28-30 October, 2000

Yippee! We are in Guatemala. We had planned to drive most of the day through Chiapas and

Cheese shop, Chiapas

sleep in Tapachula, Mexico so that we could spend some time cleaning ourselves up and getting our paperwork in order for the border tomorrow, on Sunday, but about an hour before we got to Tapachula, a few guys in the highway stopped us and talked us into paying one of them five American dollars to take us through the border crossing. According to them, the border is open on Sunday, but not the necessary paperwork offices. So we decided to cross today. They also warned us of a huge vehicle importation fee -- $150 American or more -- which had us mildly concerned. As we drove with the dude (we never really caught his name) in the front seat, Beebee in the back, got to reading ALL of our guide books to see what they said about steep importation fees into Guatemala. We'd certainly never heard of such a thing and none of the books mentioned it. We met up with two women travelling together and decided to split the cost of the dude between us. They spoke no Spanish and we realized later, could have gotten taken pretty bad if they had hired someone on their own.

So, of course, it turns out the guy was full of it. The generally accepted practice (for gringos) is to hire a guy like ours and hand over your paperwork to him. He takes it around, comes back to you intermittently and asks for money for this and money for that and then you get through. Well, it seems his game was to tell of the huge importation fee and then pocket it. Pretty good living if he gets one sucker a week. Needless to say, Steve followed him around and didn't hand over our passports etc. and it all got done in about four hours. Oh yeah, did we mention the guy who needed to sign our papers was out to lunch? For four hours. We didn't wait on him that long, only about an hour and a half, but we were getting worried about getting over the border and finding a place to stay before dark- mind you that by the time you get to the Guatemalan paperwork area you have already officially left Mexico, so if you don't get through before the office closes up… you spend the night in a parking lot with a lot of… let's say entrepreneurial Guatemalans. But we got through and find a place we did, just as dusk fell and it started to rain. The grounds of Las Virginias Hotel were beautiful, the room quite nice and the shower water HOT. We hadn't had a real shower in probably four or five days -- ocean swims and quick rinses under the sun shower only keep you clean for so long. Beebee was terribly happy and we ate a rich meal in the hotel restaurant. A bit of a splurge, but neccessary. We weren't about to drive any further in the dark and the rain.

The next day we took our time getting up and ready. We reorganized a bunch of our things and repacked the truck -- we get better at each time. We left around 1 p.m. and made it to La Antigua Guatemala by 4:30 p.m. what a nice short day of driving! We had read in a useless guide that the roads in Guatemala were the "worst" someone had ever been on. Well, this picture shows how most of the 200 odd kilometers between the border and Antigua looked- wide, smooth, and very clean. The final stretch did have about 5k of pretty bad, gravelly, pot-holed road, but that's nothing compared to much of Mexico!

And Antigua? Perfect. Beebee had been looking very forward to this town as Steve and others had raved about it, and every guide book dedicates about 10-15 pages to it. It is precious.

As she writes this Beebee is sitting in a tiled window seat, in the sun, with a view of Volcan de Agua directly in front of her, the cathedral to her left, ruins a little closer to the left, gardens, and green hills. Egads this is fabulous. The city itself suffered major natural trauma: earthquakes, floods, fires, about 200 years ago. The people either died or fled and it was left alone. No pillaging or scavenging etc. In about 1970 restoration began. Hence it is still as it looked back in 1760 or so. The streets are cobblestone; the women walk around barefoot, in native dress with huge baskets perched on their heads; there are no storefront signs sticking into the street and if you look often and carefully upwards as you stroll along, you'll see that the undersides of the eaves are tiled!

We spent Saturday evening looking for a hotel that had safe parking- and being distracted by the lovely town, finally near dark (imagine that) we found one with a tall enough gate for Sandy and took a room. We had a great dinner -- Chinese no less, and went back to the room and crashed. Did we mention that Antigua is very cosmopolitan as well? Part of its charm, or it's so charming that people from all over the world want to be here, we don't know, but it's wonderful. That means a plethora of restaurants serving all kinds of foods. In fact, last night we had trouble finding a typical "comedor" that serves simple Guatemalan cuisine: rice, beans, corn tortillas, etc. We finally stumbled upon a place (we are planning on going back tonight, it was so good) where we each had a plate of food for 10 quetzales (Guatemalan money). That's about $1.28 American! And it was delicious and exactly what we wanted.

Sunday we breakfasted in a lovely cafe and had a petit de juener (croissants and coffee) while Steve updated the site and Beebee painted some postcards. Incredible. We spent the rest of the day wandering beautiful cobblestone streets and looking at churches, old and new buildings, courtyards and native handicrafts. We walked for hours and still didn't see even half of what we would like to- most of the true beauty of Antigua is inside the walls- in lush and highly decorated courtyards that you might just walk right by if you don't take the time to poke your head into a doorway or two.

Neat wall	Courtyards everywhere	Wooden mortar and pestle
Traditional back-strap loom weaving	Bright colors are the norm	Old churches all over

Monday wasn't quite as relaxed. Steve has learned some new words in Spanish: empaque means gasket, culata is the term for the engine's head and descompuesto is how you say blown out. Steve would really rather not have learned these particular terms at this particular point… It appears that some coolant is finding its way into the exhaust system and that means two things: the head gasket needs replacing, or the head is cracked. Either way not a great situation, but one that can be easily, if not cheaply remedied. Well, pretty cheap actually, by US standards. The current estimate we have to replace the head gasket and machine the head is 2,500 quetzales- $320. Of course, considering the bank lines here, getting $320 is almost as much of pain as spending it! We can only convert $200 in traveler's cheques per day so it means two days of standing in line for an hour or so- oh, and ATM is broken.

Tuesday morning brought a long conversation with the hotel owner's brother- a former diesel mechanic who used to live in California. In fact, Steve ran off to Guatemala City to talk to a mechanic about dropping in a diesel engine instead of fixing our head. A pricy job (still only about $1,000 more than the head gasket), but money saving in the long run as diesel fuel is about 25 percent cheaper than gasoline in these parts. We hope to do a large part of the transaction in trade: the old engine and our various and expensive (even more so in Central America) spare parts. We'll see. Steve's been wanting a diesel for ages and Beebee doesn't wonder if he's been planning this all along …

Well, no diesel for the time being. After taking Sandy to the mechanic we learned some things: Great news is that it now appears that the head gasket is not blown but that there was some water in the fuel and the fuel mixture was too rich, and one plug was just about completely corroded, and we need a tune-up… but no head gasket. Crisis averted. And on the way back from the mechanic we saw another really pretty church hilighted by pink sunset-clouds.

Other good news: Kelley and Lori get here tomorrow and we are very, very excited.

Here are some photos of this fabulous city.

Arch at night	Candlelight procession	Pretty flower	Lunching in style	Laboriously restoring streets by hand	Typical courtyard

Dia de Todos Santos- Day of the Dead

That night's service/celebration seemed to finally settle down around 2 a.m. and we happily fell asleep. It had been an interesting experience, despite our irritation and overall sleepiness. At least we got to participate in an important cultural event, even if our participation was involuntarily.

We woke up understandably late that morning and headed off to one of Antigua's many internet cafes to try to call home and to update the site. Turns out that because of the Gringo demand, Antigua has sprouted more satellite connections than most American cities. There are at least eight internet cafes here that we have seen and we estimate the total number at more like 15 (or more). That number doesn't include the dozen or so little places that may have one or two computers available. Most of the ones we are talking about have in excess of 10 computers and a direct satellite hookup so you actually get DSL or better quality connection. Pretty nice if you are maintaining a web site! Some of the cafes also have internet phones set up so that you can call the US for the same rate as using the internet- usually 4-6 quetzales for half an hour (that's less than one dollar). For those of you who haven't used internet telephony- our experience was that the connections weren't great, but the price is amazing. Most anywhere in town charges five or six quetzales per minute to call direct or two quetzales per minute to receive calls. Even with the slightly lower quality of connection we were very happy to pay 12 quetzales to talk to various people for a total of nearly an hour.

The only negative side of the equation is that the place tried to rip us off. They wanted to double-charge us because there were two of us there on the computer. Fortunately we had exact change for what we considered to be the correct amount. After a brief dispute with the cashier about the charge we simply left what we thought was right and went on our way. This was actually the second bad experience we had with that particular cafe- the first time around they told us that we had to wrap up so they could close, then they charged us for an hour despite the fact that we had only used 34 minutes. In each instance their position was certainly defensible, but in the end they lost what would have been repeat customers and a glowing recommendation in order to make less than a dollar. Bad business. If you are in town you might consider not using the cafe directly under the arch, we had better experiences elsewhere.

Phone calls and internet out of the way we set out to explore some more of the lovely city and eventually found our way into a beautiful restaurant for lunch. Steve had been told that El Fiambre, today's traditional lunch, was perhaps the most typical and important meal of the year, with Christmas the only real competition. We decided to splurge and head out to one the more expensive places in town. The Fiambre was excellent. There were too many ingredients to list here, but the basic idea was an anti-pasto like salad consisting of marinated vegetables, olives, meats, cheeses, shrimp, eggs and fresh vegetables all piled onto a bed of lettuce and finished with a nice vinaigrette dressing. We really enjoyed it and spent nearly two hours eating, drinking and being merry.

Since Kelley and Lori weren't scheduled to arrive until sometime after 10:30 p.m. we killed time by walking around town and watching some of the festivities. The first thing that both of us noticed is the contrast between a holiday here and holidays in California. In California we expect that the streets and public places will be mostly empty on a holiday because everyone is at home with their families. Here, on the other hand, the streets and the main square were very busy with well-dressed people strolling with their families or teenagers meeting each other for snacks or whatnot. People were everywhere. It lent a much more festive air to the day than what we expected. Near the biggest church in town, on the main plaza, there was a parade that must have been in honor of the dead. Everyone was in black robes and paper hoods that were interestingly remeniscent of KKK costumes and walking in front a a funeral carriage that carried a symbolic coffin. After a few hours of walking, watching and a quick nap, we eventually found our way to a neat little cafe called the Rainbow Room which is supposed to be a major hangout for gringos in language school. Not many gringos tonight but we did enjoy the dim, cozy atmosphere and some great garlic bread with cheese.

K&L got to the hotel with no problems at about 11:30 p.m. and we all stayed up late chatting and being happy to see one-another.

Front view of our hotel in Antigua, Santa Lucia #4	Santa Lucia #3, inside	Beautiful flower in Antigua	Antigua's walls tell the story of building, earthquake and repair

Among the many wonderful things we've seen here is the Casa de Poponoe, an early colonial mansion that was purchased by a gringo named Poponoe and fully restored to be a nearly exact replica of colonial life. For a very small admission fee we were able to tour the grounds and see a little bit of history. Some of the most interesting things were the effective use of gutters and the rooftops to collect rainwater that is stored in large cisterns, the beautiful herb garden (now mostly flowers) and the kitchen, where the entire ceiling forms a giant chimeney.

On Friday night we all went out to a really good and inexpensive restaurant, El Escudillo, that also appears to be one of the places to see and be seen. By 10 p.m. the place was packed with gringos, euros and some locals. Most of them dressed up and looking to score. Funny to be at a scene like that after so much time in more relaxed atmosphere. We got a kick out of it and did some good people watching.

The best news from Friday, however, is that Sandy is all fixed up! In the end we payed the very friendly and pleasant mechanic, Don Gustavo 630 quetzales (that is $81 US) to do a major tune-up, change the oil and filter, lube everything, check levels, rotate tires, fix some loose lugs on one wheel (which involves taking apart the front hub), a rear brake job and included the cost of a couple of hours of diagnostic work to check to see that the head gasket was not bad like we feared. Compression in five cylinders is 135-140, one cylinder is closer to 130. Those are good numbers for an 18 year-old Landcruiser engine. I had asked Gustavo to try to line up our spare alternator, but after working on it for a bit he decided that he couldn't really do anything without it becoming a much more expensive job than his estimate so he stopped, put it back together, and charged us nothing for the time he spent trying. If you ever need your car serviced in Antigua, head out to San Felipe (a three minute drive) and ask around for Taller Libulula, about a block off of the church.

We had all hoped to get moving on Friday, towards Honduras, but because of the late hour the girls made an executive decision to stay another night in the hotel. Good decision.

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to Honduras. On the way in to the city we stopped for gas (about 14.80 quetzales/gallon- less than $2/gallon) and the attendants not only washed our windshield, but pretty much washed the whole car! One really nice thing about gas in Guatemala versus Mexico is that you can pay with a credit card here. Another nice thing is that, perhaps because there is competition among different gasoline companies, the bathrooms so far have been much cleaner and neater than the Pemex bathrooms. The down side to the competition is that here you actually have to price-shop a little for gas whereas in Mexico you are going to pay the government-controlled rate regardless of which Pemex you choose.

Not far into Guatemala city we made a wrong turn and got stuck in city traffic for a while instead of taking the faster "highway". A little further up said highway we ended up in the mother of all traffic jams. For over an hour we crept along at less than two miles/hour while people cut in and out of three lanes of traffic. There were traffic cops there, but they were mostly laughing and chatting, not directing traffic. The rule of size seemed to be the order of the day: buses and semis go wherever they want, and Landcruisers with heavy steel bumpers front and rear do pretty well too, when the driver gets fed up enough to drive like the locals do. Speaking of Landcruisers, for those of you interested in seeing some pictures of local cruisers we have started a collection. Some are interesting, some are just fun 'cause they were never sold in the US. The page is still in its early stages but you can check it out here.

After finally getting out of Guatemala City the drive was easy. We stopped for some fantastic ice-cold coconuts and warm tortillas but otherwise headed straight for the border.

The border. In a very recent guidebook (Sept. 2000) it recommends the border at Copán because it sees no big trucks and does see many tourists. The recommendation seems to have been a good one as the crossing out of Guatemala and into Honduras took us a total of about an hour. Costs where as follows:

Fee	Actual Cost	Dollar Amount
Guatemala exit tax	10 quetzales/person	$1.28/person
Honduras admission fee/person	$1/person	$1/person
Honduras vehicle admission fee	$2.00	$2.00
Road maintenance tax	$20	$20
Temporary importation permit	120 lempiras	$8

Most of the Honduran fees are set in dollars (which we found odd), so we paid with US greenbacks. For the fees that were in Lempiras we got an exchange of 15"limps"to a dollar. We also changed a little bit of cash with the local money-changers at a rate of 14.8 limps to the dollar- hopefully enough to buy us some dinner and a cold beer when we got to town. The border itself was almost comical- there was a shack on the left of the road that contained a customs office, an immigration office and a police station. Across the road they had draped a one-inch rope. They lowered it for us upon showing them our cancelled receipt for our various fees. On the Honduran side, there was a similar shack, with similar offices and an identical rope. Nothing at all like the mayhem one sees at the Mexican border of Guatemala or the US-Mexico border. It was actually really nice as the employees were universally polite and courteous, presumably because of the small-town atmosphere of the place. So we were in Honduras! Amazing. Up until now, we didn't feel so awestruck as to how far south we'd come, but Honduras, wow, Beebee still has a hard time believing she's here.

Our pleasure at the easy crossing was soon spoiled, however. As we climbed a hill and stopped for a lovely vista, Steve noticed that we were running hot so we turned off the engine and popped the hood to see that the belt on the spare alternator (and the water pump) was shredded to bits. "So that's what made the clunk sound back there", quoth Steve. Obviously we really need to get that alternator lined up better than it is. Fortunately we did have a spare belt and as soon as Sandy had cooled down enough to work on her, Steve dove right in and put the spare belt on. Would have been easier, but the spare belt was of slightly different size (the only one we could find before we left, honest) so it involved a wee bit more work than normal. Slightly complicating the situation was the fact that the lovely vista by which we had chosen to park turned out to be a cliff at the top of a landfill/dump which meant that in addition to hot, muggy weather Steve had about four dozen flies buzzing around his head. He was awfully glad we had changed enough money to get a cold beer when we got to town. The whole belt debacle turned out to take us an hour. Not that bad really, and the new belt that is on is actually a little wider than the belt that broke- more appropriately sized, actually, just a lot harder to fit on- so it should be more resistant to the belt-killing, offset alternator until we can get said alternator fixed (now a higher priority). We did stop on the outskirts of town and buy a new spare belt. Thank goodness for spares.

One hour later we got into town and found a nice place to stay- Hotel Los Gemelos. We have very little money because it is Saturday night and nothing is open on Saturday or Sunday, but we went out to a good dinner at Nia Lola's. Good in the sense that the food was great. The happy hour drinks were mediocre and the service was very slow. Slow enough that we decided to leave for another bar where it wasn't happy hour yet but where we hoped at least to get served within 10 minutes of ordering a drink. Tukul's was just the place- good drinks served fast by a friendly bartender, who, much to Beebee's delight, commented on her "good spanish".

A few hours later we arrived in Santa Rosa de Copán, where we found a working ATM (our first) and had lunch. We followed the guidebook's recommendation to eat at a particular place based on their cheap and excellent Baleadas (refried beans and cheese folded over in a thick flour tortilla, sometimes with chicken, avocado, etc.). When the waiter came to tell us what they had he omitted baleadas so Steve asked and with a shake of his head he replied, "Yes, that's what all you (meaning gringo's) ask for." Seems to be a case of the classic self-fulfilling prophecy. Write in a guidebook that a place is famous for its baleadas and sooner or later it will be.

After an excellent lunch of baleadas we took a very informational tour of the cigar factory at Flor de Copán. Ever stood in a humidor with over 6,000,000 cigars? Pretty impressive. The most overwhelming thing about the factory is that absolutely everything is done by hand. From sorting and cutting the leaves to rolling, testing and packaging the cigars, even those little bands and shrink-wrapping the boxes. A good cigar roller can do as many as 600-800 cigars in a day! The tour guide gave us a cigar each as a memento and we headed off on our way to Celaque with a little bit of a nicotine buzz from just being inside the factory for an hour.

Because the day had gotten later than we thought, we headed on to Gracias and Celaque at a fairly clip pace. Too bad- the scenery in this mountainous area of lush green landscape and winding rivers is really beautiful. All of us were surprised by the number of pines on the hills and the resemblance that those hills bear to parts of the western US (minus the banana trees, mind you). We zipped through the edge of Gracias and out to Celaque to spend the night in the visitor's center of the park. We were a little dismayed to learn that we could not actually drive to the visitor's center, despite a perfectly useable dirt road that was blocked off by a gate and we would therefore have to hike up the half-hour in the dark. We were further dismayed to learn that the kitchen in the visitor's center had burned down some time ago. Kelley and Lori managed to buy some cooked beans and fresh tortillas from a kind local woman and she was generous enough to through in a few tomatoes. Between that and some supplies from Sandy we figured we would be ok without the kitchen.

While we hiked it occurred to us more than once that we were hiking, at night, up a dirt road in Honduras, not to far from the El Salvadorean border, and that the only people who had any idea of where we were were the hopefully honest locals who lived at the bottom of the hill where Sandy was parked.

The visitor's center turned out to be a fairly spartan but acceptable shack with freezing-cold showers, but at least it was cheap! We only spent about $2.50/pax to sleep there. After watching a beautiful and nearly full moon for a while and eating some cold food we went to bed.

The hike up and down that mountain will likely stand out in our minds for a while as being one of the tougher ones we've done. The cloud forest starts at 2,500 meters, the visitor's center lies at 1,425. The trail from the latter to the former is 6 km long. That means that the overall gain is 1,100 meters in 6 km. That works out to about 3,600 ft in less than 4 miles. The actual amount of vertical gain is much larger as there are several sections of the trail that dip down into then climb back out of rivers and valleys.

After a few hours of hiking we came upon Campamento Don Tomás and enjoyed a huge surge of joy at having decided not to spend the night there. The "camp" was a leaky tin shack with moldering wooden beds that didn't have mattresses, just plastic sheets, and a grimy pit toilet. We were happy to use the fire pit, however, to warm up a little and to heat up our tortillas. "Lunch" consisted of tortillas, smoked oysters, mushy bread (from hours of being in a pack), canned tuna and some cheese which we fried in oyster oil in the fire (a real treat, or maybe we were just starving). After eating we realized that it was only 10 o'clock in the morning and that we were still a few kilometers from the hard part of the trail.

And hard it became. The kilometer immediately before the beginning of the cloud forest, our destination, has an average grade of over 50%. That is to say that it rose a foot for every two feet it progressed. That was the average. Some of the steep parts were so sheer that on a few occasions we found ourselves bumping our chests or chins on roots in the path! In addition to the rugged and steep trail we had, by this point, hiked up high enough to be enveloped in clammy mist that dripped from branches and kept the footing slippery and a little muddy. The trail was gruelling, but the rough conditions added to the overall feeling of adventure and made finally arriving in the cloud forest all the more of an accomplishment.

The cloud forest itself was beautiful. Towering trees with epiphytes (little plants growing on their sides) and hanging orchids and vines surrounded us and a near-drizzle mist floated through the trees. Unseen birds called and insects buzzed and chirped. The ground, covered with moist, rotting vegetation swallowed the sounds of our footsteps as we wandered among the trees and enjoyed the surroundings.

We also ate the rest of our food, which by this point consisted of two cans of tuna fish, a little bit of very salty cheese, and some tomato, with a little lime for flavor. Not much food, considering that we had the entire hike down ahead of us, but it was all we had.

The hike down was tough. We were tired, hot and cold, wet, and hungry. The trail seemed to stretch on endlessly. Half way down we had gotten so hungry that we were digging through our packs for anything- found some hard candies and a cough drop or two and celebrated. When Bb remembered some packets of EmergenC (vitamin mix with a tiny bit of sugar- you dissolve it in water) we looked at it as if it were gold, so happy were we to get a little bit more sugar. Funny how ten hours of hiking can work up an appetite. We were, in the outdoor vernacular, bonked.

The day ended on a good note. We made it down safely, ate some food at the caretaker's house, and hiked another half hour to Sandy to drive into Gracias in the dark to look for a hotel with parking. Having a vehicle makes some parts of the trip much better, and some much worse. Tonight was a perfect example: if we hadn't had Sandy we would have had to hitch a ride down to Gracias and that would be bad, but if we didn't have Sandy we could have just flopped into any hotel and been done with it instead of hunting around, and that would have been awfully nice. After not-too-much looking we found a good place and Steve crashed out while the others went out for a fried chicken dinner.

Early start on the hike…	Starting a fire to cook brunch and try to warm up and dry out	Steep and slippery	Wet and tired, but taking in some wonderful views

Beautiful waterfall on the trail	These trees are what we came to see, wonderful	Looking up at the fog and the trees- like being in a wonderland