TAKE A LOAD OFF, FANNIE

F*cker, more like it.

This time yesterday, things were more normal. I had rung to check on a bus back to Xela from Antigua, and all was fine. Fun as the chicken bus was, I didn't want to do it again. I wanted to sit on a shuttle bus and not watch my things like a hawk.

So I booked a shuttle for Sunday afternoon, back to Xela, and relaxed. Thing is, they overbooked and kicked me off the bus. So I booked another one for this morning, and gave myself over to a night of good food with Sylve.

We ran into the boys from last night: a Dane called Emille (great name... for a girl) and a pom called Ben (great name, for a boy).

They were more fun the night before after a few tequilas, but we had a nice night and then headed home because Sylvie had a 4am bus. There are no cabs in Antigua at midnight so we walked. We came across a quintessial Aussie with blonde dreadlocks who was wandering the streets with his hostel key extended, just in case he found the door to his hostel. He was totally lost, and swearing the requisite amount. "I mean, it was fucking here a fucking second ago, ahhh shit."

A guy passes and asks for a cigarette and the aussie says, "No...smoko" realising too late he doesn't know the word in Spanish for smoke.

We leave him pointing his key at random doors and getting shooed away by random doormen, and hit the dark part of the walk.

I notice a guy following us, it's the cigarette guy. So I tell Sylvie to wait for him to pass. He doesn't.

He starts crossing the road towards us, and I back towards the light. Sylvie runs. He's asking for money. I tell him we don't have any.

He reaches inside his jacket, and I don't want to know if he's just bluffing - I really don't. In truth, I'm scared.

"Vamas a gritar," I say in my most tall voice. "We will scream." He keeps coming.

"De verdad, vamos a gritar," and just as I am opening my mouth for one of those dream screams, where you open your mouth but only a whimper comes out, he turns and leaves us.

We wake four hours later for our early buses. Mine is late, and it ends up being a guy in a car. He loads me up, and drives me and a snoring old blonde American to Guatemala city, the opposite direction from Xela.

She gets out at the airport, and he dumps me at a generic bus stop.

"But I could have done this myself from Xela," I say, "I bought a shuttle ticket."

There's no arguing over this, it appears, so I flounce my things onto the bus and as I'm putting them on the floor, the bus guy tells me that I have to put them in the console. It's prohibited to have them on the floor.

There are five 17 year-olds watching rape porn on a mobile phone in front of my. It's not what I need at 6am. One of them is looking at me in an unnerving manner.

I am busting and I have a four-hour trip in front of me.

Three hours later, I really think I'm about to burst and I'm REALLY thirsty, but I can't drink because I"ll exacerbate the problem. I'm also really hungry, but after watching the roadside urinary antics of all the men on this trip, I realise the same happens with the food men because there are no toilets around, so I resist food.

The entire trip is threaded with cheerful cumbia music that bounces around in my head, with its off-beat accordians which are really really jarring when you need to go to the toilet.

At one point, on the strength of 'we are ten minutes away' from the girl with silver-rimmed teeth and a moustache, who is sitting beside me, I buy and drink a half-litre of orange juice.

I sleep. The ride goes forever. Then the bus stops and dumps us in the middle of nowhere. That's when I discover some MoF*cker has relieved me of my SLR camera, extra lens and worst of all, my microphone. My only microphone.

The result of this is that I can't file the stories I've promised, so my livelihood is gone... at least until I get back to Mexico.

I hurded onto a yellow school bus, which turns out to be a personalised service that drops everyone in the province at their front door. The roads are really bumping and I'm actually visualising my cargos soaked in urine. I wonder what would be worse out of that, and dying of a burst bladder with urine in my bloodstream.

That's when a religious nutter gets on the bus and starts telling us in a seering, relentless voice to repent. He keeps doing so for 20 minutes and I am so close to walking up and slapping him that I am sure my facial expression is pure hate. Then he goes through the bus asking for money - I mean, if he'd asked at the beginning for money to refrain from speaking, I would have been throwing it at him. But ... whaaaaaaaat?

That bus stops and everyone is hurded off it, and I find myself in a taxi. The driver just keeps saying 'What a shame, oh well, that's life' in a tone that suggests he thinks gringos have too many possessions in the first place. Fair enough.

Nine hours after setting off for the three-hour journey I arrive, with more urine and less net worth that I ever intended for this journey.

In a nutshell, I am really pissed off. The Pollyanna in me says at least I'm not pissed on.