Woke up, packed my stuff, and took a tuktuk up to the bus stop. The information found on the internet isn't complete or accurate, most of the time. The lobby clerk said there was a bus at 1:30pm. I wanted to be in Xela at that time, so I did what research I could and found that there were supposedly two regular buses, 10:30 and 11:30; the 1:30 was a fancier bus, but didn't get there any faster (about 3hrs). So I left about 9:30, just in case the bus left at 10am. Just as I got to the bus stop, a bus pulled up and stopped behind another bus that was already there. I asked the locals which bus to get on: the first was going to Guatemala City, the second was to Xela.  

So I hopped on, first one in . Another dozen people boarded, then we left at 10:30am. Most of the first hour is spent on half gravel, half paved narrow road, full of bumps and potholes. Between the rough road and going through some of the lake villages, we rarely got out of first gear. I was badly hungover, and my stomach wasn't in good shape. Don't know if this would have happened if I was just hanging around the hostel, but at one point I had the driver pull over and heaved for a minute on the dirt road. My stomach still wasn't in great shape, but I made it the rest of the way.  

Guatemala is very mountainous, the western half especially so. Once we left the lake, the road got a little better and mostly two lanes wide. But it was still up and down and very curvy; quite a few times, the bus went around a hairpin as far as it could go, then backed up a little, before proceeding.  

The second hour was spent on these roads, going through town after town with mean speed bumps (didn't help my stomach, but I hung in there) .  

The third hour was on a four lane highway, but it was still very curvy: you had to hold on, if you didn't want to slide off your seat.  

The bus never did fill up, so I had my seat all to myself. Total cost for this long ride: less than $3.  
To get from the terminal to my hostel, I decided to try local transport. I had read that they were located on the other side of 'something'. A local pointed me in the right direction. There's a huge market (may take pics at a later date) right next to this 'terminal' (which is just a large area, basically a parking lot, though not as well defined as those in the US), same as I saw in a few places in Mexico. It seemed like I walked three blocks going through the market, arriving at a main road. Told one bus driver where I wanted to go (the hostel is just a couple blocks from a main city park, in the main area of Xela) and he told me to catch one on the other side of the street, going in the opposite direction (same thing happened to me in Manchester, last time I was there). I crossed the very busy road and found a van heading to the park. Problem was every time he pulled over to load people he yelled 'parque'. He yelled 'parque' when we got to the park exit, but it was a couple of streets over and I thought he was again telling people where he was headed. Pulled out my phone and checked the map, saw that I was headed away from my destination, had him pull over, and now I had a seven block walk to my hostel. Wasn't that bad a walk, even in my condition.  

Settled in. Read and napped. Had a twinkie and a gatorade for dinner. Read some more. Went to sleep about 9:45pm.