The drive to the border was short and uneventful, with the road both excellent and terrible in equal measure. It was raining very hard for much of the journey through Guatemala, but by now we had become confident in the SRZero’s ability to cope with the water, and so we were all very lighthearted as we were, for once, making very good time.

After a few hours of solid driving through the jungle, we saw a break in the trees as a wide valley crossed perpendicular to the road. The river gushing along the base of the valley formed the border between Guatemala and El Salvador, and the bridge we could see arching over the river was our way across. It was really quite dramatic what with the river, the clouds, the jungle, and the mountains of both countries looming overhead. There was just one last challenge for us before leaving Guatemalan soil, and that was a large and deep pool of water just at the beginning of the bridge…

As discussed in previous blogs and video posts, the SRZero and large pools of standing water are not the best of friends. Nonetheless, if we wanted to get across today, the car was going to have to man up and take it. Toby reversed the car a little to give it a bit of a run up, and then full steam ahead it ploughed through the water! The car whipped past the rest of the team waiting on the bridge, and water could be seen streaming out of every orifice. But, the SRZero still worked, and nobody was electrocuted!

The next challenge to face us was getting all 3 vehicles into El Salvador. With our passports quickly stamped, we began the long and extremely annoying process of filling in documents, taking them to another building, then taking something else to somebody else, and then finally ending up in an office where someone takes, and I’m not joking, over an hour to put what you have written on the form, into the computer. A handicapped snail could have entered in the data faster, and a process which could easily have been completed in 10 minutes ended up taking 2 hours! Nonetheless, they were only formalities to contend with, and we didn’t have any problems with getting ourselves and the vehicles through.

Throughout this whole process, the UMG staff patiently waited to ensure we got across the border and into the safe hands of our police escort. After saying goodbye to our hosts, the police, with sirens blaring, lead us full steam ahead until we reached a petrol station. Here we met with 2 cars that had been sent from KPMG, each equipped with their own flashing lights. And so, with the police car kneading the way, and the 2 KPMG cars blocking both lanes behind us, the convoy moved with rapid pace. On occasion, another car did manage to sneak into the convoy, and when they did, they were muscled off the road by the chase cars who then sped up and resumed their positions! We must have done someone good in our previous lives because this was super 5* treatment!

Another relief was the road conditions…they were flawless! And by flawless, I mean absolutely and completely smooth all the was into San Salvador. We had never seen anything like it, and it was an absolute pleasure to drive upon. After a few hours driving, we reached the city of San Salvador where upon, if we saw a red light, we were led straight through! It was like a police chase except we were chasing the police!

After a few more minutes, we were led into the secure office compound of KPMG El Salvador where, even though it was a Sunday night, there were loads of people waiting for us. It was a tremendous welcome, and we spent a while telling them about the project and how the trip had gone so far. It was a very family-orientated atmosphere, with the employees’ children running around, and we were made to genuinely feel at home.

After dinner and putting the car on charge, another thing KPMG had kindly organised for us, we were led to a small but very tasteful hotel where we were to stay for the next 2 nights. As it was still quite early, we were looking forward to our first night of sleep longer than 4 hours for quite a while, and before long, blissful sleep engulfed us all!

Andy and Toby did an excellent job, with Toby presenting in Spanish, and Andy having his words translated. The audience was incredibly attentive, and once the presentation was finished, they were invited to ask any questions. Once again, the level of interest in the project and electric cars in general overwhelmed us, and it shows that even in poorer and less developed parts of the world, EVs can play a vital role in reducing the country’s expenditure of fossil fuel imports, a vital step in keeping money within a country.

After the Q&A session, the audience was invited to come up to the car, meet the rest of the team, take photos, and to ask any further questions they may have. We took of the rear bodywork for everyone to see what physically drives an electric car, and the reaction was very positive. The net lasted until around 2pm at which time most people had trickled away, and there was only ourselves and our hosts left.

During the event, we had our first experience of true Guatemalan rain; it was really a sight to see! For 3 hours torrential rain lashed at the marquee, and as we saw in Mexico City, the roads turned into rivers. It was a sustained attack from the heavens! With this in mind, we decided that even more waterproofing on the car would certainly not be a bad thing, and so Nik and Toby went with Roger, one of our student hosts, to the local hardware store to stock up on various equipment to make the car more resistant to such heavy rain.

However, upon trying to start up the car to move it to a different place to work on it, they found that the car wouldn’t start. This was very strange as even that morning the car was working perfectly, and we could come up with no logical explanation. We took out the seat to have a look at the high voltage electronics and control boxes underneath, but there were no problems here, so the investigation proceeded at the rear of the car, and this is where the problem was found.

Way back in March when we were assembling the battery pack, we inserted thermistors, essentially temperature probes, in several places throughout the battery pack. This was to monitor battery cell temperatures to ensure that they never get too hot. Experience soon taught us that no matter what we did with the batteries, they would never really get beyond luke warm, and so even though our control system was monitoring them constantly, we never paid that much attention to them.

However, on inspecting the rear battery pack, Toby found that one of them had broken, and he suspected that because it was broken, it was giving an error reading and actually telling the car that the batteries were at 100 degrees celsius. So, in order to alleviate the problem, we opted for changing the software rather than the thermistor as we had found that they were pretty useless in the functioning of the car, even when it was 45 degrees celsius outside. So in essence, Toby told the car’s computer to ignore the temperature readings, and from then on the car worked fine. This was the first software based problem we had encountered on the trip, and we were pleased to have solved it so quickly.

With the car back to working condition again, we went out into the city with our Guatemalan hosts to have a great dinner and to sample a bit of the Saturday nightlife. It was fantastic fun, and even though we didn’t want to, we called it an early night and headed back to the hotel in lieu for an early morning start the next day.

Many thanks to Francisco, Roger, George, Cindy and all the others from UMG for giving us such a great time Guatemala City!

After leaving an hour later than scheduled due to coordinating so many different vehicles and people, we headed the 30 miles or so to the border. The road conditions were fine, and before long we were pulling up to the Mexican side of the border. Our passports were quickly stamped out of the country and it looked like it might be a quick crossing. The last thing we had to do on the Mexican side was to cancel our temporary vehicle importation permits, and upon trying to do this, we were told that we had to go back to Tapachula, with all the vehicles, and cancel the permits there. However, we were assured by the consulate in the US that we would be able to cancel the permits at the border. But no matter how many times we explained this, the border guards were not playing dice!

After a lot of back and forth, we finally established that we were allowed out of the country with the vehicles, but if either myself, Clemens or Chris (registered owners of the support vehicle, SRZero, and motorcycle respectively) came back into Mexico, we would be liable to a $500 fine which increases every 6 months. This was not an attractive option, and neither was the alternative of going back to Tapachula and delaying the whole day significantly. So, after a chat with the British Embassy who assured us they would help us sort the whole situation out, we decided to leave Mexico regardless, and continue into Guatemala!

On the Guatemalan side of the border, we were greeted by a large police 4×4 who were kindly going to escort us to Guatemala City. However, before we could leave, we had a mountain of bureaucracy to climb over, and with all our passports in hand, Clemens marched off to the customs house to spend the next 2 hours dealing with it.

Meanwhile, the car was attracting the most attention we had ever had; literally swarms of people were surrounding the car, so much so that you couldn’t even see the car anymore. Over the course of the next 2 hours, thousands of people must have come by to check out what was going on. However, we needed a way to communicate en masse what the car was and why we were here. Coincidentally, there was a small van parked up on the side of the road which had speakers mounted on its roof, and a microphone in the cabin. We went over to ask if we could borrow it, to which the driver promptly agreed! So there we were, a few minutes later, talking to hundreds of people over a loud speaker right on the border with Guatemala…it was really a fantastic and unique experience!

Finally, after conquering the Guatemalan paperwork, Clemens returned with all the passports and documents stamped, and we were free to carry on. Along with a police escort as well as several vehicles from the university, we climbed our way up the mountain and towards Guatemala City. Along the way we stopped for dinner at Central America’s largest restaurant. It was indeed massive, the food delicious, and we had a great time talking with our contacts from the university.

Time was pushing on however, and we still needed to cover a good 100km to get to the city whereby we would be parking and charging the car at the university. So we left the restaurant and proceeded, although progress was much slower than expected as the road was in an awful condition. It was so bad that the support van had to go in front of the SRZero and call out potholes for the trailing SRZero. In addition, it was raining very heavily, and visibility was very poor.

After hours of travelling at speeds barely averaging over 20km/h, we made it onto the smooth highway leading up to Guatemala City, and what a difference! The road easily rivalled anything we have in Europe or the US, and it was a real pleasure to drive on. With progress speeding up, we quickly made it to the university and parked the car up under a massive marquee where we would be addressing an audience of students and journalists the next day.

With this complete, we were able to drive over to the hotel which the university had very kindly booked and paid for. We were expecting a small B&B or something, but it turned out to be an incredibly luxurious 5* hotel. How we could possibly deserve such treatment is still a mystery to me, but we happily sunk into our king size beds and slept the few hours we had at our disposal before the event the following morning!