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From Tikal we had to go to Antigua. Saturday was wedding day. And it was already Thursday. It wasn't many kilometers, 500. We had read some recent stories of blocked roads. People block roads in protest against the corrupt government and it can be blocked for hours. We thought we should do it all in one day. We think badly.
There are two hypotheses of roads that connect Tikal to Guatemala City and, consequently, to Antigua. One of the hypotheses, although shorter, takes longer. We soon see that it can only be a road in bad conditions. We look closely at the iOverlander, which we've already talked about here , and we see that it has a lot of exclamation marks. Which means danger, people who have been robbed, roads in terrible condition.
We decided to go for the second option. It is a recent road that the government has built precisely to link Tikal to Guatemala City and promote tourism.
The single-lane road for more than 80% of the route is full of trucks, which travel the same route as us. Since it is also possible to reach Honduras. Along the way, small villages that live off the road and people who stop for lunch or buy something.
We left the tops of Mexico for the hills of Guatemala. Less but they are called “tombs”. So imagine the size.
It is impossible to overtake the trucks. 7 hours passed and we covered 300 kilometers. We left before 7 am. We stopped for lunch with the hope that there was little left. So far no blocking. We were stopped by the police just for passport control. We're finally going down a two-lane road. We comment, wow what a road. And the rest can already be imagined. As one of my teachers used to say, “the bragged thing, the spoiled thing”. It took us another 4 hours to cover 12 kilometers, it was already night. We had to sleep at a gas station and head to Antigua the next day. We passed through the middle of Guatemala City, the country's capital. And neither, the fact that we left at 6 am saved us another 3 hours to do 75 km.
It made up for Antigua which is magical. But we'll talk about that another time
