photogenic spot.

Not everyone has a stall, or loads of product to sell. Some, like this lady, arrive with nothing but a small bag of peaches, and hope for the best.

Took the drone up for a fly around town. I recently had to replace the batteries we had. Despite not using it very much the batteries had all begun to bulge out considerably. Didn’t seem like the kind of fire hazard we’d want to keep on a boat. I know quite a few friends with DJI drones have had the same issue.

Lowe holding the machete that he’s been wanting for quite a while now. There isn’t a man, or boy, in this part of the world who doesn’t own a machete. It’s a totally normal thing to see boys even smaller than Lowe walking the streets with a well used machete hanging from their belts almost to the ground.

So we enjoyed the morning walking around the market, buying machetes, blankets, and statues—then we hit the road. Chichi is about a 10-hour drive from the boat, so we decided to split the drive up by spending the night in Guatemala City.

We were about half an hour out of town when we got backed up in a small village. Tuk tuks lined both sides of the road, and traffic waited patiently in both directions for busy village life to clear out of the way and let us through.

Most of us were patient anyway. As we sat there a chicken bus going the other way decided that he could speed things up by somehow squeezing through a small gap down the middle of the road. He came over into our lane and was within about three inches of our mirror. Ali was yelling, “He’s going to hit us!” while I said, “No, he’s got a bunch of mirrors, he can see us. I’m sure he’ll make it.”

Crunch.

The dummy made a sharp right back into his lane before he had cleared past us, causing the back end of the bus to swing out wide and scrape right down the back quarter of our car. Expletives flew. I jumped out of the car. The bus had stopped briefly, and then began moving off slowly towards a dirt parking lot on his side.

And then, a cloud of black smoke and the roar of an engine. He was off in a flash.

If you’ve never seen a chicken bus move, you might get the impression that it’s just a school bus, how fast could it really go? Honestly, you can’t believe it until you see it. They are the most powerful vehicles on the road and the drivers are absolute madmen.

No way was I letting this stand. I spun around. The car that had been behind him said they saw it and were calling the police. And then I was in hot pursuit in my four-banger Toyota compact.

It took about five minutes just to catch sight of him. Another five to catch up to him at a construction zone that he conveniently blew past despite us on his bumper honking and waving. He pulled away again. We caught up again. He passed someone on a blind curve and pulled away. We got past and managed to catch up in another small town. He went over speed bumps like they weren’t there and bullied oncoming cars onto the shoulder, pulling away yet again. But eventually the combination of traffic, and small towns that build themselves up right to the very edge of the road, defeated him. From a few cars back I spotted my opportunity at a speed bump where he was caught behind some other cars with too many coming the other way. I passed the cars behind him, squeezed my way through a gap and pulled sideways across the road in front of him. The chase was over.

Chicken buses have a couple people working onboard—the driver, his spotter, and in this case at least one other to help with baggage and collecting money. The spotter jumped out of his space at the door and came up to us feigning ignorance as I pointed at the dents in our car. He reported to the driver who reluctantly climbed down to have a look and claim he didn’t do it. Meanwhile, traffic was backed up on both sides of the road now for quite a distance. Nobody honked, everybody just sat back to enjoy the show. Even the bus full of passengers that had no doubt already paid their fares, just sat quietly.

About this time the car that had been behind the bus when it happened caught up to us. The nice couple came right up and told him exactly what they had seen, which combined with the scraped paint on the bus bumper was pretty irrefutable evidence. At this point all agreed to proceed down the road a little bit to let the traffic open up again.

So there we stood, trying to hash out a solution. The spotter (in red) looked at the damage like it was nothing. He dug in his pocked and fished out 100Q ($13). I laughed and told him I spent that much in gas chasing him. The driver claimed it would buff right out and they could just push the dented panel out. Probably 50Q ($6.50) is what it would cost, he said.

“Cuanto? Cuanto? Cuanto?” they said.

Knowing that the best solution here was just to get some money and move on I said, “2,000Q.” They laughed.

The nice couple was just shaking their heads at the chicken bus guys, trying to shame them into doing what was right, but the bus driver was unmoved. The couple had called the cops already, and at this point everyone seemed resigned to the fact that we weren’t going to solve this on our own and be on our way.

The police listened to everyone then told us all to head to the police station. Following the police was almost as hard as following the bus. For a while I began to think that the bus driver had given them the 100Q and asked them to lose me. But, eventually we found ourselves on the backside of town, further from our day’s destination than where we had begun, with an accident to sort out, and a four-hour drive to get to the city by nightfall.

By now our witnesses had left the scene and we were on our own to describe the situation. You can easily imagine how wildly different the story I told was from the story the bus driver told. Despite having originally claimed that he didn’t even know we had hit, he now claimed that we had hit him, but that he was too busy to be bothered with stopping over it. Ali had been shooting video when the guy in red had tried to hand me 100Q, and when asked why they had tried to give me money they again said they just wanted to get rid of me.

It was only at this point that the people on the bus were finally moved to another bus that was passing by.

The kids found a friendly tuk tuk driver to talk to. He had just stopped to see what all the fuss was about.

It eventually became clear that there were now two different stories and no resolution in sight. And so continued the longest day of our lives. Insurance companies were called out. An hour later the two insurance guys arrived. We each told our version of events. Another hour later I was told they could not agree on anything, so they were leaving. I’d have to file a police report.

Hours passed. The kids stared at the guy in the jail cell, the dogs wrestled, none of us ate a thing.

While giving the police report things began to change a bit. First, I told them that I’d be in the country for a few more months. This got the driver’s attention. I’m pretty sure his insurance guy had told him that I was just a tourist and would be gone in a couple days.

Second, we started to show the cops the videos that Ali had taken. We even began trying to upload them to the police station computer. At this point I’m pretty sure that the driver thought we had video of the accident. Suddenly the insurance guys were called back to the station.

More hours went by. I was really regretting the decision to have chased this guy down. On the one hand, I just couldn’t let this guy get away with a hit-and-run. On the other hand, I try to live my life by always weighing opportunity cost (i.e. my time is worth $X/hr to me), and this decision was clearly costing me money at this point, regardless of the outcome.

Finally, the insurance companies agreed that the bus driver’s insurance would pay. They filled out a form saying as much, we shook hands, and thought we were done. Then the police said, “Wait a minute, we need to file a report saying that this agreement was made.”

It’s Sunday. More hours pass. Judges are called. Lawyers are called. Everything about this whole situation is utterly ridiculous.

A lawyer is finally tracked down and a dozen of us, traipse down the road and into a tiny office where a lady with a typewriter sits. Passports, licenses, insurance papers are all handed over and we sit for another hour while she types it all up. Upon completion of that she reads it to us (keep in mind that I haven’t spoken English with anyone the entire day), we sign, she makes copies, and we are finally released. Supposedly, according to the insurance company, I won’t have to pay a thing. Just give them this piece of paper when we return the car and they’ll take care of it. I’m unconvinced, but about to pass out from fatigue.

Ali and the kids have been walking back and forth from the car to inside the police station for the past eight hours! The entire day was wasted. It was almost dark, we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and there was no way we could get to the city. I climbed in the car, turned the key, and click, click, click. Lowe had had nothing to do but play car all day. The battery was dead. Icing, meet cake. Back into the police station I went.

After a jump we drove back into town, tried out a different hotel, and ate a crappy dinner.

On the bright side, this meant another night of fireplace butler service.