pincho!

Well I am back in my favorite of the magnificent central 7, a place where chaos, beauty and struggle are ever present . Even my arrival back here was peppered with a typical guatemalan pincho, stretching what might have been a meager six hour journey into eight and a half. I still swear the driver aimed for the rock in the center of the road as if he knew that not too far down the road was a repair shop (not really a suprise as pinchazos are as common as roosters in Guatemala) as well as a friendly restraunt with a clean baño in which his gringos could rest. Prior to making it to the restraunt we spent a half hour waiting on the road side cutting down and applying aloe to our collective bites and bruises while the driver struggled to change the tire only to find it was a different size. One of my pax tried to explain about a forward axel differential whatever which I sadly attempted to translate into broken spanish. Bad translation or no we ended up at a pinchazo where the mechanics were about half my age and again some how I ended up explaining the about the differential tire size issue. Then we headed down the road in search of sustenance and a place to pee.
An hour later after doing a pepsi coke throw down (coke won) and consuming way too many platanos the driver came to collect us. We took off once again only to be foiled by a semi with what must have been half a metal building strapped to its bed. It took us over an hour to overtake the damn thing because of the narrow roads. By then we hit Guate city traffic and the whole thing turned into a snarled mess of chaotic overtaking mixed in with an unpleasent period behind a truck filled with smoking rubber and a stop for pan dulce and to pee.
Our arrival in Antigua was a welcome one.
Did I mention we had had a flat tire the day before? Life on the road is a crazy one.