Guatemala city sucks a**. sorry but im not gonna skirt around the reality of this disasterous excuse of a city. Granted this is my jaded opinion after spending 8 hours (of which I’ll never get back) of my life there. Based mostly on the amount of weapons on everyone from oh…..a guy riding on back of a motorcycle with a sawed off shotgun, to every single store front and street corner, to the mayor of Guatemala packing a large pistol in the front seat of his Smart Car. No joke. We went to aa downtown bmw dealer for one of the guys I am with to service his bike and me change my tires. Shortly after we got there a distinguished looking guy pulled in in a smart car. We noticed he had an entourage of 3 cars packed with goons. the bmw dealers combine both car and bikes here so I assume he was looking at a new car? When he went inside I moved my bike over to his car to take a size comparison picture and looking at the car noticed right away a huge pistol sitting right on his passenger seat. He came out shortly and greeted us with a handshake and asked where we were from/ what doing etc. after he left we thought, who is that…must be someone important, so we went into the dealer and asked the manager who told us he is the number one person of Guatemala city, mayor. Packing heat. Ironically he was driving a low to no(?) emissions producing car in the most co2 emitting city I have ever seen next to mexico city. Which is the next reason guatemala city sucks.Some brainchild at some point thought…hey why don’t we buy a million old school buses from the states, paint them in multiple ugly colors, stick some loud speakers blaring shitty music or something else noone wants to hear and flood this high altitude city with black diesel smoke. If I don’t get cancer from all those years of smoking, surely I will from the amount of toxins I sucked in thru my helmet today!
Next reason is the experience at the bmw dealer. Service… No such word here. Slow, not unless you consider a 20 minute computer check taking 5 hours and an extra 30 minutes just to get the ticket with a grand total bill of $30 slow. Keep in mind there was hardly anyone else at the dealer and they started with our bikes. Im not even gonna go into the tire changing experience.
I didn’t take too many pictures as I consider today to be my least favorite in the month I have been traveling and would prefer to not remember it….but here’s the bike next to the SC and guat cities pathetic attempt to emulate the eiffle tower.
Im ready for another up day….
