A couple of days ago we crossed from México to Toyotatenango (some people call this place Guatemala)
Every other car on the road is a Toyota truck. The rest are Toyota vans, Toyota Tercels, and the odd non-Toyota here and there.
There are also a lot of trucks that were written off the taxes of American companies:
And more Photoshop fails in the street than in Mexico:
We’ve seen pigs on leash, but no dogs on leash:
We saw this Vanagon ex-ambulance on the road, that a French fellow traveler had told me about. I wanted to pick some parts off it, but the owner was not there, and his son said he didn’t want to part it yet.
Milo waits for us outside a restaurant:
On the other side of the spectrum from the ex-American cargo trucks, are the old buses. In Mexico it’s common to see old American school buses, still wearing the yellow paint and the stop-while-red-lights-flashing signs. Here buses are decorated! I think American education would improve 23% if school buses were decorated like this over there.
This could be in some places in Argentina. It’s interesting how the lack of enforced building and signage codes can quickly tell you whether a photo is from the third world or not.
Now we are in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second city. “Tenango” means “place”, so this is the place of the Quetzal. We’ve only seen the monetary and not the avian kind though.
We had dinner at this bar last night. The old bars and restaurants are a nice change from San Cristóbal. That place became popular not a long time ago, so even though you can find nice places to eat and drink, they tend to be rather new. Here you can find nice, old places full of character.
Also, they have pretty good beer:
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steph