Rolo on Tour

So I was in Antigua for a few days. Some things to mention about my time there:

• I climbed the volcano Pacaya:

Carlos, our guide on the Pacaya

This was not as much fun as I hoped, the main reason being feeling like a mainstream tourist, when going up there in groups of 15-20 people. Also the weather was quite cloudy that day, so we could not have the expected view there.

• I discovered, that nobody is interested in game theoretic thoughts, when playing drinking games ;-).

But if I think about Antigua, I think of the following, wich is actually 3 stories in one:

• How I became a waiter for 20 minutes

It all started, when I was shooting some „magic“ video in a shop (You can watch it here ). This way I got to know some of the people working there and actually on the following days I happened to visit this place several times.

Why I was there that often also had to do with some negative experience I had with a travel agency, which was supposed to transport me to Copán, Honduras. They failed to do it 2 times and made up some excuses why they could not go. But the truth was simple: They just did not have enough people, who wanted to go there, to make the transport profitable for them. So this way I ended up packing my things 3 times (once at 4am), saying goodbye to everybody etc and 2 of those 3 times I had to unpack, check in again and many people were surprised to still see me around. It became some kind of running gag and I felt like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.
What did I do about that? I did what every good citizen should do: I filled out a complaint form at the office of tourism ;-).

Well, this way I also ended up 3 times saying goodbye to the girls in the shop. They recommended another agency to me and I gave them some little presents to thank them for their help:



Laura, Reina and Wendy

They wanted to redo the favor, so now I have another shirt to carry around in my bag.

They told me about the „Carrera de Charolas“, a Waiter’s run, which they said was supposed to happen at 8am the next day. I thought, well you can’t miss this event, so I was there at 8am to watch it. But when I talked to some of the waiters, it turned out that the start was one hour later. They explained me the rules and at some point they said: You should take part too! I thought that was a great idea so I went to the place where you registered yourself and received all the stuff you needed. I told them that I am not working as a waiter and don’t have the clothes requested to wear with me. But everybody was really cool about it and encouraged me to participate.
So little time later I found myself at the starting line. The rules were the following: You have to carry 4 kinds of drinks (bottle of gatorade, can of beer, can of coke, small bottle of water) during a race of 2 kilometres and the drinks are not allowed to fall over. Moreover you can only use 1 hand at a time and are only allowed to switch hands once. When I looked around, I discovered that I was kind of unique there: I was the only foreigner (as far as I could tell), the only one not wearing a waiter’s uniform and also the only person taller than 1,75 metres taking part. But nobody got disturbed by that fact, in contrary many people were talking to me, asking me which restaurant I was working in and wishing me good luck.

Allright, I thought, let’s now find the best technique. I looked around to find out how the others where holding the tray and how they placed the drinks on it. I tried different combinations and when the race started I thought I had found a good arrangement.

Well, that lasted for 50 metres 😉 Afterwards I never found a stable position, especially the gatorade bottle would move all the time causing the drinks to fall several times. So I could not apply my running skills and finished something like 950th out of 1000, but nevertheless it was a lot of fun.

One journalist noticed me running, so after I finished I answered some of his questions. He took some photos of me and I ended up on the following guatemalan newssite:

CGN Noticias

So all in all, I am really glad that this travel agency failed to do their job twice, because this was the only reason I was still around for that race!

Later that day I got to Copán, Honduras on a quite fully packed bus shuttle. The following picture was taken before 4 more passengers got onto it..

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