At 0800, we left the Tapachula, Mexico Walmart and drove to
the Mexico-Guatemala border. Leaving
Mexico took about an hour, which required presenting our passports and vehicle
documents. Bureaucracy at its
finest. Once we crossed the river, we were
in Guatemala. [From our maps it looks
like the Rio San Marcos, but neither of us remember seeing a sign with a name,
which is a common occurrence. Yet all
the bridges have name signs, regardless of size of the crossing.) At the entry
to Guatemala, we had to pull over and we had to present our documents, along
with Roger’s valid driver’s license.
Norm did a lot of back and forth with up to four guys in red border
control shirts escorting him around to different buildings. Norm and Sandra’s vehicles were sprayed with
a fungicide. We weren’t. Guatemala is trying to prevent the spread of
a red fungus that gets into the coffee plants.
We have no idea why we didn’t get sprayed. It was interesting to watch, because the only
guy that had any type of breathing apparatus was the guy with the spray
hose. People were walking around the
vehicles while being sprayed, as if the spray wasn’t a big issue. There was a lot of interesting people-watching,
including watching the money exchangers walk around waving stacks of cash to
exchange, fruit juice vendors, and a very suspicious guy who kept slinking
between our RV and Sandra’s to pass money through the fence. The fruit juice vendor only had one glass. She’d squeeze fresh orange juice into the
glass, patron’s would pay, get a straw and drink their OJ in front of her and
return the glass. The next guy gets the
used glass for his OJ as well. We were
told to stay inside our vehicles, so neither of us wandered about.
Eventually we were
told to move into a parking lot and wait.
The parking lot was full of towed-in cars from the US for resale. These were the cars we see around San Antonio
that are being towed south of the border.
From our vantage point, we could see cars from Houston. There were several cars that were having
their gas tanks siphoned out. Gas in
Mexico was about $4/gal and about $5/gal in Guatemala. When we finally got on the road again, there
were lots of 5 gallon jugs of both gas and diesel being sold along highway CA(Central
America)2 with signs for sale.
Blackmarket fuel supports the local border economy.
The drive from the border to Antigua was so-so. We had some good road and some not so good
road. We thought we were going to be
able to listen to audio books, but that hasn’t happened because we’re both too
busy watching the road for potholes, bad pavement, speed bumps, passing trucks,
etc. Norm has a tendency to drive like a
bat out of hell. We understand the need
to cover “x” number of miles in a planned day, but getting from point A to
point B feels like a Norm-ran race. Both
Sandra and Roger have come to the conclusion that they won’t drive at speeds
just to keep up with Norm.
From the border to Antigua there is a lot of
agriculture: corn, pineapple, sugar
cane, coffee and rubber. We passed
several agriculture processing plants.
For example, the sugar cane plant was closed waiting for the sugar cane
to grow.
The bridge to Antigua was closed, due to damage. We had to take a detour. The detour was the absolute most horrific road
we’ve driven on to date! Add to that the
narrowness, and outbound bus traffic and Roger was driving through a
nightmare. We ended up having a
policeman direct traffic through the alley, just so we could make it
through. There were innumerable close calls. Roger threaded “our camel through a needle’s
eye.” When we finally made it to the
Policia de Turismo’s compound, I had the shakes.
The Policia Turismo compound is a secure area, where
motorized campers can park in Antigua.
There’s a family that lives within the compound and two of the girls
stopped by to chat while Roger was grilling our chicken and hamburgers. (I have him cook all the meat at one time and
put it into the frig and freezer, because the grill requires a lot of effort
for clean up and it makes for easy quick meals later.) The 7 year old spoke very good English and
had two Pete the Cat books. I
immediately thought of Davis and so did Roger.
The 12 year old goes to a different school and did not speak
English.
Awe...you thought of my baby!!!
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