The Travelling Teacher: Guatemala

April 1

Hello everyone!

Buenos dias from El Salvador’s bigger northwestern neighbour. A place with more volcanoes, more tourists and more potholes in the roads. Bienvenido a Guatemala!

Our ultimate destination: Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Border sign: not overly prominent

The April break has given us an opportunity to explore Central America for the first time. A perfect time to put use our car to drive around-

Frijoles is currently with its...fifth...sixth mechanic?

Oh. I haven’t written in a while so you may not be aware that our car, Frijoles, is…well, as close to being dead as possible,frankly. It decided to stop working in the fast lane of a motorway about a week after we had booked everything for Guatemala…which relied on us using a car. The result was needing to find a car to rent which we could take across an international border.

This conversation explains that this rental car company - recommended
by someone who recently used them to rent a car to travel from
El Salvador to Guatemala - don't rent cars to go between
El Salvador and Guatemala. Of course!

Step forward this Nissan Sentra, which I collected the night before we set off on a long journey to one of Guatemala’s seemingly many jewels: Lake Atitlan.

Our rental car for the week

It's a long drive from home to here!

Knowing it would take a while, we set off a little after 8am from Santa Tecla. After navigating city traffic which seems to never cease, we were making solid progress, only to be halted for a while by a broken down lorry in the middle of a narrow stretch. Being just before the only river crossing for miles around, we had to patiently wait to squeeze by. It wouldn’t be the last truck we’d have to squeeze past.

Stuck in Salvadorean traffic

To the border, then. This was fairly straightforward, in spite of the fact that there were no parking spaces. We both have a ‘green book’, allowing us easy movement between four Central American nations. Our car was subject to a brief check before entering Guatemala. I had enough Spanish to explain enough of our trip, before playing dumb when she started asking about the car. Through we go.

There are many 'fronteras' between the two countries -
this is the southernmost of them, called Hachadura.

We had to park behind these cars -
luckily the process didn't take long at all

The magical green book also gives us easy
access to Honduras and Nicaragua

Unlike trucks going the other direction, it seems. Hundreds of them, a snake of immovable objects waiting to get into El Salvador. Some drivers had resorted to tying hammocks to the undercarriage of their vehicle so they could chill in the shade.

As you'll see from the video below, this situation lasted a while...

This didn’t prevent many cars - and the occasional truck - passing the snake of trucks to get to the border. A tricky scenario when there is one lane in each direction, with one of those lanes taken up by hundreds of stationary lorries. Mild carnage and an interesting welcome to driving across the border.

We had another, more direct welcome soon after. A police officer, resplendent with dark uniform and enormous gun, motioned us to pull over. This car check was more thorough, including asking to see proof that we could actually drive this car, which had El Salvador plates, in Guatemala. We were prepared for this and handed over the documents, as well as our passports, whilst another officer rummaged through the bags in the bag.

Well I'm obviously not going to take a photo of a police officer!

I had been calm up to this point as I had everything under control. When the man pulled out a bottle of red wine and started asking questions, my heart rate raised a jot. I’d forgotten that many countries have a limit of what can be brought into the country, and that alcohol is often subject to scrutiny. Was this the case here? “Vino tinto,” the man says. “Necesita,” Hannah replies with a smile. The man with the gun laughs. Panic over. We move on about five minutes later.