On The Streets

It seems the dentist cannot insert Layne’s tooth implants. We have to return to the US border at Los Algodones and have the dentist there insert the two new teeth. I never expected this but we shall make the most of it and enjoy the drive. 

Our plan know is to take a leisurely drive over the next few weeks, luckily we love Mexico so that will be easy. Then we’ll spend the summer in the US seeing friends and wild camping and return to Mexico in October. The plan the. Will be to drive Central America in the cool dry season and get to Colombia in the new year. Six months delay? Who cares, we’re retired. 

I have told my favorite Promaster mechanic in Ohio fair warning that we will see him in September for a check up, brakes spark plugs u-joints and transmission fluid. Then with all of us refreshed we shall return through Mexico and Guatemala to El Salvador. I hate the phrase “ it is what it is,” but in this case it actually is! 

We’ll probably start back on Saturday and next week we expect to be in Mexico sometime. It’s a pain but we know how to make the most of reverses. A tooth? Whoever would’ve thunk? Not me. 

Some campground friends recommended a ramen restaurant so we took a tuk-tuk, leaving Rusty to nap safely aboard GANNET2 in the cool. The restaurant is pet friendly but it seemed easier to leave him at home. 

I had curry ramen and it was a lovely opportunity to eat something different. 

A sliced pork appetizer that arrived out of by order but was simple and delicious. 

I ordered a dessert of course, burnt sesame mousse and meringue swirls made to look like ramen with strawberry sauce. Delicate and lovely. 

We bought some sweet pastries off her for dessert. Selling in the main square with her kid. Who can afford school? 

The flag of Guatemala. 

The Plaza de Armas, or main square. Too many sellers to be comfortable. 

Our tuk tuk driver who did a splendid job of hauling us two for ten minutes for $3 across town on bouncing cobble streets. 

Finally back to the peace of the campground.

La Antigua Guatemala

It’s usually known simply as Antigua or La Antigua (pro: “ant-ee-gwah” with the emphasis on the middle syllable) which means ancient.

In 1524 the city was founded and known as Santiago (Saint James) de Guatemala and it was designated as the capital of the Captain Regency of Guatemala, Spain’s Central American colony that included Chiapas, Yucatán and Belize until the British wanted mahogany from those forests.

It soldiered on for 230 years serving as the capital through an assortment of fires, earthquakes rebellions and floods until 1773 when a series of utterly ruinous earthquakes convinced the Spanish it was time to bug out.

Most did, to the new capital of Guatemala City twenty miles away but a stalwart few stayed behind hence its name of “ancient.” Nowadays it’s a tourist magnet with tons of gringos photobombing and crowding sidewalks. 

The city is famous for its language schools, middle class restaurants and preserved ruins amidst the faded splendor of a colonial city. All of which will be revealed as we spend time here. 

The city is at 5,000 feet (1500 Canadian feet) above sea level with a population near 50,000 people enjoying cool daytime breezes and chilly nights with the addition of some unexpected thundery and rainy weather. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site though most of the buildings are of 17th and 18th century origin. They say the city’s broad streets set in a grid are the original design supposedly built in imitation of Italian renaissance municipal planning. Which sounds dubious to me recalling the street mazes in the central Italian villages I grew up in. Anyway it’s still a very pretty place and we’ve barely seen any of it. 

Our first day at the downtown campground we cleaned GANNET2 furiously as we still had traces of our Belizean dirt mixed in with a hefty layer of dust from our more recent travels. A top to bottom clean of our home takes a couple of hours and that didn’t include the toilet compartment which gets a clean tomorrow. Then we rested and spiffed ourselves up for lunch inside this unprepossessing building three blocks up the street from our Green Events campsite.  

Rusty was welcome though I worried he might freak out other customers. I tried to convince them it was me that was fierce (“bravo”) not the dog. 

He was as usual perfectly behaved and our lunch with tamarind juice was satisfying if not startling. 

I frankly don’t enjoy walking on 18th century cobbles any more than I like driving on them but they do give the city it’s historic look. Sidewalks are narrow and awkward littered as they are with poles and utility boxes. Pedestrians by the way are fair game so I kept Rusty on his leash. 

Old school buses from the US are still being pressed into service here. 

We got our clothes washed in Coban. But now we want our sheets and floor mats cleaned if possible. Layne thought she had found a place, a laundry devoted to gardening as well it appeared.  

Layne wandered the fruit market and brought back some blackberries and strawberries while I took an impatient Rusty back to the comfort of the grass at the campground. 

The only sign outside the campground says “This land is not for sale.” Otherwise you just have to figure out for yourself which of the several large green gates is the actual one you want. We tried one other unmarked gate and got no response before we found the correct entrance. 

The entrance to Verde Eventos is the  bright green metal gate with absolutely no visible sign. A discreet metal sign with the name is hidden artfully under the shrubbery. 

This will make a good place from which to explore the city. 

Rusty loves it. 

And the book I am digging into here is the biography of a truly peculiar American adventurer who traveled Latin America trying to colonize parts of Mexico and the isthmus in an effort to expand slave owning lands before the Civil War. Not many Americans have heard of William Walker but I find his bizarreness fascinating. 

Tooth Decay

An online acquaintance recommended a dentist in Guatemala City and he proved to be superb. 

He speaks some English, shyly but we communicated fine in Spanglish and the news was not good. In fact it was terrible. 

The office is located in a fancy neighborhood and we arrived early yesterday morning to make sure we found a parking spot. Latin Americans always put low hanging obstructions across the entrance to their parking lots so a 2.8 meter tall (9 foot high) van is a problem. 

We found easy parking a couple of blocks up the street and we settled in for a few hours. It’s lovely traveling in your home,  as I could walk Rusty and we made lunch and layne washed her teeth. Her appointment at 1:30 was to see about installing two implants into the bases already inserted three months ago in Los Algodones, the Mexican town on the border with California.

The dentist cut open one implant base and tried all his own implants to see if one would fit. None did, but he said the work was excellent and her jaw had healed perfectly. The trouble is the Mexican dentist used a Pakistani implant unknown to the Guatemalan dentist who uses US made implants. He is now talking to his supplier to see if he can get the necessary parts. If not we can proceed and hope for the best or drive back to Los Algodones and get the two teeth implanted. Layne wants the holes in her jaw filled. We don’t want to drive around at random asking dentists if they use her implants. It turns out, and I had no idea, there are 150 different implant types in the world of dentistry. 

Our heads spinning we walked out into a stormy Monday afternoon in the capital of Guatemala. I walked Rusty before the rain started and then we drove. Our planned campsite in Antigua Guatemala was 18 miles away. It took us more than three hours. 

We left around three and arrived at dusk driving through endless traffic jams, intense puddles and piles of washed away trash. It was the end of the world. Except it wasn’t. 

Weaving through the traffic were a few hardy motorcyclists, most were huddled under bridges sitting out the apocalyptic downpour, but the others were speeding through backed up traffic as though invulnerable. 

Most of it was at walking speed and as you can see we crossed paths with everything short of the kitchen sink. Meanwhile we mulled over our options. 

Sidewalks and and traffic lights are too sophisticated for street planners here. Pedestrians are everywhere and they think nothing of walking alongside hurrying vehicles. They frighten me half to death with their insouciance. 

Children risking their lives without a second thought and car drivers cut them no slack. Guatemalans behind the wheel are notorious for being insanely aggressive and they wore me out. 

In the end we decided we would follow the dentists lead as to whether we go forward or back. If he can find the implants we will stay and get it done and then go south. If not, we will go back to the States and get Laynes teeth done in Los Algodones on the border and be back in Guatemala in the fall at the start of the cool season which will give us months to reach Panama before the rains instead of weeks as we find ourselves now. It is all out of our hands but either way the journey will ultimately continue.  

Oh yes I forgot: potholes. They are especially intriguing when the road is covered in a few inches of muddy brown water. What if there’s a giant hole hiding underneath..? 

Photos don’t show the steep gradients we had to negotiate. 

Guatemalan roads lack subtlety. They go up and down the sides of hills with no concessions to grading or contours.  The hill goes straight down? Well then the road goes straight down too. 

There are no traffic lights outside the capital so when two roads cross or merge all hell breaks loose as cars push and shove with no good manners or concessions allowed. I need to toughen up but I had a few gringo moments marveling at their bad manners. 

“Amazing we have seen no accidents,” I said as we rolled downhill trying to picture how soul destroying it might be to have to drive back to the US next week. Sure enough that was Jehovah’s cue to foul everything up beyond all recognition. There was an accident all right and it turned into a massive unscripted Central American goat fuck the like of which I had never seen and hope never to see again.  

In short order cars started turning around completely at random. Bear in mind there were no exits for miles behind us, no turn outs and no shoulders. The travel lanes are lined by deep ditches so there was no way out. We sat still and watched a giant traffic snarl form up the hill behind us. Two lanes coming down and two lanes fighting their way up into a giant hairball of cars. It was insane. The freeway uphill and behind us turned into a massive chaotic traffic jam of interlocked cars and trucks. I sipped my tea and waited with a couple of dozen cars ahead of us. Sure enough the cops opened one lane of traffic just as soon as the freeway behind us was empty of impatient confused drivers. 

Just a few minutes later the few of us waiting patiently started to move down the hill, around the corner and onto the scene of the accident. The hairball of jammed cars up the hill couldn’t move so the road behind us was completely empty. We were the last car through of course because our neighbors turned into ravening beasts the moment their cars could move and they shoved and pushed to fit in the single lane, but the road above the accident behind remained as empty as if an apocalypse had swept the traffic away. Apparently the giant snarl had turned in on itself. Totally weird but I kept driving. 

We ambled into the former capital of Spanish Central America: 

It’s a historic city worthy of exploration which we shall do. However the streets are also historically accurate and are made of very uneven cobblestones. Our kidneys were protesting in short order. 

No one was speeding on these ghastly streets but they still put speed bumps in from time to time. 

I think this will be a pretty town to explore and we met some people we had last seen Oaxaca camping next to us here. 

Right in the middle of town Green Events provides a space to hold a wedding or a festivity but also rents space to campers at $13 a night for a couple in a van, dogs welcome of course. 

Facilities are sparse, one cold shower and one toilet with a seat but no toilet paper…a trash can and lots of grass to walk. It’s perfect.