Of borders and lakes and the first 4000 km.

Have you ever found yourself questioning the decisions you have made? Do you find yourself regretting things you did or didn’t do? Well, M and I have learned a thing or two about this. We started our journey through the Americas a month later than the original plan. We had a lot of frustrations whilst preparing for the trip, mainly around the car and finding the things we needed. Cancún is not the easiest place to navigate when you are looking for camping equipment or even tools.Cancún is mainly a tourist destination and why would a tourist want to buy outdoor equipment? There are lots of people who like camping but I guess they bring their own kit. I was regretting not bringing all my gear from the UK as I thought it’d be easy to buy it in Mexico, how wrong was I.

 Anyways, we set off a month later than expected and we were tired and anxious to get going.Each additional day stranded in Cancún, we were spending money that we could be spending on the road. I even found myself questioning if we should do the trip at all. M and I argued a lot but at the end of the day we were determined to do this and pushed ourselves to the limit. On the 19^th February we hit the road.

Our first sunrise on the roadtrip

Our first stop was still in Mexico because we decided to travel from Quintana Roo towards Chiapas and cross the border from Guatemala rather than from Belize. The entire trip so far, we have been following the water; either some sort of river, lake or the sea. We have followed our natural instinct and we first stopped at El Sumidero Canyon. It is an impressive sight and I would totally recommend this to anyone because you can enjoy the view from above and then take a boat trip and go through the river to get the full picture. 

El Sumidero Canyon

We were amazed by the beauty of the state of Chiapas. The road to it was breathtaking with jungle and mountains everywhere. People live in small and very traditional communities. The women normally wear their traditional long cotton skirts with bright colours and tight around the waist. Men wear regular clothing and that’s the first sign telling you that in this part of the world, the patriarchal system it is deeply embeded in their culture.

Everybody smiled or greeted us in Chiapas, people were shy but friendly and we were happy to stay in the state for a few days whilst finding a few supplies for our trip.

Alita on our way to Guatemala

The night before we left Mexico we stayed in Lagunas de Colón. This was a magical place, as soon as we arrived, we fell in love. There is a Mayan archaeological site with 4 small pyramids and a ball game. The setting is beautiful, surrounded by nature, lakes and turquoise water streams. The sun was deadly though, we figured that in Chiapas the sun burns your skin quicker but in the evening it cools down, not like in Cancún that is always hot and humid.

We setup up camp just by a beautiful water stream and a cute bridge that connected our camping spot to the town of Colón. We enjoyed a bottle of wine and a quiet night. We felt nostalgic, excited and maybe a little bit scared.

We woke up early and alert, ready to cross to Guatemala that day.

The border was as I expected it to be. Dirty, busy, poor. The sight of the merchants trying to sell all sorts of junk reminded me of the free zone in Belize. The immigration office of Mexico looked closed so we carried on to cross the Guatemalan border. I was driving and we were stopped by the military, the man extended his arm towards Martin first as men in Mexico are normally in charge. He greeted me after. Once he knew that Martin couldn’t communicate with him, he addressed me and asked a few questions. He was respectful and let us go not without warning us that the immigration system wasn’t working so we probably were not going to leave Mexico today. When we got to the border the system was working fine, I guess we will never know why he told us that.

Our last selfie in Mexican territory

When we got to the border, we were told we needed to pay a sanitation fee. Martin explained me that they were going to put the car in a confined room and spray the car all over. This of course, didn’t happen. We had to pay 17 quetzales to a man to go around the car with a little hose and spray some sort of liquid (that it could have been just water for all I know) to our tyres. This was done in plain sight, right in front of everybody, no confined space, no warnings about dangerous chemicals, nothing. Nada. It all felt very strange.

We exchanged $40 USD to Quetzales with a man to pay for the customs and the sanitation fee. By the time we went to the Guatemalan office to get our passports stamped, he told us that we didn’t have the exit stamp from Mexico, so we had to go back and get this done. So there we were, turning around and getting that stamp. The man in the immigration office was alone and he was really unfriendly so we were glad to get out of there quickly.

Finally, we ended up in the Guatemalan border to get our passports stamped and then walked a few meters to go through customs. We payed 160 quetzales so we could drive our Alita in Guatemala. I signed a few pages, we payed and we were on our way. The whole process took us about 45 minutes, we were the 2^nd car to cross the border that day and I was told they are never busy and few cars cross every week.

Sunday market in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala