Guatemala

Lake Atitlan with a volcano in the background!

After spending 29 days in Mexico it was sad but necessary to leave considering we were only granted a 30 day visa. We were leaving behind incredible waves, food and apparently about 15 pairs of my panties. As with everything in Mexico, there are positives and negatives to every situation. A classic example of this is the fact that you can get 2 loads of laundry done for the cheap price of $6, but unfortunately some pervert or an unfortunate young lady needed a few sexy pairs of thong underwear. Either way I was happy to donate a few of my undies to the less fortunate. I am now taking after my sister and going commando style (or airing out, as my mom likes to call it) in order to make it to the next laundry stop.

The "burb" pulled through during our last day in Mexico, ferociously plowing upstream at a 45 degree angle through a foot of running water during a torrential downpour. This was an example of classic Mexican infrastructure where the main road (in a city with frequent torrential downpour) is the steepest and least maintained. Chad was proud as he saw many other cars shamefully turn around to avoid a messy situation. I, on the other hand, was nervously clenching the "oh shit" handle which is now barely attached to the car. Needless to say we made it through the downpour and found a nice little hotel on our way out of town. On the topic of hotels, it is necessary to educate all of you on a little bit of Mexico hotel/motel information that we discovered after we had already failed the test. On day three of our adventure in Mexico, we discovered a little place called "Motel Cabanas Del Rey"
(Kevin you commented about seeing it on google earth), apparently this is what the Mexicans call a "Motel No Tell". As the name implies, this is basically a whorehouse or simply a place where a good Catholic takes his girlfriend so his wife, family and friends don't find out. The beauty of a "Motel No Tell" is that they have gated parking lots with individual parking spots. It gets even better, each of these parking spots has a huge curtain to hide your car because you wouldn't want your father-in-law (who is there with his girlfriend) to see your car there. As mentioned earlier, there are positives and negatives to everything in Mexico. In this situation, Chad and I thought we had scored an awesome place. A gated parking lot with a curtain to hide the burb and all our belongings, it couldn't get any better. I knew there was something weird about the place when I noticed the mirrors on the ceiling, ok not really but I definitely couldn't sleep that night because it had a creepy feel. About a week later when we were telling a fellow traveler about these
great motels with curtains to hide your vehicle, he hysterically informed us that we had stayed at a "Motel No Tell". Lovely!!! Chad got his whore experience for the mere price of 200 pesos or $20 which included 24 hours of porn on an older TV. Gotta love Mexico!

Following all travel recommendations we headed towards the Guatemalan border bright and early the next morning. Apparently we chose Market day to cross and of course the most logical place to put a market is on the main road leading to the border, right?!? There was about a mile stretch of street vendors selling everything from chickens to cowboy hats. The vendors were on both sides flowing into the street with mobs of people walking in the middle of the street/highway. You could barely fit one car down the street let alone the burb and a semi-truck on the other side. Somehow we managed to creep through at about 1 mile an hour only hitting 3 vendor booths nearly knocking them down. In the car in front of us was Neil, a 70 year old guy
from Washington in a 1979 20R Toyota Chinook camper. He apparently knocked someones taillight off in this horrendous process. The problem with Neil is that he speaks about as much Spanish as I do (which is none) and he can't hear. Lovely guy all the same and amazing that at 70 years old he is traveling with his awesome dog through Mexico and Central America. Chad helped him through the border crossing and Neil went on to pick up a hitch hiker and follow us to Lake Atitlan. As you can imagine, I wanted to hear Neil's life story. The guy is so fascinating that we spent a couple hours listening to his stories. While in sketchy Chiapas, Mexico he was held hostage by a village of people who were surrounding him with the ever famous machete's. After being rescued 7 hours later by a couple of police men he was informed that these people had never seen a white man and were very fearful of him. After treating him to dinner the cops told him to please leave the region because it was not safe for a white person to hang around these areas. Fascinating story, and all I was thinking the whole time was "thank God that didn't happen to Chad and I". FINALLY we met an adventurous American. Up to this point on our trip we had met 100 Canadians to every American. The general consensus is that Americans are too fearful to travel
outside of their comfort zone and would feel more comfortable just reading about other peoples travels from their office when they are supposed to be working, ha ha (so Chad and I are on a mission to change this stereotype and rally all of you guys at home to prove those Canadians wrong)!

There are three border crossings from Mexico into Guatemala that you can cross by car. We chose the Cuauhtemac crossing because we heard it was the most relaxed and it was closest to where we were in Mexico. Unfortunately this particular border does not have the proper vehicle exit paperwork needed to exit the Burb from the country. The car is allowed in the country for 6 month's so we decided to risk it and hope that the Burb does not get seized as Chad tries to re-enter Mexico in August (it's only going to be a couple weeks beyond the 6 month's so everything should be fine right???). Additionally, our anxiousness to enter Guatemala superseded our need to exit Mexico. As we were doing our Guatemala entry paperwork we were missing one important part, the exit paperwork from Mexico, OOPS! For the small fee of $10 the Guatemalans officials let it slide. Payoffs can be a fabulous thing! Guatemala was our cheapest border crossing, costing us a total of $22 including the $10 payoff fee. It only took about 2 hours and was nearly painless. Due to the fact that Chad's Spanish is world's better than mine and that he is the registered owner of the Burb, he took care of all the paperwork and Rhino and I took charge of watching and protecting the burb.

Once we made it through the border crossing we cruised towards Lake Atitlan through the beautiful mountainous countryside. It looked like it was straight out of National Geographic with the women and young girls dressed in brightly colored traditional Mayan garments sprinkled throughout the hills. It was almost as if they had been placed there for tourists to see, however it was about as real as you could get. We made it all the way to Lake Atitlan by the early evening. This tremendously large lake is surrounded by three huge volcanoes. We stayed in the little town of Panajachel and enjoyed a traditional Guatemalan dinner. Although the food was good, it did not compare to the meals we had in Mexico. I preferred the tortillas in Guatemala because they were a bit thicker than the Mexican ones, but other than that the food did not compare to Mexican cuisine.

After a lovely breakfast on the lake, we decided to head back towards the coast. The town of Panajachel had a good energy about it, but was very touristy. It would have been nice to explore some of the other lake towns but Chad was anxious to get back towards the coast. We drove some crazy roads through the countryside and ended up in Antigua for lunch. Antigua reminded me of a European city with cobblestone streets and a lot of Gringos. It is home to the cheapest Spanish language schools in the world and draws a tremendous amount of visitors each year. It is a beautiful city and definitely deserved a longer stay. We had an awesome lunch at one of the street vendors in the middle of town and headed on our way to the coastal town of Monterrico. Monterrico is technically an island due to the estuaries surrounding it. We were unaware of a bridge that led to the town so we ended up taking a ferry across the canal. What they call a car ferry would be considering barely a boat in the US. It consisted of some janky wood planks with a tiny 15 hp motor. It barely fit two cars with only about 6 inches on each side of the car. We were a bit nervous about the Burb sinking the ferry, but we trusted the locals and decided to drive on the "so called ferry". As we drove down the concrete bank towards the short wooden boards they used as a ramp to get on the "ferry", the "ferry" simply drifted away as soon as some of the weight of the Burb shifted onto it. The ramps slipped off the "ferry" and the front tires came skidding to a halt inches before the edge of the canal. Fear radiated from Chad's eyes and I knew we were in trouble. The two
Guatemalan men helping us were yelling at us to stop and yelling at each other for not tying the "ferry" down. Luckily due to the ever so popular Vitrek sponsored brake job we were able to stop just in time. We were a bit hesitant to try again, but we sucked it up and made it on the "ferry". The fun doesn't stop there. During our 30 minutes ride through the estuary another one of these "ferries" was broken down in the middle of the canal. Because a 15 hp wide open throttle in reverse will not stop a 15,000 pound ferry very quickly we proceeded to crash right into the other "ferry". Luckily there was no damage but it certainly added to our crazy ferry adventure. We made it safely to Monterrico just in time to see a beautiful sunset and some locals release a bunch of baby turtles into the surf. They were so cute!

The highlight of our stay in Monterrico was our new friends. They were a group of about 7 kids (ages 9-14) that were the local hotel experts. They jumped on the back of the burb and directed us where to stay. They were full of energy and completely entertaining. I can only imagine the ticket we would have gotten in the US if a cop saw if driving around town with 7 kids on the bumper hollering directions to us. We found a nice little hotel to stay at for the night and gave the boys a soccer ball for showing us around. They were ecstatic and were trying to use their excellent persuasion techniques to get us to give them a second ball. We sent them on their way and relaxed with a cold beer after the long day of driving. That evening we met a family from Guatemala City in the pool. They invited us to join them for dinner at a local restaurant. Using our limited Spanish and their limited English we
learned a lot about Guatemala and the politics of the country. They insisted on paying for our dinner, which was an incredibly kind gesture. After dinner I went to bed and Chad went to the disco with a couple of the Guatemalan guys. He said it was quite the experience watching all the Guatemalans dance to American music and wished I had been there.

This was the end of our short stay in Guatemala. This country deserves so much more time, but we were on a tight time-line and needed to move on. I would have loved to make it to Tikal, however it would have been an incredibly far drive out of the way so I guess I will have to save it for another trip!

Adios Guatemala!