The Third Crisis In Panajachel

You know how they say things come in threes well we’ve had our third mechanical failure on this trip so I’m hoping we can put this sort of nonsense behind us.

First was me driving into the clay a month ago in Belize and not only getting stuck but losing control of the situation and wrecking our radiator in the process. Then we got stuck at the bottom of a hill in a campground in Coban Guatemala. 

This time we kept control of the situation and winched ourselves up the soft loose gravel hill which never looks as steep in pictures as it does in real life…but in the process we destroyed our front tires. 

By now we were learning that to every crisis there is a solution so it was with an easy heart that we drove slowly from Antigua to Panajachel and the famously beautiful Lake Atitlan.  We felt ready to enjoy some scenery and were not counting on having to worry about some future equipment failure, so when Google says 47 miles takes two hours, the roads you can bet will be winding and scenic. We traveled with all due caution and enjoyed the mountain roads, canyon views and narrow shoulder-free, well paved highways. 

And yes the volcanic lake, with its attendant peaks is quite beautiful.  The English writer Aldous Huxley put it on the map in the 1930s saying it’s the most beautiful in the world, exceeding the northern Italian lakes so chic and in vogue at that time. 

It’s pretty enough and you can take a boat ride across it to see various isolated Mayan villages. Some people ascribe spiritual significance to the place which, and I don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, I find absurd. It’s a tourist hotspot with attendant begging, trash, and foreign resident population. It is, in short, heavily discovered. 

Rusty has moved into a new phase in his life. He has figured out that local dogs look aggressive and bark but if he stares then down they slink away or possibly try to make friends. Consequently he is much more relaxed and at home in public spaces which gives me hope he is enjoying the constant change of travel. 

We drove out of town hunting for a supposed campsite on iOverlander at a resort on the shore of the lake. We found it but found no one at home and took iOverlander residence in a neighboring field marked as public parking.

Brilliant, except…

I have changed dozens of tires in my life and the process is as routine as anything. I even had a nice long breaker bar after we had trouble undoing the lug nuts on our flat in Louisiana. 

It worked perfectly. The jack however failed me completely. Perhaps the ground was on too much of a slope and certainly it was too soft as the van sank the jack into the ground, but I could t get the fiat off the ground. Before I could think that problem through a patrol of tourism police came by. The senior officer was the unit mechanic. He rubbed his hands, smiled broadly and set about solving the problem. By now it was dark. 

He used his bottle jack and our scissor jack on a rock and eventually the flat was off the ground. He told us he had been a police cadet for three years in the US…there’s story there methinks! 

I dug a hold under the tire to allow the fully inflated spare to fit and we were done. 

“We’re tourism police,” they said, “it’s our job to help you.” Smiles all round. We gave them Key West Police patches and expressed much gratitude as they filled out the notes for their report. And once again a crappy situation became an encounter with new friends. 

Well that was pretty bloody stupid and one more thing to put on the list to deal with when we are in the States. A bottle jack possibly…We slept on it. 

In the morning we negotiated the narrow streets and unforgiving drivers of Panajachel, the lakeside resort turned bilingual thanks to the throngs of foreigners. 

The painter above mused briefly about moving to the US when I told him where we are from but he enjoys his sign painting business keeps him happily occupied. 

Rusty hates going to the vet but he was out of luck as he needs a health certificate to cross the border to Mexico. 

The vet is Austrian trained and speaks English and gave him a going over. She also recommended a distemper booster and administered it to my unhappy dog. 

$90 later we had the paper which with his pet passport issued in Chetumal with his rabies shot recorded, will get him into Mexico. 

We got what we had come for so on we went. 

And to the road we put the whole miserable experience of the stupid flat tire behind us for the princely sum of three dollars: 

In Mexico they call tire shops “llantera” but in Guatemala they are called “pinchazo” and it occurred to me we could have inflated the tire to see how fast it lost pressure but here we were.  

Five minutes later (!) we were on our way to Chichicastenango and the worst driving day of my life. 

But first a magnificent steak lunch…

And some fresh fruit for the fridge. 

And even some sugar cookies for dessert. 

It was as though layne had a premonition of the day we faced and knew we would need some sugar to cheer us up. Tire shops it turns out are everywhere of course in countries where flats are common. 

If only that had been our problem in Chichicastenango!