Ancient splendour, dust and gears.

After our speedily repaired puncture, we sped on towards Copan, as I was anxious to get to the ruins. Well, I say sped, actually the going was very slow. The roads were full of enormous potholes, often hard to see until you were about to disappear into one. Also, there were vicious, unmarked speed bumps everywhere just waiting to send you airborne. We have a spinal surgeon among our group and I think we may be needing his services. 

Serge, in the little blue Porsche, damaged a wheel badly.  His tyre was changed, but the wheel is in poor condition and as I write, John (our leader) has his secretary flying out with a replacement. 

Our good friends, José and Maria, also had a breakdown, with gear trouble, but, fortuitously, just as José was getting his tools out along came the  fire brigade. Several strong men leapt out, grabbed the tools and got the car fixed in no time at all.  The d’Souza’s were invited to the nearby fire station, Maria was given a hat, and now they’ll probably exchange Christmas cards and be doing Honduras/Portugal exchange visits. 

Honduras was kind to us.  Despite all the guns, everyone we came across was lovely. If we had $1 for every time our car was filmed or photographed, we could have paid for the rally. 

Our first sight of Mayan ruins, at Copan was very special. It is small and not so grand, compared to Tikal, which I have been to, but wonderful to wander around.  We arrived quite late in the afternoon and there was almost no one there but us.  Us and dozens of vibrant Scarlet Macaws, that is.  A tunnel has been created that you access through a hole with steep steps going down.  Once in, you can walk around and clearly see the earliest temple that is covered by a later, step pyramid.  The early one is magnificently craved and was only discovered in the 1990’s. Imagine!

We set off to get to the Guatemalan border for the 8 am opening. It was the usual rigmarole of several bits of paper, all with stamps, photo copying, copying the photocopy with yet more stamps etc. The funniest part was seeing two glass fronted rooms absolutely stuffed with hundreds of thousands of the ridiculous same forms all tied into regulation bundles to rot away. We got into Guatemala at 1130, it could have been worse. 

Our journey to Antigua was very slow and dusty. Miles of roadworks, a big accident stopping traffic, more nasty speed bumps and some very steep climbs; all in searing heat. There was no choice but to go through heavily polluted and generally shitty Guatemala City, which was unfortunate. Doubly unfortunate because we hit it at rush hour. Tedious, so very tedious. We crawled through the sprawling, chaotic city as it was getting dark. Horrible.

We were heading for ancient Antigua. We had a family holiday in Guatemala and Belize when my youngest was two and Antigua entranced me then so I was very happy to be going back.  They’ve built a great big two lane highway to it since then bordered by scruffy, American style strip malls, so different to my previous experience when it was a narrow, twisty and  somewhat scary road through countryside.  We reached the cobbled streets of Antigua then, right outside the hotel, we lost our gears. We had a push to the side of the road and left it to go and have some dinner and a very welcome icy cervesa. Toby and Adrian will look at it on the fortuitous rest day tomorrow.  The glimmer on consolation is that it could have happened in the mess of  Guatemala City so we should be grateful. For that and a rest day tomorrow. 

This has the potential to see the end of the Model A on the rally. The five speed Land Rover gearbox was fitted comparatively recently and, if it has failed, it will be more than disappointing. So, there we are. It may be something that can be fixed, let’s hope so. As I write, in the small dark hours of the day, it does not look good and I’m feeling waves of sadness, but there we are.