Guatemala

Guatemala has short licence plates, which when blurred will typically have either a blue tinge, or a hint of green on the left side.

This grey Street View car with a visible roof rack and side mirrors can be seen on all car coverage in Guatemala.

NOTE: The only other tropical country with a similar car is Laos.

Guatemala is a tropical country, and is mainly covered by rainforests.

Guatemalan architecture mainly consists of pastel painted stone houses, commonly with rusted sheet metal roofs. It is also somewhat common for buildings to be made out of exposed white brick.

Similarly to Mexico, Guatemalan roads generally have solid white outer lines with a single yellow middle line. Road lines in Guatemala are generally significantly thinner than in Mexico.

Like Mexico and Panama, Guatemala uses the word “ALTO” on stop signs.

In Guatemala you will very commonly see poles painted with either pink, green or a combination of the two.

Guatemala has a fairly low amount of coverage, particularly in the north. Here you can see which roads are covered.

This is a topographic map of Guatemala. Generally speaking, the middle of the country is mountainous, while the south and north are fairly flat.

The southern regions of Guatemala mainly consist of completely flat agricultural land. It is generally more built up than flat areas in the north.

The central regions of Guatemala are generally mountainous.

The northern regions of Guatemala are typically fairly flat. You will however usually see some hills or a slightly rolling landscape, rather than the complete flatness of the south.

Oil palm plantations are primarily found in two general areas: in the southwest and just north of the central mountain range.

Completely green utility poles are primarily found in the southeast of the country, but also on a road in the further north in the east and on a small stretch of road around Melchor de Mencos, near the end of the coverage in the far northeast.

These poles also feature small pole plates, which can further narrow down the road. This will be further explained in the next tip.

Most green utility poles contain a white pole plate, for which the top two characters will determine which road you are on. These roads and their corresponding characters are shown in this infographic.

In most of the Guatemala coverage, the top right bar will be facing forward. This means that you can see this line on the side facing forward.

The opposite is true in southeastern Guatemala, where the line is facing backwards.

In these regions, you can often see a blue rope on the bottom right bar. 

NOTE: Sometimes it can be hard or almost impossible to see, in which case it might look like a normal backward facing bar.

These regions in the south and northeast also have the backwards facing bar. The difference here is that the bottom right bar is missing the thin black cap, which is present in the other regions.

Phone numbers starting with a 2 are unique to Guatemala City.

Similarly, phone numbers starting with a 6 are unique to the Guatemala Department.

NOTE: Phone numbers starting with 7 are found anywhere except for Guatemala Department, and phones starting with 3, 4 or 5 can be found anywhere in the country.

Lago de Atitlán is by far the largest lake in the mountainous regions of Guatemala. It is surrounded by mountains, and some volcanoes.

A small dirt road in the middle of a dense jungle can be found north of Tikal, in the far north of the country.

These small white bollards with two black stripes can be found on road 1 northeast of Quetzaltenango.

The PET-11, south of Las Pozas can be recognised by the slightly rolling landscape combined with its completely north-to-south road angle.

The CA9, going between Escuintla and the coast, can be recognised by being a divided highway with concrete pavement.

A trekker featuring several Mayan temples can be found just west of the town of Tikal.

It is worth mentioning that while there are other Guatemalan trekkers featuring Mayan ruins, this is by far the most prominent and contains the largest and most intact temple structures.

These white rectangular stickers that have the word ‘electricista’ written on them are unique to Guatemala City.