Gettin’ Gutsy in Guatemala By Rob Wick
Guatemala is about 2,000 square miles smaller My wife, Amy, had participated in an than my home state of Ohio. According to the GPS, to drive from one side of the country to the other, a distance of about 500 km (310 miles), takes about 12 hours. This means the cross-country drive was supposed to average about 26 mph. This seems slow, and it is, but keep in mind the conditions of the roads. They pretty much just cut a path and pave it, leaving the hills and especially sharp curves in place. The “freeways” have 90 degree turns in them and run up and down the sides of mountains, with few guardrails, if any. Most of the time, the posted speed limit is 50 kph (31 mph) and occasionally on a freeway you’ll see an 80 kph limit (50 mph). Much of the time, road conditions and traffic don’t permit driving even that fast.
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archaeological dig in Belize and Guatemala when she was in college, and had been wanting to visit again for years. This was why we were there with our two boys, Neal (12 years old) and Ray (10) for a nine day vacation. We flew into Guatemala City, rented a four door Toyota Hilux 4x4 pickup (six speed manual transmission behind a small, four cylinder turbo diesel with a clogged air filter I ended up replacing myself), and then set out on a driving journey that took us to all corners of the small country. The first couple days went without incident, and we enjoyed a hotel built from logs and reeds. We had to ride a boat across a lake to get over to it. After that, we traveled to Flores and toured Tikal, an ancient Mayan temple site. It was awesome.
