Roadblocks in Guatemala

I was in Guatemala with our family in late November, and it occurred to me that if I had read the following before we left I might have planned things differently:

We had spent a couple days in Santa Elena and Tikal. We were just an hour into the six-hour drive to Semuc Champey when we hit a series of wildcat roadblocks near and in the village of Las Pozas. I hadn’t heard of the tactic being used in Guatemala; I had always associated it with Bolivia and Peru, but Guatemala apparently uses it too. We were stuck there for eight hours.

The people doing the blockading weren’t violent and the situation wasn’t particularly scary, but there were a lot of people crammed together in this small town, and as the afternoon wore on, we had a couple instances where things got hotter. Probably just as dangerous, but in a different way, was that with so many trapped vehicles, and their drivers, by the middle of the afternoon the village closely resembled an unflushed toilet bowl.

I don’t have a solution for getting out of a Guatemalan roadblock (I don’t think there is one based on the number of Guatemalans who were stuck with us, resigned to their fate). But if I could go back in time and give myself some advice, it would be to know where the way-stations are ahead of time, so that I might have alternatives when, not if, something goes awry during a long drive through Guatemala.

For a play-by-play recap of the experience, you can read this: http://traveldiaryofamadman.com/guatemalarocks/

Very common in the region as a method of staging protests. The worst I've known were in Mexico where they literally last for days with nobody going anywhere under the hot sun. Once I decided to follow some guys who knew a dirt track alternative route through the mountains and it was one of the hairiest drives of my life as my tires were clinging on to goat tracks on the cliff edges! (still scares me thinking about it....). most of a day later we popped out the other side and went into the first bar and the guy said "how the hell did you get here??!"...he hadn't seen a car through in three days...

Protest, strikes, roadblocks are very common in these parts, but the odds of it happening when you are there is slim. Like above says, you deal with it. Also, the protesters usually don't want anything do to with foreigners...

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