We looked at the different routes we could drive to get from Rio Dulce to Lanquin. There were a few options given by Google Maps, but our iOverlander application warned that the roads of some of the routes were bad…really rough, unpassible bridges, rockslides, that kind of thing.

One route had an option of a shortcut, which an iOverlander user had said was a terrible road but that was in the process of being paved. We decided that we would stop in the town before the turn off and ask a local about the condition of the road. If it sounded sketchy we would continue on the better roads and drive more kilometres.

We arrived in said town after a few hours of fairly easy driving, pulled into a gas station and asked the gas station guard (armed with a shot gun) if he knew if the road was paved. He said “Si, si!”, Derek asked if it was paved all the way, naming out each town along the route. “Si, si, está totalmente pavimentada” (or something similar). Back in the truck, armed with this new information, we were pleased to have stopped to ask as this was going to save us a couple of hours of driving.

We started down the road; a beautiful paved road with nice wide shoulders. We drove through small towns where children smiled and waved at we passed. We saw views that made our jaws drop. Just as we were saying how lucky we were to be driving on this great paved road, that maybe we were among the first foreigners to drive the new road, the pavement ended. “Maybe it’s just a short section that they haven’t paved yet”, I said hopefully.

The following video’s have been sped up to 5 times the actual speed…..

 

But the gravel continued. Then the gravel turned to a rubble road. Then the rubble road narrowed down to one lane. By this time we had already gone about half the distance of our “short cut”, so we decided to continue on.

We rounded a corner and there were two young boys maybe 5 and 7 years old with a string across the road and a couple of shovels. They told us that they were fixing the road and that we needed to pay them 100 quetzales if we wanted to pass. Derek asked them if they were working very hard, and they assured him that they were. Derek gave them one quetzale. They said that was not enough. Derek offered a second quetzale, and they said that also was not enough. We said, okay then, we will just continue on, and they accepted the second quetzale and dropped the rope.

 

Further along were two older boys, who tired the same routine on us. They had been sitting idle until they saw our truck and then jumped up pretending to work on the road. We know that you are not suppose to pay these people as it just encourages them to extort tourists, but we just were not prepared with how to deal with these situations.  We did successfully dodge a couple of the road blocks.

In total we came across 4 different road blocks. One was two men about 30ish. The one man had a machete out, which he put away when he came to talk to us about our “toll”. But as Derek negotiated/argued with the man, he kept raising his shirt so that we could see the machete. Now, understand, many men here carry machetes in this part of the world all the time, as they are used to chop tinder for fires, open coconuts, clear pathways, and we are quite accustomed to seeing them. But that doesn’t mean that we have lost any respect for what a big blade can do. As I watched Derek converse with the man, suddenly I decided to turn our dash cam onto him. He looked up and saw the camera on him, and his buddy and their demeanor changed slightly. We did pay, but only a fraction of what he had originally asked for. We were never really frightened; as Derek says, these people want trouble a lot less than they want money, but we were not thrilled to have paid these men anything at all, just the same we were happy to be rolling again, albeit ever so slowly.

 

 

Finally we hit pavement again. Sixty kilometres, the first 16 of which were paved, had taken us about 3.5 hours. So much for our short cut, and so much for getting reliable information from shot gun toting guards at gas stations!

The paved road quickly turned back to gravel as we drove the last 20 kilometres of the day, arriving in the town of Lanquin. People had talked that this 20 kilometre stretch of road was bad, but compared to what we had driven earlier in the day, it was nothing…we just had to go slow and watch for potholes and oncoming trucks.

We found a great hostel to camp at for the night, El Retiro, but not before buying a few cold beer to wash the day’s dust and frustration away.