by Randy Denmon
As I finally walked off double time, one of the women yelled at me, “You come see me tomorrow. My name is Margarita.”
Tomorrow, I would hopefully be another two hundred miles down the road.
Guatemalans’ Hospitality and Short Memory
I wanted to depart at first light the next morning, but Rafael Ralón, the hotel owner, wanted to take some pictures with us and the car. I’m quite familiar with the Latin concept of time, so about seven, I called him to make sure he was on his way.
He assured me he was en route.
To pass the time, Dean and I took a fantastic picture of us and the car on the banks of Lake Atitlán and then ate a light breakfast at the hotel. The lake may be the most beautiful natural wonder I’ve ever seen, a huge, volcanic caldera lake, similar in setting to Yellowstone Lake, a vast expanse of calm, shimmering water set between towering, peaceful peaks. It’s ringed with three enormous, cone-shaped volcanoes: Atitlán, San Pedro, and Toliman. They reach for the sky, piercing the clouds and give eloquent testament to the powerful forces below.
I tried to pay for the car wash, but was told it was complimentary. Further ingratiating us with the hotel staff, the night before, Dean ran off a couple of American hippies, whiffing pot and walking around the hotel grounds and lakefront, setting off fireworks. I don’t know what he did, but after he set off to quiet the little heathens, the loud, irritating pops ceased.
• • •
How friendly and helpful the Guatemalans had been. Few people in the world should be more hostile to Americans than Guatemalans. They’d been the recipient of more underhanded misdealing by us over the last hundred years than almost any country on the planet. In fact, Guatemala hasn’t had much luck since the Europeans arrived.
First conquered by the tyrannical Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado almost five hundred years ago, it is estimated that through disease, murder, or deportation for slavery, a third of the Guatemalan population was eliminated during the first hundred years of occupation.
Later came the Americans. First, the New Orleans-based United Fruit Company and its president, Samuel Zemurray, nicknamed Sam the Banana Man, that controlled the country for most of the first half the twentieth century with monopolies not only on land and bananas, but also coffee, the postal service, railroads, and the media, just to name a few.
By 1952, the Guatemalans had had enough and elected a liberal president who planned to reform the country and end foreign exploitation. The only problem was he was too left-leaning, and Washington feared the republic might end up a puppet state for the Soviets. So in one of America’s first attempts at nation building, the CIA orchestrated a coup that deposed the elected president and installed a general with more capitalistic values. Not our finest hour.
What followed was forty years of military rule and a thirty-year civil war that resulted in the death or disappearance of more than two hundred thousand Guatemalans. On a proportional basis, that’s about three times as many deaths as America suffered in World War II. The United Nations estimates that government forces or CIA-trained paramilitaries were responsible for more than 90 percent of the murders. I’m glad we finally defeated those Soviets, but we had to sell our souls to do it.
Since the demise of world communism, true democracy has returned to Guatemala, and in 1996 peace accords were signed between the government and the guerrillas. Still, the healing process has been slow. In 1998, two days after his publication of Never Again in Guatemala, Bishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera, a longtime advocate for Guatemala’s indigenous people, was beaten to death in his church. So brutal was the murder that he was identified only by his ring. In 2001, three army officers and a priest were convicted of his murder. The case was the first time members of the military had been tried in a civilian court.
Since the Guatemalans don’t seem to have America’s vindictiveness, and appear more worried about their future than their past, I anxiously waited on Rafael in hopes he might give me some driving directions. Not sure of our next destination or the route, I had walked down to the Hotel Atitlán the night before, hoping to find the American owners.
I didn’t find them, but I did find a hotel full of well-to-do Americans, mostly middle- or late-aged couples, private-school types, dining in the plush accommodations in a scene that resembled the restaurant and bar at Washington, DC’s Four Seasons. A wedding party was even at the hotel. All gave the impression of fun, schmoozing in their casual wear as they lifted wine glasses in toasts. Let’s hope the marriage turns out better than most of the weddings I’ve been in.
The hotel clerk did speak excellent English and scratched out a few directions on my map.
Rafael finally arrived about seven-thirty with a request—he wanted us to bring the car to his other hotel in town. We could have breakfast there, and he wanted to take some pictures of the car there with his family.
I concurred, but first wanted to get some better directions. I pulled out my Central American map and unfolded it on the hood of the car. “Rafael, we’re headed south, two hundred to two hundred fifty miles. Where do you think we can get a charge, and how do we get there?”
Rafael studied the map, scratching his chin, then pointed to La Libertad, El Salvador. “This is good place, plenty of hotels. And take this road.” He pointed to CA-2 along the coast.
“How’s the border crossing there?”
“No problem, about an hour.”
I ran my hands through my hair and flashed my eyes at Dean. I knew La Libertad, a popular coastal resort with American surfers I’d briefly passed through a decade previously, but his recommended route was in complete contrast to the instructions I’d gotten the previous evening.
“How about this road, further inland?” I said, pointing at CA-1, “and then crossing here?”
Rafael crinkled his face. “That’s okay too, but you will have to go through Guatemala City. Just don’t take this road here.” He pointed to a road that ran south out of Lake Atitlán to the coast. “Or this northern road. It has some trouble spots, and I hear the border crossing there can be problematic.”
I was more confused than before. I stared at Rafael. I had long ago learned to be leery of directions meted out south of the border. They’d sent me on dozens of goose-chases over the years. There’s something in the Latin psyche, machismo as it’s called, that makes a man embarrassed if he doesn’t know the way. When in doubt, he will simply make up the directions.
But worse, our GPS that had performed superbly in Mexico had started to get befuddled since we had crossed the Mexican border. The standard Garmin package for North America includes Mexico, but Garmin doesn’t produce a GPS map file for Central America. I’d been forced to purchase a third-party package. Thus far, it had done a pretty good job of mapping our location and travel direction in the mountain forest, but with directions and roads, it had been somewhat spotty. Surely, some computer whiz kid out there should put something more reliable on the market, but the number of individuals needing this would be minuscule. How many dumbasses like us are out there?
Dean spoke up. “We’ll just keep the sun to our left in the mornings, and to our right in the evenings. The terrain will eventually taper us in the right direction. Just keep going south. We’ll get there.”
I looked at the map, the distance between the two oceans growing narrower by the day. In Guatemala, only about 225 miles separated the Pacific and Atlantic, and by the time we got to Panama, if we made it that far, this would be reduced to about forty miles. We were down to reading the map and traveling by celestial “dead reckoning!” At least we had a map.
• • •
By eight-thirty we had pacified Rafael and were on the road, our tank full. The 3,000-foot climb out of Panajachel would likely consume 10 to 15 percent of our batteries, but I wasn’t concerned. We’d be at an elevation above 8,000 feet and on our way to the coast, where the elevation was no more than 1,500 feet. In an electric car, like an airplane, elevation is stored energy, and our
net descent would add considerably to our range. To my contentment, the day before, and even earlier in Mexico, the Tesla had grossly exceeded my expectations in the mountains.
Behind the wheel, I felt cautiously optimistic and again overtaken with the task ahead. We’d make it somewhere today, but the next twelve hours promised to be a true day of discovery. At our recent rates of travel, we’d be lucky to burn all our battery in twelve to fifteen hours. The long hours of getting the car down the road in recent days had left me little time to muse over my holiday. This vacation was turning out to be a lot of work, but what a great break from the world.
Climbing out of Panajachel, I got a final look at Lake Atitlán. The sun, rising in the east, shone on the land, accentuating the montage of colors and the mammoth wedge of water, stretching across the horizon and juxtaposed against the resplendent volcanoes, their chiseled apexes colliding with the sky.
• • •
Like many people living around natural wonders, the residents here had paid a price. During the civil war, Mayan villages around the lake were constantly harassed by the government. It is believed that more than three hundred citizens in the area, and Stanley Rother, a missionary from Oklahoma, were killed by government forces.
Weather has also been a source of trouble. In 2005, Hurricane Stan belted the region, inducing a huge landslide that buried the lakeside village of Panabaj, killing 1,400 and leaving 5,000 homeless. Tropical storms are forever causing rapid water-level increases on the lake, flooding the adjacent villages. Since Hurricane Stan, most of the roads had been rebuilt, and the region looked to be bouncing back fine.
But the biggest long-term threat to the lake is an environmental tragedy. Too much sewage was being discharged to the lake from the dozen or so villages around it. The tourists in Panajachel had to be making this worse. A few years ago, the lake turned green because of the oxygen-depleting effluent. Swimming is not recommended. The sewage problem is much worse than most lakes or rivers that get contaminated because the lake has no river feeding it or a natural outlet. The water is only rainfall that has collected for thousands of years, so Mother Nature provides no flushing effect to help cleanse the lake.
When a closed system like this gets polluted, it is very difficult to clean it up. Several international groups have donated more than a million dollars to address the problem, but currently the lake’s situation has not improved significantly. And this in one of the most breathtaking, spectacular locales in the world.
• • •
Less than an hour outside of Panajachel, we had to make a decision. As we approached the turnoff to the road Rafael recommended, we opted to stay on CA-1. It was still a four-lane highway. Curvy and steep, the road wasn’t I-10, or even anything a good-government state like Texas would be proud of (in Louisiana we’d have been damn proud of it), and I had averaged almost 40 mph for the last half hour—warp speed compared to the day before. The side road didn’t look too inviting, only two lanes of asphalt disappearing into the emerald mountains. Hopefully we weren’t being tempted into a trap.
Our route along CA-1 (Central American Highway 1), led right through the middle of Guatemala City, the largest city in Central America, with more than four million people in the urban area. The traffic was terrible on the six- and eight-lane route through town. On the freeway, Lexuses and Mercedes battled with 1980s hand-me-down jalopies from the States. They all jammed their way onto and off the road with little order. In the mayhem, they dodged and cut everywhere. The drivers honked as if this were required to prime the engine.
Nothing worried me more than the thought of a crash. Each day, fewer obstacles lay in front of us, but with each day we had more to lose in a mishap.
Our biggest impediment were the lunatic drivers. For the natives, driving, and more importantly passing, is a race, something to be relished. At home, most Americans cautiously slow down and ease over when changing lanes in a traffic jam, giving other drivers time to yield and make way. Here, they storm into the other lane, hoping to beat everybody else to the desired spot.
I can think of no better use for American foreign aid than giving defensive-driving lessons to the entire third world. And probably nothing would increase the average human’s life span more.
The urban driving was the most frightening, for here we had the best chance for a fender-bender too complicated for the local body shop. While the open road wasn’t any safer—the drivers equally incompetent—the odds there were more in our favor. Of course, on the open road, the stakes are higher—the loss of the car or the trip might be a minor inconvenience compared with the consequences of meeting one of these nutcases at 70 mph.
Four times during our transit of Guatemala City we were funneled off the road and into a neighborhood. It wasn’t like we were driving in the exit lane—suddenly, the middle of the road would split, three lanes going one way and three lanes going the other. The signs on the freeway would say something like: Calle 20 to the right, Avenida 14 to the left. Nothing said how to stay on CA-1. There may be something to that sign-selling enterprise I mentioned a few chapters back. I thought to check into that when I got home. It had to be less stressful than engineering.
Every time we found ourselves off the freeway, we were forced to drive around the neighborhood for a few blocks until we got back on the freeway. Fortunately, we were never dumped off into the Guatemalan version of East LA. After our first two wrong turns, I approached these devious splits with intense focus in hopes of finding something to steer me correctly. A few times I guessed right. The GPS was of no use. As I agonized over what to do at each moment of truth, all it said was, “Calculating.”
After forty-five minutes of the nerve-racking experience, we found ourselves out of town, having seen none of the shantytowns, or “settlements,” the city is notorious for. Or felt the danger I’d heard so much about. Fifteen or twenty miles south of Guatemala City, the road transitioned back to a congested two-lane, winding, pothole-strewn asphalt trail bisecting the rural landscape. Despite the good road out of Panajachel, it had taken us almost four hours to go 120 miles, and our pace was about to slow down. Outside, the scenery hadn’t changed: green hills, impoverished villages, and pickup trucks, their beds crammed with people.
We drove by Volcano Pacaya, its sharp apex only nine miles off to our right. A month later, it would erupt, sending a vertical stream of ash, gas, and glowing rock two and a half miles high.
We did find a couple of short stretches where we were vectored off the old road onto new four-lane that took a straight line, the engineers carving away the hills for the new throughway. Just as our hopes rose on one of these, we’d be back on the old road. But the signs of progress were encouraging. Maybe they could get the highway completed before the radical environmentalists found out about it and started complaining about spoiling the virgin country.
We passed four or five more volcanoes. Our only sight in this stretch of road was the crossing of the often-raging Rio los Esclavos, the River of Slaves, at the little town of Cuilapa. We passed just beside the old stone bridge, built by the Spanish in 1592 and still in operation. Only recently has motorized traffic been removed from the bridge, not because of structural deficiency, but in hopes of prolonging the lifespan of the engineering treasure.
At a fork, we took CA-8 to avoid the road Rafael had warned us about. From here, it was about thirty miles to the El Salvador border.
• • •
I’d noticed that, as we approached borders, the land became isolated, and this stretch of road was the most solitary we’d driven the entire trip. We saw nothing but a few women carrying wood on their heads. Americans often forget how good we have it.
In an exceptionally bad mood, Dean didn’t say much during the day. His computer had crashed the night before. His daily video posts had come to an end, as had his work on a website for the trip that he had been putting together in both English and Chinese.
“When we get to the next town,” I said, “just go
buy a new one.”
“I don’t roll like you and all your highfalutin’ buddies,” he jested, “who think everything you have is disposable—clothes, computers, even cars. When the shit quits working, you just trash it and flop down your credit card for a new one. When you live in some of the overseas places I do, you gotta know how to fix or salvage everything.”
I looked at the GPS. It was doing a reasonable job of tracking our progress. The little border town of Valle Nuevo was only a few miles ahead. I looked back out at Guatemala. It had been an enjoyable surprise, its land superlative, its people polite and helpful. Grave predictions abound from narco experts and pundits that Guatemala is on the verge of becoming the next Mexico. Let’s hope not. I’d like to come back some day. Hopefully, El Salvador would be as agreeable.
Guatemalan Math and Bridges
The first thing that tells you that you’re at a Central American border crossing is not the signs, or the customs or immigration buildings, but the hawkers, helpers, handlers, shysters, petty con men, you name it, who loiter around the border crossings hoping to prey on unsuspecting tourists. They attack you like hornets who have just had their nest kicked.
When we drove up to the tiny Guatemalan border crossing in Valle Nuevo in the freshly washed, slick new Tesla, they recklessly charged forward. Dogs will run at a car, but they have enough sense to chase behind the car when they get close. Not these people. They ran directly in front.
“What the hell?” I slammed on the brakes.
Three or four heads poked into my window, forcing me to roll it up as I motored up to a small, official-looking building.
“No necesito,” I said four or five times as I stepped out of the car, grabbing my papers and locking the door.
My words dissuaded no one, and the hawkers continued to blare Spanish into my face, a few less than a foot away. One man grabbed my arm and another reached for my passport and papers.