Up a Mountain without a road…

After two really good days in Guatemala and the hope of an apartment, we decided to return to Lake Atitlan and San Pedro to get Fritz into school.  Consulting the map the most direct way to go was back though Coban and then cut over to Chimiltenango stay the night there and then to the school the next day.  With an early start I was fairly certain that we could get to Chimiltenango by around 3.  We stopped and to eat and get some dog food in Coban and then took off again still with plenty of time. 

We hit some really winding roads but everything seemed to be going well, we were a bit behind schedule and discussed stopping for the day but as it was still only 1 (our rule is try to find a place to settle in for the night by 3 or 4 at the latest) so we pushed on.  About an hour outside of the last town on our map we realized we had been going the wrong direction, we stopped at a gas station to double check and were informed that yes we had made a wrong turn but that it wasn’t a problem we could keep going and we would reach a town of Pachalum where there were hotels and was about 45 minutes from Chimiltenango. 

Following the directions to the City Square and Catholic Church, stopping to ask the nice policeman if we were on the right path we left the tiny town called I don’t know and headed up a steep mountain.  After about 3 miles the pavement ended but there was still a good gravel road so up we went, about 20 miles and 5000 feet altitude later the gravel was long gone but the dirt was well packed and we were headed down the other side… when the road forked.

We weren’t prepared for a fork in the road, we didn’t know which way to go, to our left was basically the right compass direction but on winding mountain dirt roads, a direction could change in a second, but left it was.  After a few minutes we saw a group of men (on horses) and of course stopped to ask directions, only one small hiccup with that idea, they didn’t speak Spanish, but indicated that we were definitely going the wrong way, further up the road we were finally able to turn around and coming toward us was a pick-up bus (the favorite mode of mass transportation on Guatemalan dirt roads a pick-up truck that people pay to ride in the back of since busses are too slow and they are cheaper than Combis), he thankfully spoke Spanish so we asked him for directions and he told us we had been headed in the right direction and he would wait for us to turn around again and we could follow him out. 

Once past the horsemen we found a place to turn around and caught back up with the pick-up bus passing the horse men for the third time to shouts of “otra vez” (again) and followed the bus while he dropped off his last two passengers.  Once they were out down the hill we went into the softest dust Fritz had ever driven in, it was so bad that not only could we not see in front of us but the tires started to skip like we were in water. 

Successfully navigating that stretch and on something that almost resembled a road the driver of the bus told us to keep heading down and we would be in town in about 10 minutes. Five minutes later we came to a fork in the road, guessing left, off we went hoping that we would see some sign of a town as it was now past 4 and we were getting more worried about having to drive after dark.  Up and then down a small hill we spotted a woman on the side of the road and out I jumped to ask for directions, in my best Spanish I explained that we were lost and asked if we were close to Pachalum and in perfect English she said yes we were just outside of the city asked where we were from, turns out she was raised in New Jersey and had been back for about 2 years to raise her daughter in the county where it is safer than the US.

With her recommendation of a good hotel we were off and 20 minutes later we were settled in drinking our first cerveza of the day, unfortunately 20 minutes after that I was expelling my cerveza and ½ hour later Fritz was in bed, both of us with the tourista, we spent two days in Pachalum and didn’t see anything outside of our hotel except for the few walks we took the dogs on, luckily for us it was a quick bout and we were able to finally get back on the road so Fritz could start school.