Landslide

Salama to Uspitan, 117 miles. over 8 hours.
I spoke with a man last night about the road conditions to Uspitan. He said there had ben a landslide and we couldn't pass there. It just happened a couple days ago. That was a problem, because we came all this way north to take this road and would have to back track a few hours otherwise. So the next morning we found some police to ask. They acknowledged that there had been a slide but that it was ok to pass now. So we went for it.
We exited through San Jeronimo. on the small dirt roads it took an hour to get to the highway(including being a little lost in the town). We thought of going to the Quetzal Preserve here but hadn't read any good reviews of it and we had a long day ahead.
it is a great high mountain, chilly damp road to San Cristobal. San Cris has a nice plaza and a nice small museum that we visited.
headed out towards Nebaj.
Not too far along, maybe 15 min out of town, we saw the landslide. The road stops abruptly with big signs and detours you to the left, so we continued. on this road you can see the slope, it ripped out from the ridge an flowed about 3500 feet down the valley almost a mile wide . We had never seen anything of this scale except one slide in India that was much bigger. but no one lived around there. this area in Guatemala was more populated and 40 people died in this slide which happened in january.
So that slide had been fixed, the cops were half right. a small road cut across the bottom of the debris, the way we were headed. It must feel strange walking on a skinny dirt track with a mammoth gapping wound looming above your head as you cross.

But the man who gave us the news was more correct. Four days before a new slide had taken out the path. There was no way for us to cross this due to a new river running through the road in a gulch.
Collectivo mini buses were lined up on the edge of the slide, waiting to fill up with people walking across. a long wait because there was very few people around.

We drove to the edge and spoke with a road crew for a while. January is the dry season and a slide like this happened. it made us think about this potential the whole day ahead. and the next few days activity was evident.
The roadcrew told us the best way to divert around the slide. We backtracked about 40minutes to another town called agua blanca.
the detour took 1.5 hours on rough dirt, rock, mud road. Super steep switch backs in places. nice views. we passed the bottom of the run out and saw the reservoir that was created in the river from the slide. huge.
we finally regained the road we started on and there was a lunch shack at the top for a very late lunch. Yippee. and a beer for Steve.
Steve overspiced his lunch and tried to feed some to a dog, which was very funny. The dog just couldn't stop licking its lips.
An hour or so later we got to Uspitan. We stayed at San Gabriel for 80Q. a really nice hotel with a shared bath for $10. Uspitan is a concrete town but with a nice traditional market in the morning out on the street and undercover. lots of little breakfast nook eateries with great wood stoves and tortillas cooking. cornmeal coffee and lots of getting stared at.
Guatemala has the best and most abundant traditional clothing, but the people are the most reserved and shy. sometimes we felt unwelcome, but they just werent used to seeing us.