Latin America Collection

Our first impression of Guatemala was that the vegetation near the
border crossing was more tropical than in Mexico. Quite a big change, after
travelling only a short distance. This jungle was soon replaced by farms.

The greatest change was the difference in the people. One would
think that changes in people and culture would be gradual as you travel
from one country to the next. But here it was like walking through a door
into another world. First, there were more people walking along the roads
or riding the more frequent numbers of buses than in Mexico. The early
morning roads were crowded.

There were women in brilliantly colored clothing, carrying bundles, jugs,
boxes and bundles of wood on their heads. They had a sort of towel curled
on top of their head, making a platform for the load they were carrying.
They walked down the road very erect, not using their hands to hold the
load in place.

Then the numbers of people crowding into and on to each bus had to
be seen to be believed. On a normal forty-passenger bus there would be
at least one hundred passengers jammed inside. Others would be hanging
on the outside of the buses, hanging onto the window frames and the doors
with their feet flying into the air. Others would be on top of the bus. I
judged that there had to be in excess of one hunderd twenty-five people
in, on and around each forty-passenger bus. I could not figure how they
were possibly able to collect the fares.

In Mexico the roads are very well marked, both by the road numbers
and the next major city, with the distance in kilometers. The quick conversion
factor from kilometers to miles is to multiply the kilometers by .62. I would
round it off to .6, mentally, and come up with a good mileage estimate and
add or subtract a bit. From the time you leave Mexico until you get to Costa
Rica where again the roads are again well marked, you are in a "by guess
and by god" situation.

When you come to an intersection where you should go one way or
another, you choose the one you think it might be, then right away ask
someone the right way. Use the name of major cities or countries when
you ask them. Then, when you are in the direction they told you, ask
another person down the road a ways. You will be amazed at how some
of them will go into a five-minute dissertation, pointing in one direction
and seem so sincere, yet be wrong. They seem to get confused over little
things. For instance, let's assume you are trying to get to Guatemala City,
and you ask a local, "Is this the way to Guatemala City ?" Don `t use so
many words. Just point and say, "Guatemala ?" in the form of a question.
If you say "Guatemala City ?", he is already confused. He does not know
what the word "city" means. They just call it Guatemala. When you throw
in too many other words, he will be trying to figure out what they all mean,
and again he is confused. So, just be as brief as possible.

In one case shortly after we entered Guatemala, the road we were on,
dead-ended on what seemed to be a main road. Both directions seemed
to indicate about equal tire wear, so we had to guess . I turned right. A
quarter mile down the road, I asked someone, and he pointed in the opposite
direction. So, I made a "U-turn" and went the other way. Then I asked
another man down the road, and he pointed in the direction I was going
and said, "directo, directo", which means "straight ahead" in Spanish. Later,
in studying the map, the other direction was the coastal road which we had
originally picked, until the man at the ice cream parlor in Tapachula changed
our mind.

The road to Guatemala City took us through beautiful farmland with
many dairies which had healthy looking herds. The whole area appeared
to be very prosperous.

As we drove into the outskirts of Guatemala City, our map indicated
that we did not need to go into the center of the city. Of course, we were
using the National Geographic map, and not a regular road map. We were
on a four-lane divided highway with a chain-link fence down the center
median. Suddenly we saw a beautiful new Shell station on the other side
of the fence. It had, of all things, a Circle-K mini-mart. We saw this as a
possible stop. It gave us an opportunity to service the car, refill our ice chest
with ice and goodies, use possibly new, clean rest-rooms and even cash a
travellers check, all in one stop.

We managed to turn around at an intersection, and made our way
back to the station. They accepted a travellers check (thank you, Karl). So,
while I serviced the car, Audrey used their "facilities", then went in to
shop. When I was through with the car and my "pit stop", I went into the
store. Audrey was all excited. She was talking to a nice lady who was trying
to draw her a map, showing her how to get on the road to San Salvador
without going down town. Her problem was that she was not a cartographer,
and was not doing too well with the map.

Suddenly, she threw up her hands in disgust and told us to follow her,
and she would show us the right way. Shades of Mexico City and the lady
in the VW bug.

She went out and jumped into her new Nissan Stanza. We forgot our
shopping, and ran after her to follow her in our van. She did a U-turn
around the other end of the chain-link fence, then went off into an industrial
area, zigging here, zagging there for about five miles. Suddenly we popped
out onto another four-lane divided highway and she told us to go, "directo,
directo", so we thanked her and continued straight ahead.

Again as in Mexico City, we were amazed that she would go out of her
way for strangers--on a Sunday morning. It made me wonder how many
Americans would have done such a generous thing?

We debated about missing our opportunity to shop in the Shell mini-
mart. No more than a mile down the road was a new Texaco station, with
yet another Circle-K. We pulled in and completed our shopping and
refilling of our ice chest. Wow! This was almost as though we had not left
the states. I paid with the change from cashing the travellers check at the
Shell station.

The highway was much better than anything we had seen in Mexico,
allowing us to drive 65 to 75 m.p.h. After leaving Guatemala City, we
came into an area with vast fields of sugar cane. We also ran into a lot of
trucks loaded with cut sugar cane, heading for the sugar mill somewhere
up ahead. The road was straight and wide, so we had no trouble passing
them.
We soon came to a gigantic sugar mill. Trucks loaded with cane were
lined up for at least a mile, waiting their turn on the scales and to unload
their cargo. Everything about the area of Guatemala we had gone through
indicated wealth and affluence, which really surprised me. On the edge
of my National Geographic map, there were boxes that gave their G.N.P.
and per-capita income for each Central American country. Again, we were
surprised to see that Guatemala was second to Panama in income, and
Costa Rica, which we had assumed would be number one, came in third.