Travel Documentary hosted by Zay Harding and Laura Guiauchain and Holly Morris, published by Pilot Productions in 2018 - English narration
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In this mini series we explore some of the most unique and hard-core truck journeys on the planet. Destinations in the six part series are Iceland, Guatemala, Turkey, Morocco, Ethiopia and Russia.
The "Tough Trucks" series takes you on roads where a small car can't manage. Sometimes we get stuck in mud in the rainforest or meander to the top of a glacier. However, the goal is not to ramble on the terrain, but to see sights and culture, such as the Guatemalan horse race, for which the contestants prepare by getting drunk.
The series takes you to exotic places, where roads don't even always have names. Some names, on the other hand, are deeply etched in history. Zay Harding travels in Siberia on the "Road of Bones", whose sinister name includes Stalin's prison camps and prisoners who died during road construction.
In the company of American Holly Morris, we will travel one and a half thousand kilometers in Turkey on the ancient Silk Road on the way of truck drivers. Goods still travel on the road, just as they did a thousand years ago - and you still get involved in political twists and turns on the winding roads.
Ancient trade routes are also in Morocco. The French Laura Guiauchain introduces the viewers to Ouarzazate, where the landscapes depicted are familiar from many Hollywood films. Game of Thrones fans may also see familiar-looking landscapes in the city, as well as the lava-covered landscapes in the episode introducing Iceland.
Our hosts take a series of truck journeys across these lands exploring the many fascinating cultural, natural and historical sites along the way, including unique geological locations in Iceland, ancient Mayan sites in Guatemala and rarely visited Silk Road destinations in Eastern Turkey.
Produced & Directed by Chris Ledger ; Pilot Film & TV Productions for PBS/American Public Television and Travel Channel International
3) Guatemala
In this episode Zay Harding travels by truck through Central America's toughest and most spectacular country, Guatemala.
Starting his journey from the National Palace in the centre of Guatemala City, from where all distances in the country are measured, Zay heads first to the dramatic ruins of the ancient Maya city of Mixco Viejo in the highlands just outside the capital. To get there, he travels on a hugely colourful old school bus, driven down from the USA and then reconditioned with a powerful truck engine in order to cope with Guatemala's challenging mountainous terrain.
Heading on along the country's main road, the PanAmerican Highway, in a large 18-wheeler truck, Zay discovers that just as most of Guatemala's buses are driven down through Mexico from the USA, so are most of Guatemala's big trucks. Transferring onto a local truck heading up into Guatemala's highest mountain range, Zay visits one of the country's most beautiful and traditional villages, Todos Santos Cuchumatan, as it celebrates its annual fiesta with a truly remarkable, and extremely dangerous, drunken horse race.
Continuing his journey by hitching a ride along Guatemala's most dangerous road, running the gauntlet of a tectonic fault that causes frequent, fatal landslides, Zay passes through beautiful orchid-filled highland cloud forest en route to the remote lowland jungle of northern Guatemala. Heading further and further into the wilderness along treacherously muddy tracks through the rainforest, Zay breathes a sigh of relief as he eventually arrives safely at his final destination, Tikal, the most spectacular of all ancient Maya cities.
