Our second day in Guatemala

 

Our first days experience of Guatemalan roads was not a good one and we hoped for better things today as we worked our way towards the Mexican border. Sadly I don’t think that things were that much different, the only good news being a lack of steep long climbs to exhaust both cars and drivers.

 

 

 

The day started later than usual as drivers had commitments that needed to be met as well as a degree of fettling. Nigel’s Lagonda’s valve clearances were reset once again, Chris’ Rolls had some more diff oil and ham’s car received its usual TLC. Tobs left the team this morning to return to Zimabwe. He was an excellent member of the team and we remaining band of brothers will miss him. We finally set off at around 12:00 aiming to stay about 75km from the border crossing at Retalhuleu.

 

 

 

The exit from Antigua, in the shadow Acatenango volcano, was slow and painful. Luckily for the first time in months the sky was rather overcast which took the edge of the usual searing temperatures. We crawled along behind lorries, trucks and the usual rampaging bus and slowly, ever so slowly, the traffic began to ease slightly. At Escuintla we turned onto the CA2 which was a duel carriageway and the cars finally could open up and get on. After 90km we hit our first massive traffic jam caused by a damaged bridge (have we heard that somewhere before in this epic story?) at a place called Cocales. As soon as we got on the duel carriageway Nigel had sprinted off to try and clear his plugs and Chris and Ham had stopped for coffee so Nigel went through this first major traffic challenge first, as usual nipping to the front. Chris and Ham followed suit somewhere behind, so instead of delaying the team by a couple of hours it probably took about 15 minutes.

 

 

 

On we went in amongst the brutal noise and smell of diesel that we have got so used to in Guatemala.  We will enjoy the open road even more so when finally we experience it once again. There were numerous other places where the traffic ground to a standstill or crawled along at an indescribably slow pace but we battled on finally arriving at our destination, the hotel La Colonia. It’s not quite a truckers stop but probably one rung up the ladder from that. The rooms do have air con, but it is right by the road which exhibits a constant throng of traffic.

 

 

 

 

We shall, I suspect, leave early tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we leave Central America for our first venture into North America. 2 more border crossings and 5000km to go. Do we dare to dream?