Back To Mexico

I am writing this sitting in our favorite campground, El Rancho outside the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca, and I am resting after some rather intense driving from Quetzaltenango in northern Guatemala.

It very soon became apparent that we weren’t going to stay in Guatemala for long. After our fiasco driving Chichicastenango we approached the city of Quetzaltenango with some trepidation. Layne was keen to see the city she had lived in forty years ago while attending Spanish language school, but we both knew nostalgia is a fickle mistress. 

It soon became apparent Quetzaltenango (known to locals as “Chela”) has changed beyond recognition…so we drove to the only campsite mentioned as being in town on the iOverlander app which showed a basic secure parking lot with no camping facilities at a Catholic Church. Layne knocked but just as in Bethlehem 2100 years ago the inn wasn’t taking travelers so we decided this whole thing was a bad idea. Mexico was three hours away so we drove for the border in best country-western style. Layne had found a campsite thirty minutes from Mexico and that seemed good enough.

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So we took a long last drive through the mountains of Guatemala, gradually dropping to sea level as we went. Frequent roadside repairs are the order of the day in poor countries and in Guatemala they drive their vehicles hard, much harder than we do as we teeter gently over the topes and figure our way round potholes not through them. 

These guys were on their way to work and their ride stopped in the middle of the road to pick them up which would be disconcerting except Guatemalan roads aren’t designed with shoulders or turn outs so this stuff happens all the time. For gas prices divide the numbers on the display by 7.5 to get the price of a gallon in US dollars. Diesel is cheapest and the top number is what we use, regular gas. 

Most Mayans labor to speak Spanish and many speak nothing but their own dialect of Queché which may not be understood in a village ten miles away. Consequently they tend to be shy around strangers though Layne did manage to break through occasionally. 

You may wonder at the floods of people trying to get to the US, however when you see men picking through trash heaps looking for sellable stuff you get a better understanding of the appeal of a 2,000 mile journey on foot with a little hope and no money to try to find work.  

You still see Maya carrying loads with a traditional tumpline which have been used forever as wheels and consequently wheelbarrows are a very modern innovation. I can’t imagine the neck muscles required to support a load with your forehead on a basic headband. 

Not only carrying a ladder on a motorcycle but the passenger is trusting the pilot to ride with one hand only on the handlebars. The ubiquitous telephone is never out of anyone’s hand. The Maya women carry them tucked into traditional sash round their middles always close at hand. 

The campground was not what we wanted exactly. Basically it’s a guys backyard and he rents space to Guatemalans who want to come and stay a few hours to hang out in his lovely well tended garden and splash in the river. The owner speaks English after a decade working in Houston, but like so many illegals immigrants he came home after making his money and runs his business at home.

Unfortunately he kept a lovely sweet Doberman on a chain in the yard and that fact revolted me. I fed her cookies and petted her much to Rusty’s disgust but I couldn’t wait to get out.  Besides the river smelled rather disturbingly of detergent so we had to swim heads up! With no showers (or toilets) this was not camping in any sense a gringo would understand, and for thirteen bucks a night. 

Up at six and off to the border, stopping to get gas for convenience as the price between the two countries is pretty much identical. 

El Carmen is the Guatemalan town on the border astride Central America 2, the main road from the border to Quetzaltenango but it’s just a jumble of homes and businesses on a narrow street to the van lifer seeking passage to Mexico. 

Naturally we arrived early for the eight am border opening and caused some traffic back up until I got permission to park outside the vehicle registration office.  Local traffic from the rest of the town passes through here air they had to work their way around us. No big deal!

Check out from Guatemala was easy once they checked my VIN number against the Temporary Import Permit and then a hundred yards further on the immigration office stamped us out of the country. We crossed the bridge and were in Mexico where a rather feeble disinfection spray awaited us. We parked in the lot as directed and walked back to do the bureaucracy two step. Agriculture got us first and waylaid us in the way to Immigration snagging Rusty’s pet passport and health certificate from the vet in Panajachel. Meanwhile customs got into the van and checked the fridge and took all our few fruits and vegetables as expected. Mexico looks at Guatemala much as the US looks at Mexico, an unsafe third world country full of pests and disease, and behaves accordingly. 

Layne got the nice immigration lady who laughed and joked while I got Cruella DeVille who yelled at me to put my phone away and to give back the entry form as she had given me the wrong one. This was fun. Then Agriculture got in on the act sating Rusty was listed on his passport and the imbecille vet wrote Golden Retriever on the health certificate. Shame on me for not noticing but I showed the inspector a picture on my phone (don’t let her see me using the phone I pleaded) of a Labrador Retriever and a Golden Retriever and we agreed to modify the passport by me adding the weird retriever and he write the color down on his paper as dark golden and we were good to go.  

But no, we needed a New Mexican TIP - temporary import permit- for GANNET2 so we marched to the Banercito office window. Banercito is the Army bank which Carrie’s out money transactions for the Mexican government. We had to pay a fifty dollar fee and a four hundred dollar deposit repayable upon leaving Mexico within the ninety days we had asked for and received from Immigration. 

It used to be no one cared about vans coming to Mexico but nowadays things have git a bit sticky. You can’t get an import permit for vehicles over 7700 pounds (3500 kilos) and ours is registered as a van and weighs 9300 pounds (4400 kgs). Hmmm! Luckily our paperwork shows a weight of 5500pounds so if they don’t inspect us we are good. When we get back to Florida we will reregister the van as an RV and eliminate this potential hiccough. We did fine in this case as everything passed and suddenly we were free to drive off into Mexico!

Yay! We got out of there before anyone changed they’re minds!

Mexicos southern border is a very different proposition we discovered as tourists used to entering the country from the United States. In these locations Mexiconis the rich country offering the prospect of work to poorer Guatemalans not to mention acting as a transit corridor toward the distant but desirable United States. 

For us the privileged tourist class it was a matter of ninety minutes and $60 for our tourist cards and $50 for our vehicle TIP and then the faff with Agricultire which doesn’t take place at all on the northern border. Ninety minutes after we started checking out of Guatemala we were on our way to Tapachula on broad Mexican highways with shoulders and not many potholes surprisingly. 

Our first ordering business was breakfast and we got a couple of beef tacos before Layne went shopping. 

We hadn’t seen an American style supermarket in a couple of months so…welcome back to the land of plenty.