CENTRAL AMERICA: Pleasure Trip

Two road testers for the American Automobile Association set out last February to drive a 1958 Pontiac to Panama from Mexico City on the Pan American Highway. Last week, the journey completed, the A.A.A. bluntly told its members that the drive "is not recommended:" In addition to bone-jarring road hazards, Testers Art Auerbach and George E. Burns found that "accommodations are inadequate, customs are very annoying, and the points of interest do not justify the effort."

Just south of the Mexican town of Tonala, the A.A.A. team came upon "eleven streams to cross with no bridges. At one, we met up with two Chinese in a Jeep who drove out to midstream, then turned and drove down 50 yards, then crossed. We followed them. A 2½-ton truck came behind us, went straight across and got bogged down." To dodge Guatemala's El Tapón (meaning stopper) pass, which is closed during the May-September rainy season, Auerbach and Burns had to board a flatcar for a train ride south, with no place to eat. Often crossing floating bridges, they drove hesitantly over Guatemala's graded-earth roads to El Salvador, where a 190-mile stretch is firmly paved. In Honduras, the worn and rough highway twists through hilly country to the bumpy stretches of Nicaragua.

In Costa Rica, the highway is mostly only two years old; yet the pavement is full of chuckholes. The drive beyond Cartago goes over an 11,000-ft. pass on eroded, slippery gravel. Then, 134 miles from the Panama border, the road suddenly stops. Though the highway was originally scheduled to open this year, 39 bridges are still to be built.

The repair bill for the Pontiac was $411.92 for two transmission overhauls, five new tires, eight shock absorbers, brake realignments and muffler welding.