The Future of Petén

I finally got to see more of Guatemala by land yesterday. I left Flores, Petén, with Kara and Nadia at 6 a.m. Hector, our friend and driver, was behind the wheel and we headed south for hours on straight roads passing more treeless land than I had seen my entire time in Guatemala. The vast rainforest that remains to the north has long ago been transformed into great open tracts of multi-use land. Houses line the roads, roofs are tiled or metal-covered rather than thatched. The livestock grazing in the fields are larger and meatier, the car traffic is denser.

Soon after leaving Petén the road joins with the main east-west corridor, an overland connection between Guatemala’s coasts. The roads wind between the growing hills from the plains in the east to the mountains in the west. Traffic moves slowly as we leapfrog ahead of large trucks filled with cargo from the Atlantic ships and others with cows packed like chickens into large beds towering over our red minivan. But we speed on.

A stop for lunch with Kara’s family in Chiquimula is a rare opportunity to share family time with others in a place so far away from home. All the family made us feel welcome and fed us lunch in the shade of a large open patio as the children played in a kiddie pool to beat the heavy heat of the sun. In too short of a time we were all passing hugs and kisses goodbye, promises to return and we off again stomachs full and the final drive in to the capital.