Wipers While You Wait?

The rainy season has started in some parts of Guatemala, but here in Petén we've just had miserably hot days waiting for it to finally rain. There have been a couple days of storms, but it's been a while now. Because it is so dry for so long, you can forget about your windshield wipers. Mine had not been replaced since buying the Micro. Even when you pay for it at the service places, you don't always get them (that's happened to me twice) and you will wait a few extra hours while they find it from somebody else, get it delivered and then figure out how much to charge you for it.

Another option is to find these car door to car door salesmen. I found this guy at a Pollo Campero about 2 hours outside of Guate. He had two wipers the right size and installed them while I went inside and ordered. Total cost= $10. We hit our first rain 30 minutes later.

The stuff draped over his arms is a door sealer. It is way overpriced and the guys will put on twice as much as needed and then try and charge you per foot instead of per yard. Don't let them get away with it.

Jimmy Who?

A year ago we had the transmission rebuilt for our Blazer. I had to ride a tow truck 8 hours to Guate to drop it off, then catch a flight home, then Shelley and I flew back 10 days later to pick it up. The mechanic's name was Hugo and he has his own shop. I found him through a knowledgeable Guatemalan friend here in Petén who had had USA made vehicles worked on by this guy.

Hugo met me on the side of the road to guide us to his shop and I spent over $1,000 on Blazer repairs. We talked quite often and he assured me that he knew what he was doing and that everything was on time. I was actually happy for the first time with a mechanic here. The best part was his 2 year guarantee on the transmission.

I am used to people remembering me. There aren't very many Gringos from Petén, and especially if I spend a lot of money somewhere, people remember who I am. So yesterday I called up Hugo to see if he could help a friend with his Mercedes. I was expecting a cheery greeting but instead the guy drew a blank. I explained further, "You worked on my transmission a year ago...I'm the gringo from Petén who you met in the tow truck..." He still acted dumbfounded. Then he said, "I don't work on transmissions." I said, "Yes you do. I have a receipt here with your name on it and your address and even a guarantee for 2 years." "No, you must be mistaken. You have to have special tools to work on an automatic transmission and I don't have those," he replied.

It was then that I understood that he thought I was calling about the guarantee. I explained, "I just need a phone number for somebody who can work on a Mercedes transmission. My transmission is fine."

"Oh, well yeah I have a phone number and address right here. How's everything going in Petén? Do you still have the Blazer? ...well if you need anything give me a call..."

At least I got the information I wanted. Not sure that I would trust it. Sorry Mark.

Pinchazo Pt. 3

For some reason my truck has a real problem with flats. I think I pick up nails when I take my trash to the dump.

When I got home I was shown that one of my rear truck tires had gone flat. I asked how long it had been like this since I was talking to Quincho every week checking on the house. We have friends here who could have come by to get it fixed so the truck didn't sit on a flat tire on one side. He said about 2 months!

So the first thing to do once I got back was to get transportation. I couldn't get the Blazer started after hooking back up the battery, but that was because it was out of gas, even after leaving it with a full tank 5 months before. My truck tires weigh 70 pounds each and it is hard to move a flat tire (especially when one side is actually flat from having a truck sitting on top of it for 2 months).

I wrestled it down the three blocks to the highway where I flagged a tuk tuk to take me to the tire repair place, who worked on it while I took my gas can to the gas station. Once I got back the guy had it aired up, and charged me Q20 ($2.50). He said it was just the inside seal that needed to be fixed.

The next day it was flat again, so I took it to a different place where they immediately found the nail and put in a patch for Q30 ($4) without even taking the tire off. My dad was with me and we had never seen anybody do it this way before, but the guy assured me that his patch would last longer than the tire would. So far so good.

Trying to Find a Windshield Pt. 2

You can click HERE to catch up on part 1. What do you know, the next morning (a Saturday with plans to drive with the family to Guate on Sunday), I called and "fijese" the windshield didn't come. I expected this, so I told them to have my deposit ready and that I was going to come and pick up the Micro and take it to somebody who could do it right.

I then set about trying to find a windshield in Petén. A friend of mine called four different places in Santa Elena that he knew about and nobody had one for our model of Micro (there are TONS of these things on the roads, so I'm not sure how that's possible), but he was going to keep looking. I drove my truck to the city, thinking I could take the Micro to a windshield place and drive home without having to spend another day sitting around. My friend called back after about 30 minutes and told me that he found one in Melchor. Melchor is a border town with Belize and takes anywhere from 1.5-2 hours to get to from Santa Elena. The problem was that there was no box to ship it in, and therefore no way to get it to Santa Elena.

When I told him that I would just drive the Micro there with no windshield he acted like I was the dumbest Gringo he'd ever met. Anyways, he set it up with a friend of his there who could install the windshield and I went and got a pair of sunglasses, picked up the Micro and my deposit, and started driving. I will add that I was nice to the ladies at the Serviteca, because I didn't know what parts of my Micro they still had and I didn't want to burn any bridges and lose parts forever.

You don't fully appreciate a windshield until it's gone... Bugs at 60 miles an hour feel like rocks, and rocks...make you bleed. I think everybody should see Guatemala in this way at least once though. You can hear the people laughing at you; you can smell the horse drawn carts and the soap from the laundry day in the river; you can taste the gravel from the rustic dirt roads... I guess it would be like driving a big not-fun motorcycle.

Side note: my first dicho (axiom) that I learned in Spanish was "En boca cerrada no entran moscas." It means, "Flies don't enter a closed mouth." and it was sage advice for this experience.

So after 2 hours I made it, found my new windshield and the whole installation process was pretty painless. A couple hours later, we discovered the Serviteca still had one of the bars to my grill guard (that they had to remove for some reason before installing the windshield) and my rear-view mirror. Told you so!

The drive back was much more pleasant.

It was when I picked those items up that I informed them I would no longer be spending money at their business.

Trying to Find a Windshield Pt. 1

So I mentioned before that I needed to get a new windshield for the Micro. It did have a lot of cracks in it (several that went all the way to the edge and one from top to bottom), but the main reason was that it was so tinted that you couldn't see out of it! During the day it was fine, especially if you want to drive around without anybody seeing you, but at night you could only see if you were the only one on the road. Any other light from any other source would make it like you were driving blind. This is a problem especially with all of the motorcycles, bicycles, people and horses that roam the highways at night with no taillights.

When taking the Micro to the Serviteca to get all of the usual service things done, I mentioned to the mechanic about fixing the windshield. I really didn't want the place to try and do it, so I just asked if he knew a guy that could come do it while it was there. He said no problem.

So when I went in later they had a list of all the things I wanted done that would have to wait for another day while they ordered the parts. No worries because they order it the same day and so "tomorrow at 8:30am you can drop it off and we'll be done with it."

I should state here that this place is notorious for being late. A job that they say will take 2 hours takes 6. Since this is 45 minutes from my house, I plan on doing lots of other things in the city while I'm there, but I still end up spending many hours sitting in their office which only runs the A/C on cold days...

I waited two days before taking it back. They had my other items that I needed (door handle, turbo belt) but "fijese" there wasn't room for the windshield. But don't worry, we'll have it tomorrow for you.

The problem is that I don't like driving back and forth 1.5 hours round trip and wasting each and every day just sitting around, so I had them fix the things that they could and I waited a week before going back for the windshield.

This is a Friday before a Sunday that we are leaving for Guatemala City. I didn't think too much of this because they said they had the windshield. It was more expensive than other places should have charged me, but the assured me that this came directly from the Toyota agency. It was so specific that they took my registration card out of the Micro and didn't give it back that first day (which could have caused lots of problems in the case of a police checkpoint) just so they had all the right information.

So I dropped off the Micro at 9. They said it was a 2 hour job, but they had to take it to the place where they would install it. This was something I could have done myself, but they were dishonest about that point from the beginning. I went and met with an architect about our new house and when I arrived at 11:30 hoping to pick up my Micro, it was still sitting there! They hadn't even taken it to the guy yet.

So I sat there until 3:30 pm when one of the girls comes over with some really bad news. The way she's carrying on without getting to the point had me thinking they had wrecked it or somebody had stolen it, but it turned out that the windshield...DID NOT FIT!

Oh but don't worry because we're ordering it right now and it will be here tomorrow morning first thing and it won't even take very long because they already have the old one off....Wait a second...You mean I can't drive it home...and you can't put the old one back on because you broke it into a thousand pieces...but I have to trust that you'll have it here tomorrow when you didn't have the first one after TWO days... I told them what I thought about their business practices and then caught a taxi home.

The lady in charge even blamed it on God, saying that everything happens for a reason... While I believe this to be true, nobody has the right to blame their own poor decisions or mistakes on God. God doesn't make people do stupid things.

To be continued...

Shopping for a Micro

After being kicked out of New Horizon, we had to decide how we would continue to work with the people there. We have some really good relationships and do not want to see the 2 years we already have invested go to waste. Our idea was to sell my wife's Blazer (it can't get fixed here anyway) and buy a micro-bus. That way we could pick up the people on the highway where the town council has no authority and bring them to our house for services.

Very quickly my home church gave us $7,500 and two days before we left KS an anonymous couple in the church dropped off the other half of the money needed. So we quickly started shopping.

One of our closest friends here is Luis. He owns a couple Micros and a couple larger 28 passenger buses that he rents to tourists in Petén and Belize. He also speaks English and has proven to be very dependable and trustworthy. We met him with our first group of teenagers that visited us in July, 2007 and use him exclusively for all of our missions teams.

He volunteered to help us shop around. We went saw several Micros to get an idea of what was available. However the nicest one was the one we were riding around in. The money converted to be around Q120,000, but he was asking Q140,000 for his, so we weren't really that interested. It was my dad who pitched to him that he take the Blazer and Q100,000. After a couple days he called and said that he liked that offer.

He knows all the problems we have had with the Blazer and are still having, but for some reason he still wanted it. At least I have a clean conscience that I didn't sell it to some unsuspecting Guatemalan just to unload my problems.

With the other Q20,000 we set to fixing the Micro. It is a "16 passenger" 2007 Toyota HiAce, manual transmission turbo-diesel with 195,000 km. Supposedly they will run 500,000 km without too much effort.

I had the stickers removed along with the very thick tinting on the front windows. The tinting was so think that you could barely see the mirrors during the day and they were invisible at night. We also had to fix the sliding door handle that wouldn't open from the inside, replace the turbo belt and replace the windshield. We had all the fluids changed and filled just to start from scratch on the service. I also bought and had installed a rear bumper guard, front grill guard, fog lights and had the luggage rack painted.

The downside is that I really miss my automatic transmission, but I won't have to ride in a tow truck to Guatemala City to get it fixed either. The best part is that we have a vehicle that the boys can ride in safely with their seat belts. On a recent trip back and forth to Guatemala City (7 hours each way) we spent Q550 ($70) in diesel. It costs us twice that in gas in my pickup. Here's some Micro pics:

Pinchazo Pt. 2

I had another tire problem not too long ago. While driving around 70 mph, I lost a band on my left front tire. Upon inspection I saw that the metal tire guard had been bent by a mechanic and caught the tire. Thankfully, this happened within 100 yards of a Pinchazo.

The man was working with his two sons and there happened to be two other men there that I knew. I was happy to see that the two boys were working right alongside of their father. The older one was in charge of the jack.

He did not have any tires the same size as what I needed (and my spare was already one of my tires.) He sold me a used tire to use that was much smaller, but fit the rim. It didn't seal right (as the only used tires he gets are ones he takes off of other people's vehicles or buys from people who don't want them any more), so he got some plastic wrap and made a seal. Here is his younger son wrapping it up.

It became a job that everybody pitched in for to get it to seal right and inflate. The tire lasted me long enough to drive home (15 minutes) and back to the city (45 minutes) to buy real tires. Total cost: Q250. Cost of two brand new GoodYear A/T tires in the city: Q3000.

Pinchazo

Yesterday at the gas station I asked the guy to check my tires. I do this about once a week and give the guy a Q5 tip for the work. While it's only about $.65 and in the states you would think I am offending the guy, keep in mind that for that same amount I can get a guy to mix cement for me by hand for an hour.

My tires need to be at 40psi, but after our long bumpy trip last week they were down to 35, 20, 35 and 8. The 8 was the one that worried me. He filled it up, but I noticed at the dump today that it was very low again. Luckily I had my handy emergency tire repair can and filled it up so I could go get it fixed.

I've seen lots of "pinchazos", or tire repair shops, on the sides of the road but have never had the pleasure of stopping by one. The tire was maintaining air just fine after my magic can, but next week I am taking a generator and a bunch of doctors 5 hours round trip on a bad road and don't want to get stuck changing my tire at night in the middle of literally nowhere Petén.

I pulled up and explained my problem. They then proceeded to look for the leak by pouring muddy water over the top of my tire while looking for leaks. I have seen my air conditioner repair guy do the same thing on our Blazer, but he puts soap in his water to look for bubbles. I wasn't sure what these guys would see, especially after I told them about the quick repair. After moving my truck so they could not see a leak underneath it, they told me they were going to pull off the tire. I thought finally. After taking off my big 70 lb. tire they submerged it in water. I had a brief flashback to when my dad used to teach me how to repair my bicycle inner tubes in the same way. I'm not sure how normal this is, but at least they got the tire clean and didn't find any nails. After still not finding any leaks I asked them if they could take it off the rim and look inside for any punctures.

This is when they informed me that since I used the can of repair foam they would not be able to fix my tire. They said patches don't work after that and the only thing they may be able to do would be to put an inner tube inside my tire. Luckily they informed me that the can appeared to be working and I wouldn't have any more problems with my leak. (I'm glad they are positive about what is not their problem.)

Maybe somebody can tell me if this is really as crazy as I am assuming it to be. These are 6 ply tires and I don't know that they will have an inner tube strong enough to hold up my tire. I politely declined and made a mental note to buy a few more magic cans next time I go to the city so that I can prepare for the worst on this one. We'll see how this holds up.