MUNGO EATS Latin America

We were all awake early today because of a time change.  Well, except  me, but I was outvoted.  This meant that we were actually on the road at about 8:30 or so, which is at least half hour to and hour earlier than usual.  We didn’t have long to congratulate ourselves though, because literally minutes after getting started, we suffered a little van trouble.  I really cannot explain it in any official capacity, all I can tell you is that there are a series of hoses that keep popping off their pipes and this is a problem.  You can hear when it happens, a little pop, then the engine loses power and we have to pull over and Kevin tries to fix it.  It has been happening on and off since we got to Mexico.  Some days we will drive the whole day without incident, but other days it will happen 2 or 3 times during the drive.  Since the van’s engine is located in the back, we have to unload all the stuff that is piled behind the seat out of the van so that Kevin can get to the engine.  Today was a longer than usual delay (about and hour) so we had soon eaten up the head start we  had this morning.  We were not discouraged though.  It did not appear that we had far to drive today, so we were hopeful.  You must always remember, never ever forget…things are not always what they seem!!!

Today, we drove to San Pedro la Laguna, which is a small town on the shores of Lake Atitlan.  This is the location of our Spanish school.  Our hope was that we would arrive in town early enough to find the school and meet with our contact guy and hopefully figure out where we could camp, etc.  When we are actually in school, we will be staying with a family, but we are not sure if classes will start next week or today, so we thought we may need to camp for a few days.  We drove quite slowly because of the engine issues we were facing, but we still got “close” to the town plenty early. 

The map said, go to Santa Clara, then follow the road down to the lake, to the right to San Juan and then San Pedro.  Easy!  Actually, 2 separate maps said this.  So down the GIGANTIC hill we go, back and forth along switchbacks, slowly descending to the lake to San Pedro.  When we got to the customary “Welcome to Such and Such” sign which is present at the start of every town, the sign read, “Welcome to San Pablo”!  San Pablo?  Our maps, two of them, clearly showed San Pablo was left along the shore, and San Pedro was right along the lake…we must have taken a wrong turn.  So, back up the crazy switchback road we went in search of the elusive turn we must have missed.  When we got back to Santa Clara, we asked a group of three people where the road to San Pedro was and they disturbingly pointed us back down the road we had just labored up!!!  But down there is San Pablo.  “Yes”, they said “first you pass through San Pablo, then San Juan , then comes San Pedro.”   But the map says…but the map LIES.  Things are not always as they seem.  It must be like a cruel joke.  Once every country, let’s draw the map wrong and trick those silly map following McLeans!!

It ended up being 4pm or a bit later, before we FINALLY rolled into town.  The town is a crazy maze of narrow cobblestone streets, a lot of which are one ways.  We couldn’t find a hotel, until someone just walked up to the van as it was crawling along the road and said, “Friend, do you need a hotel, follow me!”  So here we are at the Hotel San Francisco, which is the same name as the hotel last night.  It’s quite a bit more rustic than last night’s hotel, but any port in a storm.  It is pretty clean and we have our own bathroom.

Tomorrow we will look for our school and try to figure out where we are staying.  I hoping we do not have to drive the van for a while, today’s drive was enough for a week!!