Latin American Packard Odyssey

Latin American P= ackard Odyssey

By Keith Vail

In June of 1960, my father, younger broth= er and I set out on a little trip in our 1953 Clipper sedan which at that time had over 90,000 miles on the odometer. This journey covered more th= an 6,000 miles over all manners of roadw= ay and through all types of terrain.

My father was a history teacher at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C. One of his classes was Latin American History. He= applied for a grant from the Meyer Foundation to observe Latin American culture, particularly the public education systems. The best way to do this, he reason= ed, was to drive down the Pan = American Highway through Mex= ico and into Central = America.

At this time, the inter-city highway = networks, hotel facilities, etc. in this area were just beginning to receiv= e the attention necessary to make the countryside readily accessible and hospitable to North American motorists. Save for a 15-mile stretch of toll highway south of <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">Mexico City, there were no 4-lane roads except in the largest cities. Neither= were there very many road signs. We often had to = rely on my limited command of the Spanish language= and the goodwill of the locals, who after he= lping as much as they could, would extend the open palm. We learned very quickly to have lots of loose= change in our pockets. Traveling through cit= ies and towns was especially adventurous. On occasion, finding our way was a matter of serendipity. Our AAA tour book often was not = up to the task.

After visiting relatives in Pennsylvania, Ohio<= /st1:State> and Illinois, we deposited my mother and= sister at Union Station in St. Louis, and proceeded on. We reached Laredo, Texas on July 3^rd.^{Our
first order of business was to purchase Mexican automobile insurance. We then crossed over into =
Mexico =
on the 4^th. After cooling
our heels for several hours at
Mexican Customs for no apparent=
good
reason, we were finally off! We immediately encountered our first
experience of no signage. We found the Pan-American Highway for the cost of a dollar, and set of=
f on
what was a blistering hot day. Traveling into Monterrey, we somehow found the road to=
Saltillio, although we weren’t sure for some ti=
me. We
left Saltillio the next morning and got onto Mexico<=
/st1:country-region>
route 57 to Mexico City, a good, new road re=
commended
over the Pan-American.}

In Mexico City, we stayed at a pleasant suburb= an hotel on the northern outskirts near = Chapultepec Park. This hotel had a large full-service garage on the ground level where the Clipper was serviced.

We left Mexico City = and headed towards Oaxaca, supplied with box lunches as= there were no dining facilities on the way. We and the Clipper effortlessly ascen= ded to 10,000 feet, by-passed Puebla and tu= rned due south, once more on the Pan-American High= way. After some distance, the road began to twist and turn as we entered barren, mountainous country. We endured one switchback after another. There were no guardrails, only painted stones and numerous metal crosses to mark the edge of the road. This factor did not slow down the busses and big trucks as they hurtled past us. After over 100 miles of this (the <= span class=3DSpellE>Ultramatic never complained), we finally arrived at Oaxaca= .

We left = Oaxaca the next morning, again supplied with lunches, for some more twisting road until we approached Tehuantepec. After another of the innumerable Customs stops, we eventually reached Arriaga just as it was getting dark. Arriaga was a railroad town. Becaus= e it was the rainy season, the weste= rn Guatemala section of the Pan-American Hig= hway often washed out. So, the prudent course of action was to bypass it = by taking the “railway portage” to Tapachula<= /span>, near the Guatemalan border. The Clipper and other waiting vehicles were strapped onto flatcars. We se= t off late the next morning, pulled by a coal-burning steam locomotive. We covered 110 miles in 12 hours= ! We arrived at Tapachula close to midnight where the on= ly decent hotel in town was full. So, we slept in the car.

We set off the following day for the border. There were two route choices; we took the shorter one. By and by, our chosen road disappeared into a farmyard. T= here was a lot of pointing by the natives a= t the train tracks we had just crossed. I got out of the car, looked down the tra= cks and saw the border gates midway across the railroad bridge, over the river! There was a 12’-wide wooden roadway straddling the tracks, no railings of course. Cars shared the right-of-way with the trains!

We cautiously drove onto the trestle and down to the border crossing gates. After several moments there, a worker came running up, shouting “tren! tren!” Those of you who know a lit= tle Spanish will understand this to mean “TRAIN TRAI= N”! Sure enough, there sat a large locomotive demanding that we get out of the way. So, I had to back up the Clipper about 100 yard= s to get off the tracks and onto firm ground. I don’t think that I could perform that maneuver today= .

As soon as we cleared Mexican Customs, we had to deal with the Guatemalans. We happened to have in the car several= cans of peaches, etc. to snack on. Because apparently there was some sort of national “holiday”, we were obliged to pay a duty on each can. I still don’t understand the rationale. I suspect it might have been a device of the officials to secure some “personal revenue”. Once free of this situation, we began to mak= e our way towards Guatemala City.

About 15 miles into the interior, we came to a fork in the road. There was no sig= nage or any indication in our tour book as to which way to go. Two gentlemen were nearby and walked up to u= s. They looked like country folk; one had on what looked like a taxi driver’s cap. We assumed that they wanted to hitch a ride, so we waved the= m off. BIG mistake. The fellow with the cap pull= ed out a gun and began to shout and wave it = about! Turned out that th= ey were local policemen, on edge because Castro was at that moment stirring things up in the region. Well, we didn’t get shot and after a brief inspection, everyone sort of laughed it off.

The remainder of our trip into Guatemala was uneventful and pleasant. Leaving Guatemala City, heading south, we again had to hunt an= d peck to find the Pan-American Highway. The road was by turns paved, gravel then paved again to the El Salvador border. In El Salvador, the roads were good, and the countryside very pleasant. In = San Salvador, we stayed at a new, modern hotel. (Some = years later during a revolution, the rebels = seized this hotel with some loss of life.) = But for us, thankfully, there was no such problem.

For various reasons, we decided to forego traveling further south and instead spent several days touring through El Salvador. Eventually, we went back nor= th to Gua= temala. The Guatemalan border officials seemed = jumpy. Later, when we got to Gua= temala City, we discovered why. The Guatemalan governmen= t had declared a “state of sieg= e” (i.e., martial law) and troops in military trucks filled the streets. Hotel staff parked our Packard in a garage for safekeeping. My father wanted to see Quezaltenango on the way back. Our tour book = was a bit vague but off we went. We = were going along rather well on a go= od road and came to a toll tunnel, which was no surprise. The surprise = was what lay at the other end. We emerged fr= om the tunnel to see a narrow dirt road, about one and one-half lanes wide. = We could see for miles the way it snaked around the edges of the sheer mountain cliffs, at least a 1000’ drop! Th= ere were no guardrails of course, not even the occasional painted stone. Every little bit, on our side, there were pullouts where a vehicle could move over and wait so that someone coming the other way could get by. W= ell, what could we do? We figured it must be doab= le, and there was no feasible alternative. It was an interesting two hou= rs. The reward was that Quezaltenango was quite nice, a pleasant colonial = mountain town with beautiful scenery.

Quezaltenango happened to be on the Pan‑= American Highway. So, we decided that we would follow= it until we reached the alternate route = to Tapachula and thereby avoid revisiting the previous unpleasantness. Well, we made a wrong turn and got onto a dirt and g= ravel road that snaked through a numb= er of small villages. We trusted that as lon= g as the road kept going we would eventually reach either the border or t= he ocean! After all, Guatemala is not that big. Well, we did finally reach something recognizable, the fork in the road where we had earlier encounte= red the police! We carefully looked about, saw no one, and kept moving. So, despite our intention to take what was obviously the better route, we instead found ourselves retracing= our southbound steps. This time though, we clear= ed Customs and crossed the railroad bri= dge without incident. Safely back in Tapachula, we s= ecured a room at the hotel and booked = return passage on the railway portage.

Having learned from our experiences, the trip <= span style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial;letter-spacing:-.5pt'>north wen= t much easier. We did a = great deal of sightseeing, my Dad saw a number of schools, and the Clipper performed quite nicely, thank you. Under grueling conditions, the car did not complain, overheat, suffer brake fade, nor give any other cause for concer= n. This experience made such a lasting im= pression on me that 22 years later I purchased a similar Packard.<= /span>