México

My first attempt at crossing a border by land was an adventure. In an airport, it’s so simple and straightforward. You can’t escape without your stamps. Not true at the Guatemala-Mexico border at La Mesilla.

After a couple hours on a chicken bus, a tuk-tuk (motorized rick-shaw) took me the remaining kilometer to the border. There, I walked beneath the large “Bienvenidos a México” sign, climbed onto a bus and off I went. The Mexican town was 4 kilometers down the road, so I figured that was where we would all pass through Immigration. Nope. We kept on driving down the road.

I asked the driver to stop. “Perdón, Señor, I think I need a stamp in my passport.”

“Really? Okay, if you want one of those, you have to walk back over there.”

He got my backpack out and drove off.

The passport-stamper looked through my passport and coldly told me that I needed the stamp for leaving Guatemala. “But nobody stopped me and told me to get one.” He didn’t care. “Go back to the Guatemalan side and get one.” So I hopped on a bus, re-crossed the border, again without anyone stopping me, got my stamp, and then came back to get the Mexican stamp.

It was good that I made the extra effort to get the stamps, because once I was on the road in México, Immigration stopped our bus at least 5 times. Though they didn’t really care about me, they were looking for Guatemalans that were trying to cross illegally. At one point, they took two off and the bus left them behind.

My destination was San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, where Julio and I planned to meet up on Wednesday and explore the state for a week. He, however, didn’t show up until Thursday morning, leaving me worrying. Typical Julio.

This was my first time in México. I was expecting it to be similar to Guatemala, but it was much cleaner and more organized. I felt safer there too.

Anyway, we explored San Cristobal a bit, learned about the Zapatista rebellion, then headed to the Mayan ruins in Palenque. Strangely, it was cheaper to use a tour agency than public transportation. They took us first to Agua Azul, which is a huge series of waterfalls much like my beloved Las Conchas, but bigger. The driver gave us an hour there. When we were all ten minutes late, he yelled at and told us that next time he would leave us behind. At Misol-Ha, another cool waterfall, we had 40 minutes. This is why I don’t like organized tours: you can’t take time to appreciate the place. I would’ve loved to have a picnic and go for a swim. Next we had 2 hours in Palenque. It’s very similar to Tikal: Mayan ruins tucked away in the jungle. All very cool, just rushed.

The next day we took a boat tour of the Cañon del Sumidero, which is a beautiful Canyon with walls 200 meters high at some points. It used to be a raging river, but now, as in many places, it is a reservoir that was created by a large hydroelectric dam. At some places it is now more than 200 meters deep. The guide casually told us that the town of Usumacinta was relocated. No big deal, right? Gotta love dams.

We decided to move on from Chiapas to Oaxaca since we saw most everything we wanted to in just a couple days. We had 2 ½ days in Oaxaca, which definitely was not enough. It is a very diverse state with respect to both nature and culture, thus I will have to return one day. During the time we had there, we went to the “Mezcal capital of the world” and saw how they make the famous artisan alcohol from maguey plants. We visited Monte Alban, the first urban settlement in Mesoamerica. And of course, we ate lots of food, as Oaxaca’s cuisine is delicious (including grasshoppers, a delicacy there).

Tuesday night I made the long trip back to Guatemala: a12 hour overnight bus ride from Oaxaca to Tapachula, another border crossing, plus about 4 hours of travel back to my site from the border. The border crossing was again interesting but not because of passport stamps. Before crossing the border, there was a handful of men with wads of Guatemalan money so that travellers could change their pesos to quetzales. I already had quetzales, but some Canadians that I had started travelling with needed to change their money. We were about to when some guy got pissed because they gave him a poor rate, threatened to call the cops, then the money-changers punched him in the face. So we left and I lent them Q100 until we found an ATM.

This trip was a much needed respite from my projects. I have been driving myself crazy worrying about how I am going to manage to finish everything in just four months. So I told myself that on this trip I would not think about Peace Corps. Plus, Julio wasn’t going to want to hear me talk about that. Thus it was a very peaceful, tranquil week. And it made me really excited for my travels next year when I really won’t have any commitments to worry about nor my whereabouts to report to Peace Corps … I’ll only have to report my whereabouts to my mom!

p.s. I'll put pictures up within the next couple of days.