Crossing the Guatemalan Border

Monday 22 June, 2009


8.00am: This is a big day. Leaving my beloved Mex and crossing the border. Wake up to find a daddy long legs bigger than I've ever seen creeping across my bed. Crush it to death with my Central America on a Shoestring. Probably the best way in which that guidebook has been so far put to use.

8.45am: My bus to the border departs at 11.30. I am allowing up to two hours to deal with the post office - I know all too well what they're like. Lug my 8.5kg box across town, unpackaged and with two metres of bubble wrap trailing out behind me. Have been laughed at for dragging it around since Oaxaca, ie. almost two weeks but am convinced that it will pay off in the end, ie. today.

9.00am: The post office is completely empty. One lady is behind the counter using a typewriter. Retro. The first thing she tells me is: "You have to go buy manilla paper to wrap your box. No, we don't sell it here. You have to go to a papeleria for that." Subtext: Silly silly girl. Of course. You can't even buy an envelope in the post offices here. Maybe stamps. Knew something like this would happen. Not to worry, it is all within the plan.

9.05am: Papeleria. Of course they don't have any change. Wait for a century while one of the girls goes to change my money.

9.15am: Girl returns and hands me my change. The coins have dried blood on them.

10am: Spend 45 minutes bubblewrapping, taping, and manilla-wrapping my box of goodies. Fill in an insurance/customs form and a passing postal worker mutters to me, "Don't fill in the value of the items or else Australian customs will charge you a percentage as import tax." Thanks buddy! Send my package off by boat - am told it will take 25 days. Am fully prepared for it to take 6 months. I have been warned about Mexican post.

10.30am: If you want the short version, the rest of my day goes like this: bagel - taxi - coach - taxi - tuktuk - chicken bus - chicken bus - minivan.

2pm: The coach to the Mexican border is comfort and style all the way (if over-airconditioned). I will make a mental note of this luxury for later reference. Have no problems crossing the Mexican border as am the only gringa there. Do not have to pay any mysterious $USD20 "departure tax" as have been told by others. Ha! I will not be swindled! Have to get a taxi across to the Guatemalan side as it is 4km away. This is the furthest-apart border I've ever had to cross (except Australia to anywhere else).

2.10pm: Silly me thought I had the cab to myself but five more Mexicans pile in. An old Mexican caballero in a sobrero with an enormously bushy silver moustache is practically sitting in my lap. He smiles at me. "How much does it cost to fly from Australia to Mexico?" he wants to know. Play down the figure so I don't look even richer than they think I am. "Are you travelling solita?" No, I tell them, my brother and his friends are waiting for me in Guatemala; I liked Mexico so much I stayed a few extra days... I tell some variation on this lie at least twice a day.

2.20pm: Am also the only gringa crossing through Guatemalan immigration. Get a pretty new stamp. Change cash with a remarkably sweet and honest moneychanger and hop into a tuktuk to the bus terminal.

2.30pm/3.30pm: Turns out Guatemala is an hour ahead. Which means that I am now an hour late. Glimpse my first chicken bus. They are amazing - old American school buses from the 60s and 70s that have been completely pimped out and used in pretty much every Central American country. They are brightly painted and personalised with stickers, pictures of Jesus, and slogans such as "Dios viaja con nosotros" (God travels with us - a nifty way to excuse their maniacal driving.). Big bags go on the roof and anything else goes inside. A bit scary. Driver tells me 60 quetzales to Xela. Haven't quite worked out the exchange rate yet but sounds reasonable so hop on.

The bus is very cramped. Knees are pressed hard up against the seat in front. All the Guatemalans are reclining comfortably as none of their heads even clear the top of the seat. Notice that Guatemalans have an alarming habit of carrying machetes onto public transport. I count at least three (and will later find out that this is the norm).

3.40pm: Should have luxuriated in the relative space I had sharing a seat with a girl no older than 13 when a large mammajamma gets on and squeezes onto our seat. There are other free seats available. Have not been three to a seat since primary school trips. The girl looks as disgruntled as I feel. The driver takes corners with all the zeal of a rally car driver, never touching the brake even though the corners are blind and there is a steep drop off to the right. Every turn the girl and mammajamma slide into me and I take their full (considerable) weight on my ribs. Ow.

4.00pm: The girl nods off on my shoulder. Clearly sleeping on strangers is par for the course. I have no hope of falling asleep.

4.10pm: The bus keeps stopping for vendors to get on and hawk their wares. They are selling everything from fruit ( spiked on ingenious grappling hook-type things to be hung off the bag rails overhead) and refreshments to disposable Bic razors and batteries. One man gets on and begins a spiel about a "very special educational book" of natural medicine. In Mexico men would board buses all the time with little briefcases filled with some new wonderdrug, which they would then extol the virtues of to other passengers.

This guy's special book offers natural remedies for "gastritis, cancer, vaginal infections, coughs and colds, and sexual impotence." This "marvellous book, featuring recipes of pineapple and papaya, treats more than 170 afflictions and normally sells for Q30-40 but ladies and gentlemen, on this wonderful day I am proud to offer it to you for only 10 quetzalitos." Everyone on the bus is given a copy to peruse except me. Realise that not only am I the only foreigner but am also the only person wearing sunglasses. Perhaps that's why I have been snubbed?

4.30pm: The view is spectacular - mountainous (this is, after all, Guatemala's highlands), lush and green, and the road winds its way along, looking down to valleys below. The Guatemalans toss everything out of the window without a care in the world - cans, food wrappers, plastic bags. At one point there is a loud thump and I look out the window to see a two litre bottle of water bouncing down the road off the roof. Know without a doubt that it is mine, gotten free from my pack (and it was).

5.30pm: We pull over to the side of the road and everyone starts bellowing "Xela!!" at me. What? But Xela is another two hours away. Looks like I have to change buses, even though I was told that the bus is direct. Being the only foreigner, they are already hustling me off the bus and untying my pack from the roof - it's the only pack up there.

5.45pm: Everything is going swimmingly on the second bus until the conductor - who cannot be older than seventeen - comes over asking for payment. No worries, I whip out my ticket with "Xela" written on it. He looks confused. "But you have to pay me," he says. But I've ALREADY paid, look at my ticket. "Yes, but that was for the other bus, you have to pay for this bus now," he says. But I paid on the other one all the way to Xela, and I don't understand why I've changed buses but I've already paid, look! He looks dubious. He doesn't understand why I changed either but what he does know is that I have not yet paid and I need to pay my fare. Feel as though I am being duped somehow. All the other passengers are listening. The conductor and I are at a stalemate.

An older gentleman who was on the previous bus with me pipes up and says that he thinks the other bus scammed me. "How much did you pay, señorita?" asks a man in front of me. Q60, I tell him. He whistles. "Oh, they robbed you," he says. What? "It should only cost Q20," he tells me. Great. Have paid triple. Feel like a total idiot for letting this happen. After six months I should know better. But Guatemala is not comfortable Mexico - there is no bus station, no office, no prices written up on boards. People jump on the bus wherever it happens to be and everyone already knows the price and destination, except stupid foreigners who get fooled in their first five minutes in the country. Should have asked a local how much it costs. The problem is that I am way too trusting; I always want to believe the best of people and 99% of the time they are lovely. I refuse to be like other tourists and blanket-categorise Latin Americans as thieves and scam artists because they aren't. But I should definitely be smarter than this.

5.55pm: The conductor is still waiting for my Q20 so I pay him; it isn't his fault that I'm stupid. However, a moment later my money comes back to me: another passenger has paid for me and refuses to take his money back. "No señorita," he tells me, "It's not worth the worry; now you know. I don't want you to have a bad impression of my country." I am deeply touched. Everyone on the bus is on my side and gives me commiserating smiles. Guatemalans are amazing. The man in the seat in front of me offers tips so I don't get taken advantage of again.

7.30pm: Arrive in Xela and get off the bus. "I'm sorry," the conductor says to me. Am flabbergasted that he feels the need to apologise and babble out that I am the one who should be sorry. He looks awkward and hops back on the bus. The driver points me to a minivan that will take me to the centre.

7.45pm: Hop out of the minivan and pay the driver, and almost walk off without Q15 of my change. He calls me back and counts it out into my hand. Why am I so stupid, seriously? Everyone from the border onwards has been so unbelieveably helpful and lovely that it is enough to make me forget that one person took advantage of my willingness to trust. And occasional obliviousness. And what's one person, anyway?

(PS. My box arrived home in 11 days. Surely this in an unprecedented feat for Mexican post? Perhaps a medal is in order?)