Free Day Adventure

(Here I am with Sindy, our friend who works at Pollo Campero, Walker, Jeffrey our "Taxi Driver", and Joel.)

There have been a lot of crazy stories from this trip to Guatemala, but the one from today’s free day was definitely up there in the rankings. This morning some of my teammates and I decided to have our clothes washed at a laundry mat (Or ‘lavandaria’ as they are called here) for a mid-trip deep cleaning. The way the lavandarias work is that you drop your laundry off, they wash, dry, and fold them, and then you pick them up later. So some of my teammates went to drop the clothes off and then others went to pick them up; I was with the latter group. So Walker, Joel, and I walked down to the main road to try to catch a taxi. Taxis are usually a dime-a-dozen around here, but tonight they were hard to come by. After several minutes, we saw an empty taxi and Joel asked if he would take us where we needed to go. The driver seemed a bit hesitant, but graciously accepted.

About a minute into our journey, our driver asks Joel, “Where are you from?” Whoa...Once you live in Guatemala, you never expect to hear English. So it turns out that our driver is this goofy, awesome guy named Jeffrey, who lived in Rhode Island for a while and knows some English. Then he drops this bomb on us: “You know…this isn’t my car. I’m borrowing this from my friend. I’m not working. I’m not a taxi driver.” Umm…What do you do with that information?!

So we make it to the lavandaria and the boys get out of the car without paying Jeffrey. I say, “Guys…we need to pay him.” But then Joel tells me that he’s going to wait for us and then take us back to the house. Our clothes weren’t quite ready, so we just sit there with Jeffrey chatting. We tell him how we are working with Shofar Ministries and he tells us about working in Rhode Island and how his family works in radio.

After we pick up our laundry and pack it in his car, we start to head toward the main street when Jeffrey turns around and says he’s going to take us to the beach (granted most of the “beaches” here don’t have sand…They are just rocks or concrete right up against the water). I got kind of concerned at this point; where is he really taking us? But Joel and Walker didn’t seem to be concerned so I just tried to enjoy the adventure. We went to a part of the beach that we have never been to and it was sunset and it was absolutely beautiful.

So, once again, we get back in the car and start to head back toward our house. On the way there, Jeffrey says, “I want coffee. You guys want coffee? Let’s get coffee.” Oh man, where is this guy taking us? Our next stop is a gas station. There we don’t buy gas or coffee, but instead we pick up Jeffrey’s friend Ronny.

Then all of us head to Pollo Campero (Kind of like a KFC…but not) where we all order stuff to eat and we end up talking for another hour. We ended up spending about 4 hours with Jeffrey. I have experienced a lot of crazy things here in Guatemala, but tonight takes the cake.