In the last post we’ve spend a lot of time planning for our safe border crossing into Guatemala and finally all the extra kilometers and effort paid off and we had a smooth border crossing into Guatemala. It was a cloudy day and the first scenes of Guatemala didn’t disappoint.
In the first glance, everything looked wilder and more untouched comparing to Mexico. The first real highlight was the women’s outfit, they all had beautiful handmade dresses on which was a feast to my eyes. Small villages and towns were more rustic, authentic and beautiful. We entered Guatemala from a remote border and we were in a remote area too so we didn’t know this is the reason or the whole Guatemala has the same vibe. It was really exciting and different. It definitely felt like we entered a new country. First task on the list was to find a decent town to get some cash since we couldn’t exchange our Mexican pesos into Guatemalan Quetzal. So the first few villages that we passed was a torture for Amir because he couldn’t try all the interesting food on the grills along the way! It took us few hours to get to the first town called La Libertad. The plan was to get cash, have a late lunch and find a hotel to stay. It was rainy and miserable and Amir wasn’t feeling great. He had all the Flu symptoms so a hot shower could be great! Well we did our first task, getting cash from ATM but we couldn’t find food easily. All restaurants were closed so we had to have a greasy fried chicken for our first meal in Guatemala. We also weren’t successful finding a hotel with hot water!! When I was asking, they were looking at me in a strange way and always answer the same, ” No hot water but we have the AC”. Considering the fact that how hot it gets in this area, having hot water is not a necessity but the AC is! The hotels weren’t cheap too so we decided to move on to another spot that could potentially be a nice camp spot for our first night.
We only had few hours of daylight left so we had to push on to reach the camp spot. After an hour, we reached a river and realized that there’s no bridge and we have to wait for a ferry to go to the other side, perfect! We had more delays and it was pouring by then. Between bad weather, Amir’s flu and terrible roads, it looked like a perfect first day in a new country! We just didn’t want to add driving in the dark to the mix!
We got to the national park that we had plans to camp and by then rain slowed down a bit. They allowed us to camp in the only place that wasn’t muddy and kind of flat and we were relieved to set up camp just before the sunset.
Our first camp in Guatemala was magical!!! We camped under massive trees with a view over a beautiful lake and had a group of locals gathered around the fire and were doing a religious ceremony just next to our camp. There were few nice walks in the dense forest around us too. It really felt like we moved to a completely different world! This is the magic of overlanding for me. You have plans for the day , it starts fantastic, then nothing works and then just before the end of the day you find yourself in paradise, never a dull moment indeed.
The next day, we headed south toward Sayaxche. We were really close to the city of Flores and the famous Tikal, but we had plans to get back there in couple of weeks so we decided to do some off the beaten path in northern Guatemala. The roads were kind of worse than Mexico and we couldn’t drive much the next day. Amir was also sick so we decided to set up camp early, have some healthy food and rest.
The following day, we found our energy to move on and as always we came up with a plan for an offroad route to go and check some villages and rural areas close to the Mexican border before continuing south. The weather looks promising and since the highways were full of potholes and trucks, we thought, it can be a better option.
It was an epic drive!! We met so many beautiful people and learned so much about the rural Guatemala in a day and saw some stunning scenery but it took way too longer than we thought, It also started to rain and we had to go through really muddy and steep roads for the whole day and ended up camping just before sunset again! I’ve just got lucky with the camp site and we just managed to camp in an stunning location next to a turquoise river for the night. We were the only ones there and paid only 5 NZD for the night. It was a shame that the weather wasn’t great otherwise we were staying for at least few days.
We had two days in one week with last minute camping and with the infrastructure in Guatemala, we learnt that we had to plan better and be prepared for the unexpected in this country otherwise we can not enjoy it as much as we want to.
So for the next few days, we took it slow, drive for few hours and camped just after lunch and everything was going smoothly.
We were also trying to get used to the Guatemalan roads. They are high up in the mountains and windy, different from the Mexican roads. There are lots of trucks and buses on these roads too with almost no opportunity to overtake and no shoulder or stop area next to the roads to stop for a while and give ourselves and the car a break.
All the roads also go through the small town and villages so all the traffic needs to cross narrow roads at some point! If you are lucky and be on the road on a Sunday or a market day. The main road of the village is closed for the events and you need to take even narrower and steeper road through the village to get back on track and Google maps is definitely your enemy in this scenario.
It was a Sunday when all of these happened to us at once. We drove for few hours and had to make lots of detours to get back on the track. We were both tired and since southern Mexico, our front brake pads had an annoying squeaking noise that was driving both of us crazy. We had to change our brake rotors in the USA at early stage of the trip, that was a story for its own, you can read about that here.
When we did change the rotors from DBA, we changed our front brake pads from the original Toyota ones to the DBA ones. Since southern Mexico we had a lot of problem with these brake pads. They were screaming and when breaking they were going quiet. That day, they were really load and it made us brake more than what we normally do in the mountainous roads, and it
caused the worst.
We were close to where we wanted to stay for the night and honestly we both had enough for the day. We chased trucks and inhaled their black smoke for the whole day and went through the steepest and narrowest cobblestone streets to that date and just wanted to get off the road. We were coming downhill for quite some time descending toward the next small town that was our destination and Amir just told me that the brakes are feeling weird, it didn’t take long before we realized that we lost our brakes in a windy steep road going downhill with nowhere to pull out!
That was the first time for both of us to experience it and took us few minutes to come up with the plan! Just few hundred minutes before this, I saw a sign of a petrol station that should have been in few hundred meters ahead of us, the least it could do was a place for us to park the car safely so we started to move the car utilising the handbrake and luckily after one turn, we could see the petrol station on the other side of the road. They were really helpful and called a mechanic to come and have a look.
The mechanic showed up in 10 minutes on a Sunday afternoon and as soon as he tested few things, he knew the problem! A common one on these roads!! Overheating brakes, cause the braking liquid to boil and create air bubble in the brake system and it won’t work!! So he got rid of the air bubbles and quite a lots of our braking liquid, topped it up with braking liquid and it was all good.
We had enough for the day and didn’t want to get back in the car. We were lucky that there was a small hotel next to the petrol station so we stayed there for the night.
Next morning I woke up sick. I got the same flu that Amir had the last few days. But we learnt from yesterday events and tried to start the day on the high note!
First task was replacing the front brake pads with the original Toyota ones that we kept as spares. From there, we had only 2 hours drive to our next destination, Chichicastanengo and I already found a perfect camp spot in walking distance from the town center. The plan was to chill out for few days and enjoy the vibrant market of Chichi which we heard so much about.
We had a smooth drive and got to the edge of Chichicastanengo, exactly five minutes from the exit to the dead end alley that our campsite entrance was and we got stuck in a heavy traffic out of nowhere. We were there for over an hour and it was becoming more and more chaotic. A lot of buses and trucks full of people were unloading people and turning around.
The outfit of women were stunning and completely different from where we were before in Guatemala. They all had fancy high heels and handbags and it looked like they are all dressed up for an special occasion.
We finally got to the place that we had to turn right and the police stopped us and told us there’s no where to go and we could see it as well. It was a market and a full on playground set up there like it was never an alley. Apparently there was a three day event in town which was a big deal and we just arrived on the first day so accessing the campsite was physically not possible.
Well, we were learning how unpredicted Central America is! Having no camp option and getting stuck in the traffic, we had no option than adopting ourselves and leave our car somewhere secure for now and go and explore to see what is happening.
But this is an interesting story for the next time! All I can say is our first week in Central America and Guatemala was a roller coaster. Till next time with more stories from Guatemala take care and enjoy life. Below is few photos from the entrance of our potential campsite in Chichi which didn’t work out. You can see why 🙂
