Now Sunday is where it gets interesting. We started the day with an early morning team meeting of praise and worship as we sought the Lord on what we should do, given the fact that the Durango's transmission was not as fixed as we'd hoped, and at best could only be driven in 1st gear which equates to about 30miles an hour. One of the words we got from God for the team is to "go slow". Which is definitely happening as we are once again stranded with car problems. We decided to head to a town called Chimaltenango which is near the town of Antigua which is where friends of Christian (one of our team members) are visiting missionaries at an orphanage. The first couple of hours went well, but after lunch is when things started to go wrong. First of all, at about 3:30pm one of the tyres in our pop-up tent trailer burst. The whole thing, to the point of us literally driving on the rim of the tyre. Err. So we pull over and put on our spare tyre. Thank you to the guys for being so great at changing tyres on the side of the road.
On the road again. Yay. Before we start heading up the mountain on the worst roads I've been on since we used to go on family holidays to Namibia and other African countries when I was a child. We apparently were a few villages entertainment. Well I'm not surprised. 22 gringos driving in 1 motor home, 1 camper van, two 4x4s pulling pop-up tent trailers plus a station wagon through rural villages up a mountain in Guatemala. We got such a welcome all the way, people came out onto the roads to wave hello and greet us, and of course laugh at us. The best was someone took a photo of us - I suppose 4 white girls driving the Suburban 4x4 pulling a pop-up trailer with the music pumping is not an everyday occurrence for a quiet Sunday afternoon in a rural Guatemalan village.
We got lost at a few intersections as our car got way behind a few of our cars in front of us for a number of reasons, such as having to stop for a group of cows and calves walking up the road. The cow showed her discontent by mooing loudly as she walked past us. Next traffic jam was an old man crossing the road. That took a while waiting for him to get across. Lucky for us, being the only gringos in town at every fork in the road there was a local outside staring at us and able to point us in the direction of the rest of our other crazy gringo cars.
One of the challenges was not knowing where we were exactly, how long it would get to our destination or whether the roads would get any worse. The answer to these questions landed up being we wouldn't get to our planned destination, we would get to the town on San Juan de Chol at 11pm (some people said it was an hour away, others said 2, others said we'd not get there so should turn around), and yes the roads would get worse. Much worse. One of the challenges with driving on these roads is that they are barely wide enough for one car to drive on. So when a truck comes from the opposite direction. Well...
It kinda went wrong at about 18:30 when half way up a ridiculously steep rough road we hear the dreaded "ssshhh" as the air went out our recently replaced tyre on the pop-up trailer. Yes our second flat tyre for the day. Drat. Double drat is that we didn't have another spare. Our plan B was that hopefully we could use the spare from the other pop-up trailer. Unfortunately the other 3 cars were way ahead of us (oh ja, with flat radios so we couldn't radio them to stop for us). So off Taylor ran to catch up with them and bring back a spare. So there we were, 2 cars and a bunch of peeps just hanging out on the side of the mountain as the sun starts going down. And of course that would be a great time for a car to come from the other direction. Err, so we had to drive the trailer (with the wheel on it's rim as the tyre was blown) out the way. Did I mention the road was steep, rocky and barely wide enough for one car let alone two??
Taylor eventually comes back with Jesse and Victor (great) but no spare tyre (not great). Turns out the other pop-up trailers tyres have a different tread or something to our trailer. Ok, this was not good. No spare, needing to fix the tyre in the side of a cliff, the rim of the tyre was bent (we think that's how the puncture came about). Victor and Taylor were absolute troopers using some seriously creative techniques in fixing the tyre which involved tying a string (which happens to be Rowan and Gillian's washing line) around the tyre, pumping air into it, using grease to get the tyre back onto the wheel, pumping more air, using tyre silicon to fill the tyre, pumping more air, and by some miracle this actually worked and an hour and a half later we were back on the road.
So 8pm, we met up with the rest of our group, put the car in 4 wheel drive and off we went. 10min into the drive and we start driving past some of our team walking up the road. Turns out it was safer to walk than to drive in the motor home as things were flying out the cupboards in the motor home - Natalie got hit in the eye with the shampoo bottle, Roberta somehow has a massive bruise on her underarm... So I took Zoe (she's only 23 months old) so she could sleep on my lap (easier than her mom carrying her while walking up the side of a mountain pass and safer than being in the motor home at that moment).
10min later we start sliding, lose complete grip of the road and part of the car starts being a bit too close to the edge of the cliff. Before we knew it the guys from the cars in front come running full speed towards us to help us. I guess that's what happens when Gillian runs to the cars shouting "the Suburban's going over the edge of the cliff". We weren't. We were fine. But good to know that the others will come running in a heartbeat when needed. To get going we had to dislodge the trailer from the car, have a dozen people push the car to get it to more firm ground, push the trailer to, and reconnect it to car again.
Off we go again. We then get to some water across the road so we stopped the cars to check out the best way to navigate the road ahead. Turns out we had to drive fairly quickly through the river, but not too much as there was a 90 degree turn right after. All passed through successfully but boy was it stinky!! A little while later I see a metal pipe hanging underneath the motor home. Later on Jesse gets out to see what the metal pipe is, rips it out and hooks it onto the ladder on the outside of the motor home and carries on going. It turns out it was the poop pipe from the motor home (it has a toilet in it). So the stinky part we'd been driving through was our sewage. Gross.
We finally arrived (exhausted but in good spirits) in the town of San Juan de Chol. The final straw was that to get to the hotel (this was not a night to find a campsite) the road dropped at a 90 degree angle onto a dirt road, like you were driving down a step. Not cool for the station wagon which has such a low clearance. Taylor (the station wagon is his car) provided us with great entertainment as he got out the car and started getting rocks from the side of road to build a "ramp" to soften the angle for the car. He suddenly stops, removes the rocks, gets back in his car and floors it to rather try clear the ramp as best as possible. It was so awesome to watch.
Unfortunately the hotel was less awesome (seriously budget), but we were so exhausted I would've slept on the floor, anywhere.
Looking back on this day, all we can say is that we were protected by angels. Lots of them. There is no way our mottly crew of cars should've made it through that mountain okay.
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