Met another Adventure Traveler, south of Guatemala City, Dave from Milwaukee, WI. He was in Deadhorse two weeks ahead of my visit in August.
A lake about three miles from the border with El Salvador. It's about here that the trucks are starting to line up to cross the border. Can take up to three days. With the Coastal Route, #2, closed because many of the bridges are washed out, they all come over on #1, the Pan American Highway.
The process of crossing from Guatemala to El Salvador should have taken about 90 minutes. We got in to the middle of some sort of dispute between officials if the two customs/immigration services and had to give statements, in Spanish, to the guys from El Salvador. A great deal of patience helps here, as does humor and a smile.
It was only a 209 mile day with about three hours of it getting lost again and again trying to get through Guatemala City. I'm using Garmin World Map for Central America as they don't make 'City Navigator' for Central America.
Got to Santa Ana after dark, breaking Rule Number 1 again. Stopped in the City Centro to try and figure out how to find a hotel and a shop owner came out and offered to help. We accepted and he flagged over a cab driver he knew. For $8 he led us to the Hotel Tolteka Plaza, the best hotel in town. We'd have never found it. Hotels here don't have big signs or for that matter lighted signs.
Anyhow we checked in here at 18:30 and locked up the bikes for the night.
Tomorrow we're taking a rest day and having some laundry done. We've been doing our own but a 'real' washing will be good.
We've gotten a day ahead of Greg Powell, the Canadian I met at Dease Lake back in August. As you may recall he had been to Deadhorse two days ahead of me and is also going to Ushuaia. He stopped over in Reno on his way to the Grand Canyon and San Antonio, TX, before heading down the East Coast of Mexico. He may catch up with us tomorrow, weather and border crossings permitting.
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Location:CA 1,San Cristobal,Guatemala
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