How to Avoid Motion Sicknes

I knew that after my arrival in Guatemala City I would need to take a bus to complete my journey to La Democracia Spanish School in Xela. Having examined a map, it seemed that Guatemala City and Xela were relatively close in distance. However, when traveling in certain parts of the world, proximity is better measured by time rather than distance. So, it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that the bus journey was expected to take 4 hours. I have partaken in bus journeys of similar duration during previous adventures, and based on these experiences I have developed some trepidation with regard to travel by bus. Avoidance of the primary challenge of extensive coach travel, namely motion sickness, generates the secondary nuisance of boredom. The primary diversions on a long journey, namely reading, watching movies, and even gazing aimlessly out the window, all have the effect of exacerbating movement induced nausea. Fortunately, from my prior experience, I have generated a list of strategies that overcome my secondary concern while also circumventing my primary concern. These strategies include:

1. Listening to music or audio books
2. Sleeping
3. Engaging in lively conversation with my travel companion

Unfortunately, the circumstances of my voyage made each of these possible diversions unlikely to fill the duration of the journey for the following reasons:

1. In my haste to pack for the trip (I booked my flight 48 hours before departure while facing a full day working and a full day family gathering), I was unable to locate the charger for my iPod. Given the impending loss of its utility I decided it was best to skip the iPod all together. This limited me to enjoying the music that my fellow travelers blasted from their own devices. Certainly I enjoyed catching the refrain of “Hotel California” or the bridge of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” but this was not sufficient to fill the journey. Similarly, even if my iPod were available, I lacked the foresight to fill it with audio books.

   

   I may not always travel first class,
   but when I do, I look like a hobo.

2. One of the upsides of booking a trip with 2 days notice is the sudden drop in the price of airline
   tickets. This coincides with a decline in the number of seats available leading to a particularly unique condition in which, for less than the price of a coach ticket, I procured first class seating. Naturally I took full advantage of the extra space on my journey and slept for most of the flight. When I was not snoozing I took full advantage of the complementary wine served at the front of the plane. This meant I also slept soundly on my overnight stay in Guatemala City, a situation that resulted in feeling well rested and unable to succumb to the typically soporific swaying of the coach.
3. Congenial banter can delightfully fill many an hour, on or off a bus. As a solo traveler, said discourse is not easy to come by. My fellow voyagers were Spanish speakers. While unpleasant, I am compelled to highlight the irony that the purpose of my journey is to attend a Spanish language school in an attempt to remedy my embarrassingly poor Spanish skills. Needless to say, I did not find myself in rapt discourse while on the bus. Fortunately, I will be joining a friend, Monica, at La Democracia. On future bus rides, I can dialogue with her or attempt dynamic discussion with Spanish speakers, given the anticipation of rapid improvement in my conversational ability.

As it turned out, I happened to be traveling from Guatemala City to Xela by bus the day that a group of protesters shut down the road periodically to demand respect for the indigenous people of Guatemala in the form of land and water rights. To my delight, this resulted in at least 4 hours of time spent on a stationary bus. While my fellow travelers were irked by the delays and the associated doubling of our travel time, I was sympathetic to the cause and gratified by near impossibility of suffering motion sickness in an immobile vehicle. I took advantage of the disruptions to our forward progress by reading, writing (in case you wondered why a blog post about a bus ride is so long), and engaging in what would be sick inducing recreations were the bus in motion. Between these pauses I marveled at the novelty of making headway. I also figured out how to operate the text-to-speech feature on my kindle.