We were up and ready to leave by 8:30 this morning. We had several more visitors once they saw we were up. It's nice and it is interesting to talk to them but it is also kind of tiring for me as the one who speaks the most spanish. I spend a lot of time translating and it is hard to break away to do what I need to do.

We had been told that the next 10 km were very bad road and they were not joking. Deeply rutted, hairpin turns, really steep grades both up and down and enormous amounts of dust. Actually, all that didn't stop after 10km, it was just the ruts that were really bad for that first ten.

We spent another 4 or more hours transversing these mountains and the road was steeper than the first day, and the turns were often almost a U turn but with boulders from the cliff sticking out into the road and a huge drop on the other side.

We went down into several valleys and there were beautiful rock filled streams with lots of people out washing themselves and their clothes. We also went through several more small villages, some were friendly but others were from what we called the slack-jaw tribe, no matter whether you smiled, said buenos dias, or whatever all they did was stare at us with their jaws open.

Because the road wound around the mountains so closely, people could see us coming from across the mountain and had time to get to the road before we got there. Some of these isolated families were very polite, smiling and nodding with the whole family out at the road to watch us pass.

We were as weird as if Santa claus and his reindeer decided to drive by. In the spirit of Santa, we would give small cars and dolls we had along to some of the kids, particularly those way out in the country at very small houses perched on the side of the cliff. Actually, we would very politely offer them to the parents telling them it was for their child and they would accept it, thank us and give it to the kids. We try to be careful about this as there are rumors in many rural areas that gringos come here to steal their children and we did not want to arouse any suspicions. It was great to see the smiles on the kids faces in our rear view mirrror when they got the little car or doll.

Many people were climbing trails around the road carrying enormous loads. Most of the men carried them using a head strap like these guys carrying firewood. The women carried most things on their heads, balancing huge bundles perfectly as they climbed steep trails.

When we finally got to a paved road at the town of Montúfar, we were laughing and cheering. What an adventure! We had crossed a mountain range called the Sierra de Chuacús entirely by dirt road, climbing to over 6000' at least 3 times and descending again to small river valleys.

This is looking back at some of the road we crossed. It was exhilerating and not a little scary but we are all glad we did it.

It did do a number on our vehicles though, there are rattles we haven't yet identified and things fell that have never fallen. We have dust everywhere! Inside the bins, inside the rig on every surface, in our eyes and our hair and our clothes. Our jeep which is green looks dirty white from being towed behind the RV most of the way.

We sailed on down and cut across the edge of Guatemala City with few problems, finding the road to Antigua. We were looking for a park in the town of Santa Lucia Milpas Altas which is 11 km outside Antigua. What we didn't know is that it is at the top of a hill and when we didn't see the park we were suddenly on a divided highway dropping several thousand feet with no exits. At the bottom, we were in Antigua.

We pulled off the road to figure out what to do. Antigua is an old colonial city with narrow streets and cobblestones, we knew we didn't want to go blindly into it. A man came up to Patti and Bobby and told them (he spoke english) that he could take us to an RV parking place, he maintained he had taken many RVs bigger than ours on this route. So, he got into their truck and off we went. We had a tour of Antigua in 2 rigs each over 40' long, he didn't get us stuck although we did spend a long time on one street waiting for a string of semi trucks to use the only lane and we did have to pull in our mirrors and hold our breaths a couple of times. It turned out that he was trying to get us to park our rigs on the street and rent hotel rooms. It was a learning experience.

Patti and Bobby dumped him off and we headed back up the long hill to look for the park we originally wanted. This time we spotted it at the top of the hill, turns out it is only accessable from the uphill side of the divided highway and the gps coordinates we had don't match ours. Oh well, we made it and it is a beautiful park. We found a spot we liked, parked and the first thing on our minds were showers! After that, we headed down the hill in Bobby's truck to Antigua to walk around a bit and treat ourselves to an excellent dinner at an Argentine restuarant. I've yet to be disappointed at an Argentine restaurant, I hope the trend continues as I love the chimichurra sauce and the tender beef. This one had a salad bar which was a big treat for all of us as well.

We are at 6400' so it was another early night for me. What a great adventure, we will be talking about this last two days for a long time.