From Guatemala to Nicaragua.

We drove from the  ruins at Tikal to Guatemala City, and we had a good chance to see this beautiful country. The mountainous terrain is all covered with green, planted to the top of the hills with all sort of crops. There are mountain rivers and great lakes.

We stayed at an hotel Guatemala City's old city center, but we didn't like very much, so now we will continue as planned to visit the volcanos on our way to Lake Atitlan, some 100 miles north of Guatemala City.

However, one thing is to plan and the other to successfully complete the plan.

To start, we spent more than two hours to get into Guatemala City, and then four more hours to get out of there. The traffic is the worst by far, the streets are too narrow, there are no rules, bus engines are too smoky, and pedestrian struggle in the middle of this mess. Definitely, Guatemala City is a place to avoid. In fact, there is a big contrast between Guatemalan cities and the countryside. The later is absolutely gorgeous, neat, and well kept, which cannot be said of the cities.

Lake Atitlan was defined as the best lake in the entire world by Aldous Huxley. However, the lake and the nearby volcanos were covered by smog so we were unable to see either one.

 

Now talking of more serious issues. It is really hard for me to talk of the travel incidents and the nice of bad sights we have along the way without also observing how people lives and the surrounding environment. Some of the things are soo bad that I cannot refrain from making a comment. For example, driving in Guatemala's countryside we saw way too much poverty, too many kids working on the farms instead of being at the school, people too old to work still carrying big, heavy loads, and way too much child labor. For example, a girl about 6 years old carrying a big load of firewood, or a boy about 9 years old along the road cleaning a guter with a shovel. The contrast between the standard of living of the normal worker and the way of life of the rich is too sharp to be ignored, and makes you wonder what is the government doing to improve the lot of the poor.

 

From Guatemala we went to El Salvador, where we stopped overnight in the town of Zacatecoluca. We arrived there very late and asked a police agent where can we find an hotel. He sent  us to a nearby hotel and when we got there we found it to be an "auto hotel", the type of places used by couples in search of some intimacy. In any case, the place was very cheap and comfortable so we put all concerns aside and had a great stay there.

 

From Zacatecoluca we drove into Honduras and then into Nicaragua in the same day. The main problem is at border crossings.  I think that agents are ill prepad for the tasks, so we spend long time negotiating our exit from one pace and entry into the next. typically there are crowds of men offering to help with the paperwork, even when there is nothing as complex to require special help.

 

What we saw from Nicaragua so far was very good. We expected an impoverished country worst than even El Salvador or Honduras, but we were surprised because the standard of living seems to be significantly higher than in those countries. The roads are in optimum shape, there is no much poverty along the road, and people dress very neatly.  There are plenty of public schools, which means that the government is doing much better than other countries we found in our trip.