Border Crossing

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Left Puerto behind yesterday evening, having spent my last day there sitting on a beautiful beach looking out at the surf and discussing with Derek the relative merits of the various waves like two old surf bums. Chose not to head out into them, however, as it felt as if the elbow and shoulder joints of my right arm might have been seperated and reconnected repeatedly the day before, each time I threw myself with one arm over my board into an incoming wave. It is possible that this is a young man's sport...
At any rate, another overnight bus ride found us staggering out into early morning heat, homes on our backs and thus moving like snails, with no idea (besides a name - Tapachula) where we were, and even less idea which way we had to go. Actually, an altogether familiar and normal feeling following 10 hours of trying to sleep sitting up, starting awake periodically to find drool all down your shirt or that you´ve tipped over onto your seatmate´s shoulder.
An early morning coffee lady appears, beckoning salvation from behind a steaming thermos. She turns out to be a deceiving siren, however: there is little to no caffeine in the dirty dishwater she is flogging. Nevertheless, we down a cup and go and stand on a likely street corner, where sure enough after a few minutes a mini-van slows down and a young lad hollers the name of our destination - Ciudad Hidalgo, one half of a border town where we will cross to Guatemala. After about forty minutes of the usual, slightly exaggerated, sequence of rapid accelerations and decelerations, we have arrived. I stop again at the first coffee lady I see, fearing the eventual onset of a caffeine headache thanks to that woefully inadequate first cup. This time, however, I top it off with some of my own instant, carried for just such emergencies as this.
The border crossing went without a hitch, however I do wish to report that I have solved one of the great mysteries of southern Mexico. Having spent my last couple of peso coins on that second cup of dishwater, we arrived in no man´s land to find that there is a one peso toll for pedestrians on the bridge. Having only a hundred peso note, I knew we were fucked. Throughout southern Mexico, you see, nobody has change. You will frequently attempt to pay a 93 peso bill with a hundred pesos, and the Doña will look at you innocently and exclaim, "Nothing smaller?" This despite the fact that you just watched someone pay her 43 pesos in fives and singles. She will then make you wait 45 minutes while she runs up and down the beach trying to find someone to break your c-note.
So, seeing the toll, I had visions of a four hour struggle and an international incident to mar our seamless border crossing. I tried to pay the man with an American single, but he demurred and asked if I had any pesos. So I pulled out my hundred, holding it up with a sinking feeling. But he takes it with a cry of "No problema," making change out of his till in about 5 seconds. So you see, the answer to the riddle of the change in southern Mexico is this: the instant anything smaller than a 50 changes hands, it is snatched up by government officials and whisked away to the border tollkeepers, who sit upon their mound of coins and small bills just waiting for the opportunity to smooth the passage of gringos out of Mexico.


One other item of note: the first bank we found in Tecun Uman (the Guatemalan half of the border town) had a fascinating and frightening arrangement at the entrance. There was a cabinet full of drawers, each drawer with its own lock, and most of them (but not all) with keys hanging out of them. The sign next to the drawers suggested that the bank would appreciate, if its clientele would be so kind (and in the interests of their own safety), that they should please leave their guns locked in one of these drawers before entering the bank.
Aren´t border towns charming.

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