Pimp My Tuk Tuk, Guatemala
Here in Guatemala, and other parts of the world, the main style of taxi is a motorized rickshaw type vehicle called a Tuk-Tuk. I’m sure lots of you well traveled folks are familiar with them. We have become totally fascinated with these little three wheeled demons and it is now turning into an unhealthy obsession (Ok, for me at least. I don’t to drag Rache into this ridiculousness, but hey, thats what I do best).
So I had this idea to do a series of blog posts on our favorite Tuk Tuks in Guatemala. As you all know, if you have a good idea, there is a 99% chance it has already been done. Well, you guessed it, it has. There are some dudes in India that created a charity called “Pimp My Tuk Tuk” and we love it! Check it out. Maybe Ra’Co can hook up with these guys while we do a version in Guatemala. We’ll see!
But back here at the Lago, we are going to start our own version of Pimp My Tuk Tuk by posting images of our favorite Tuk-Tuks and we will try to do a little expose on the drivers as we learn more of the language. But right now our Spanish totally sucks. This will be a killer ongoing project that we are really excited about. Hopefully we can get to a point where we can gain interest in the project, get ya’ll to vote on your favorite vehicle, post videos etc. of the drivers and their vehicles and tell their stories. Maybe even start a Kickstarter project to raise funds for the drivers, their families and the less fortunate Mayan folks in the area that we are growing to love.
Sound good! Give a shout!
The History of the Tuk Tuk
According to these guys the first version of the Tuk Tuk was created in Japan by Daihatsu. But they say Thailand was really responsible for inventing them and putting them to good use over 50 years ago. Anyway, the above mentioned site gives an excellent history of the Tuk Tuk so I’m not really going to get into it any further than I have to. That’s what links are for.
So without further ado, here is our first entry into Pimp My Tuk Tuk Guatemala. We call this one The Love Tuk and it’s located in San Juan La Laguna, a beautiful arts and crafts town located next to San Pedro. Unfortunately the driver wasn’t around so we could only get these photos. We will definitely follow up on this once we can find the driver, get his name, and try to get him to tell us something about himself.
There it is, out first entry in Pimp My Tuk Tuk Guatemala. Check back soon for the next installment!