Guatemala, taxis, and very bad roads

Belize speaks English, Guatemala Spanish ONLY, no habla engles!  Our first order of business is going through immigration but before we get there we are approached by James the taxi driver/immigration helper/translator/can even import your car if you want to guy.  We didn’t need help at the border but he was hell bent on helping us in an attempt to use him as a taxi.  After much negotiation we settled on a reasonable (still overpriced but hey aren't ALL gringos are loaded) price to go the 2 hours to El Remate for the night.

James who was really Jaime loaded us into his Toyota Corolla,  that’s the only vehicle on the road here I swear!  It was pretty well maintained and even had A/C (if A/C on low for 2 hours in 96 degree weather with an obscene amount of humidity counts).

Jame's Corolla was much nicer than this one!

His english was very decent and he liked to talk. He was educated in Belize when he was younger, has 1 daughter, had is car for 2 years, toyotas are best in guatemala because they are easy to repair, etc etc.

The road to El Remate is great and then VERY bad.  All of the sudden a nasty dirt road appears and our taxi practically comes to a standstill. My first thought... Oh Shit we are getting mugged, murdered, or dropped in the middle of nowhere without our money or id.  My mom was right guatemala was a BAD idea!!  

Nope just a bad bad bad road, just slowing down to avoid the wear and tear on his Corolla.

Then a police checkpoint(AK's and all but they did have duck tape on them).... repeat of the bad thoughts, crap I’m gonna die.  Nope just a standard guatemalan checkpoint.

So not my picture, no way would I photograph a guatemalan chechpoint!

Slowly the villages start to pop up here and there and every time we slowed down for a speed bump I was a little nervous and scared, thought we might die and then we were through the village.

Soon lakes started to appear and then we arrived at El Remate.  We had told James we were staying at Don David’s but we really had no idea or any reservations.  We were just winging it in El Remate.

view from El Remate

Up next... Nights in El Remate  or never saw that before!