Airport shuttle guatemala city2/29/2024 ![]() ![]() One thing the transportation options must do is both be appropriate to the specific intended uses, and also be versatile to accommodate various needs. So the transportation network has developed around some very basic car ownership choices and a variety of public transportation options. For most of the people, car ownership is a luxury of sorts, but transportation is a necessity for most. Like most of Central and Latin America, Guatemala is a relatively poor place by our standards. Only a mid-1970s Toyota Corolla daily driver was spotted, along with a carefully restored first-gen MR2 caravanning with a pristine first-gen Toyota 4×4 Pickup on a late Saturday morning, most likely returning from a parking lot car show in Guatemala City, rushing home to beat the afternoon rains. Casual automotive observations on my part saw little in the way of passenger cars that had been built before the mid-1990s. A civil war that began with a U.S.-backed coup in 1954 (to protect the international banana monopoly and to fight the communists) led to ever greater fighting, suffering, and widespread death, until the war was officially concluded in late 1996. Guatemala has a complex and often tragic history, right up until a few years ago. A smattering of Lexus and unusual (to me) cars such as Peugeot and Renault SUV/CUVs were observed. The cars themselves were largely a mix of later model and slightly older model Japanese and Korean small cars, leavened with a small mix of just about everything else, including full-size SUVs, and the occasional Audi, BMW, or Mercedes. ![]() But public transportation, trucks, and the roadside environments were fascinating, to say nothing of the high level of visible road maintenance and the interesting cooperative driving techniques used by the drivers on the narrow and sometimes very crowded roads. As things turned out, the car experiences, per se, were not so interesting. Lake Atitlán, surrounded by dormant volcanoes and ringed with small, largely poor towns.įor a car nerd, there was an extra and appealing dimension to going to a new country, which was to observe and record a different culture from an automotive standpoint. ![]()
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