Of Land and Cars
ByGreg over at Project Somos shares a few anecdotes to life in Guate that you won´t want to miss. Here are the highlights:
It seems, through lack of communication or something that the property just became smaller. No legal description was included in the offer to purchase, only the total amount of land, so now the volunteers found out that the one boundary is somewhere between 6 and 30 feet closer from where they were originally shown it was. Oops. The conversation went relatively well and three of the Guatemalan Board, and Dennis set off to actually measure the boundary to find out if it is 6 or perhaps 30 feet in from hedge that borders the property. This type of omission of accurate information does occur here and I do hope they are able to resolve their differing positions.
Just be sure you get a title. And it´s valid. And the person selling the property really owns it. And the person who owns it hasn´t acquired the property by squatting. And that no one else has ever squatted on it, because if so, they have a right to it.
I like driving in Guatemala. There are none of the frivolous and fancy things like speed limits, or actually any highway regulations to stop one from driving like it is a video game. The only difference from a video game is that here on thehighway there is no rest button and you die. Wrecks are common and deadly. Lots of obstacles like animals, boulders in the road, landslides, many times cars in the oncoming lane passing on blind curves and suddenly they are in your lane. Wow, this is almost fun.
Then there are the chicken buses -turbo charged diesel converted school buses driven by men with an overt death wish or drivers that believe they are invincible because they have a Jesus decal on their windshield. Whichever the case, I give them lots of room and expect crazy stuff from them. Riding in a chicken bus is like a life and death Disney ride on steroids – going around curves so fast the wheels on one side might as well be off the ground. I included a few road trip pictures to entice you to call your AAA or CAA road club for maps, so you too can make the trip.
It is remarkable given the age and condition of so many vehicles and the rarity of a licensed and trained driver that there aren´t more accidents. It´s not uncommon to see a full chicken bus or a loaded down tractor trailer pass a caravan of jalopies around a curve up a hill into ongoing traffic. Nobody here even responds; there is no honking, lights blinking or road rage, they just move over and keep driving. Amazing.
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3 Comments
March 6th, 2010 at 12:32 am
Boundaries. It is so true. We had property in a nice sized town — historic, cultural, colorful, etc.– that my mother sold. She was sick and tired of the constant warnings she received from people regarding our property lines. Beware when buying land in towns with a lot of indios.
March 6th, 2010 at 2:15 am
I was told that the person going up hill has the right-of-way and that even if they are in your lane, the down hill driver has to get out of the way, one way or another. The people at the rental car company told me that rule many years ago and it seems to hold true today.
March 6th, 2010 at 10:54 am
The person going uphill has the right of way supposedly, but I guess more and more people are forgetting this rule (or not even learning it). I had my car opened up like a can of sardines all over its left side by a truck that chose to ignore this rule and refused to give me 1 second to get to a wider part of the street. He contentedly continued to drive slowly onward while I shook inside the car and tried to write down his license plate number.
As for land, be sure you go to Registro de la Propiedad to make sure the land has no problems and have someone measure it for you. Someone I know lost about 40 meters of land because the neighbors moved their border 0.75 meters all along several cuerdas. No use getting into fights: put up some sort of markers to border your land once you have it.