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Published: December 7th 2019
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As a kid we often drove from France into Italy, Spain and even the UK, so since a young age I have had an affinity with border crossings. Being half Russian, half Italian also feeds this interest for borders, cultures and heritage. Having never crossed a border by land in Latin America, I was especially excited by the long and bumpy journey that lay ahead of us as we left my beloved Mexico for pastures new. I’d never been to Guatemala either and I was excited to see what lay across the border line.
We boarded the mini van at 7am and spent the next hour picking up the other passengers at their hotels. On board was Claudio; an Argentinian who had done this journey many times and who we then hung out with and cooked pasta for; a young Australian dude who came with his surf board (you can’t surf in Lake Atitlan), a quiet older couple who were going to a different destination; a silent Japanese girl travelling on her own; and a lovely couple from New Zealand who were very chatty and friendly and told us about how they left their jobs and went travelling
for 2 years! (Hmmm next trip Marco?)
The first 4 hours or so were smooth and easy and before we knew it we arrived to the border town of Mesilla. At this point we were told to disembark, walk over to the immigration point and pay our fee to leave Mexico if you had been in Mexico for over 7 days. As abiding citizens we all paid our £20 or so fee to receive a stamp and were told to get back in the van. The silent Japanese girl who didn’t speak a word of Spanish showed the officer a piece of paper that said in Spanish something along the lines of: “I will not pay the exit fee, this is illegal, I paid my taxes entering the country”. Things got tense. I went in as the translator and was told to tell her that if she doesn’t pay she won’t be able to enter Guatemala. Still, our Japanese friend didn’t break a sweat and maintained her position that she will not pay, as this is illegal and they can do what they like. I translated this back to the officer who after mumbling said “fine, she
can go through but we are making a note on her file that she’s a disruptive and difficult character and when she tries to leave Mexico by air this record will be flagged up with immigration”. I relayed this information to her. Yet again, no sweat broken, she simply waited for her stamp and made her way back into the van gracefully. We were all a bit shocked! Especially our Argentinian friend Claudio who had done this journey many times and always paid the fee without questions! If only she had gone first not last! Maybe we could all have avoided this scam...
Back in the van, we drove a few more metres down a dirt track where we stopped and were told to take all our luggage. This is where our Mexican driver was leaving us and we were to cross the 10 metre line on our own. At the other end, our Guatemalan driver would pick us up in a new van once we had shown our passports to immigration. I was buzzing with adrenaline and excitement as we crossed the few steps into Guatemala and left Mexico behind. In reality, nothing had changed; just an imaginary line but at the same time everything had changed. Suddenly we were approached by an onslaught of men with massive wads of money offering “cambio, cambio”. We looked at each other and realised we hadn’t even checked what the exchange rate was! Big fail on our part. The others from our bus all seemed to be happy with the 35 Quetzal exchange rate so we too, changed what was left of our pesos to that exchange rate. This walking bureau de change even took our tiny Mexican coins! If we had learned anything from the immigration experience we should have let the Japanese girl lead the way...but clearly we didn’t. She was the only one to have haggled the exchange rate to 40 Quetzals and got her way! Way to go lady! (I then spoke to her in the toilet queue and she told me she was travelling the world on her own for a whole year. She must have picked up a lot of tips and tricks in that time!)
The immigration point was super smooth on the Guatemalan side and we weren’t asked to pay a penny which was a relief. Our young driver met us with the equivalent of a Guatemalan red bull energy drink in his hand and so we all piled in to his shuttle van that was slightly more spacious and neater than the Mexican equivalent. This one had blacked out windows and played Bryan Adams, George Michael and The Scorpions on loop!
The next 6 hours were fun if a bit dodgy with our driver speeding his way along the narrow and winding mountain roads as he sipped his second or third energy drink! They have to arrive at the drop off point by a certain time or else they are somehow penalised (not entirely sure but maybe they don’t get paid or something). After overtaking trucks from the wrong side and a few other manoeuvres - we arrived in Panajachel right on time!
For now the scenery and people looked very much like in Mexico, but it was apparent that there was more poverty in the streets. Sixty percent of Guatemalans are of indigenous descent and this was very apparent too as we saw lots of old ladies and young women and girls in their traditional wear weaving textiles or selling vegetables in the street.
We arrived at sunset with a glorious view of the volcanoes around us and enjoyed a really beautiful drive down to the docking area where we would be taking our boat to San Marcos, our base on Lake Atitlan for the next 7 days. Hippyville here we come!
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