Tuesday 31 August
Tapachula (Mexico) – Guatemala City (almost)
In the morning M. did a bit more shopping and we set off on our second run at Guatemala. Again a herd of money changers and brats threw themselves at us right in front of the border, Krypl among them!!L. I wound the window down, shoved my fist right under his nose and yelled something filthy in Czech. He repeated the last word cheekily but scared, then ran off and didn't dare come near again.
Surprisingly, one of the money changers wasn't a money changer but a paperwork fixer – (some sort of tropical version of a freight forwarderJ). He spoke a human language (pure English), which slowly started to win us over. Anyway, we drove up to the Mexican barrier on our own. A customs officer nabbed us straight away, he wanted to see the car papers for Mexico. They found out they were valid until 12 September he advised us that we absolutely had to cancel them in Tapachula by then, otherwise trouble.
Once we'd got our exit stamp at the Mexican migración, we got talking to that forwarder guy. He'd sort out all the formalities including the fees for the car into Guatemala for 250 Q (about 1250 CZK) That's reasonable and on top of that he'd throw in cancelling the car in Mexico for free, but we have to drive to Tapachula.
Thursday 2 September, afternoon – Guatemala City
This is unbearable, another insert.
As I was waiting there in the rain on the blanket, after about 2.5 hours Martin turned up saying it was all totally fuckedL and it was. He's got Sršáň written in his passport, and they have to delete it at the local office, which is only possible once the buyer pays the car purchase tax, which comes to 9,590Q (he's buying the car for about 3,900Q!!) That deleting office closed half an hour ago! So it won't be done until tomorrow around 11:00 and then there are still two more offices to go to L The bus to Mexico City leaves at 7:00 L And the plane to Cuba connects tightly to the bus Just hellL!
Martin came up with a crisis solution: he'd drive the car to the border, cross on foot on the sly and leave the car there. Nonsense. Another solution, I take the bus, Martin flies and we meet in Mexico City. The ticket costs $275 L
We also tried calling the embassy to see if they could help us somehow. They couldn't (the attitude of the Guatemalan offices came as no surprise to the lady speaking with an accent), but she did give me the idea that we could try to push back the flight to Cuba. So first we went to push back the bus departure, after wandering around a bit we found the bus terminal and changed the departure by a day with no problems.
Then we found a travel agency where Miss Karla spoke English and tried to help us. While she was phoning Habana Air (they're not on the netL), I worked out from the wall map that we're below the 15th parallel, which corresponds to Dakar or Lake Chad in central Africa!
Unfortunately, the girl did find out that instead of Sunday we could fly as late as Thursday, but it can't be changed in Guatemala, because Cubana has no office here.
So we ran to Telecom, bought a card (I jumped the queue past about 10 peopleJ) and called Jorge in Mexico City. By the time they put me through to him, the card was almost gone. But I still managed to explain to him what it was about and that I'd call him back in 10 min. Martin went off for a second card. When he hadn't come back after a quarter of an hour, I went inside, jumped the queue again and pulled Martin out of the middle of the line.
The second time round they took a week to connect me again and on top of that Jorge said we have the cheapest tickets, which can't be changedL.
So back to the plane-from-Guatemala option. We went to return the bus ticket and change the other one (for me) back to tomorrow.
You can't return tickets…L. Despair. We started explaining the whole situation to the guy at the ticket desk and he suddenly says: „So why don't you go tomorrow at 13:30?" !!! We counted up the hours and found out we'd make it no problem (?)!J Only it'll be insanely tight. If it works out, it'll be a genuine logistical miracle!
Ever so slightly calmed down, we went to the local version of KFC to scoff some chicken, the first meal of this crazy day.
After the meal we went to call that slow dim-witted buyer to tell him it had worked out and he should be outside the office tomorrow morning.
At the phone a fairly likeable (he spoke excellent human language!) dark-skinned young guy asked us if we needed help. That's exactly what we needed, because the dimwit (let's call our buyer that) doesn't speak a word of human language. We explained to Rony how things stood with the car and he was in the picture immediately. He knew all the details about selling an imported car and about the release stamp. His uncle apparently works at customs and for 300Q he'd sort the stamp out for us. That sounded promising. Then he called Dimwit and, in the name of the customs office, left him a message to be outside customs tomorrow at exactly 9:00, otherwise they'd send an inspection after himJ. Then he immediately ran off (and us after him) to offer Sršáň around the neighbourhood. He got lucky at the very first hotel and the hotel owner (from now on „the Owner") wanted to see it straight away. We told him later and started looking for a hotel. Rony showed us two insane dives where I wouldn't let a dog sleep (Martin remarked that it looked like the houses in Moravia after the floods J).
So we said goodbye to him and went off to the tried-and-tested Hotel Felix, agreeing to meet in an hour in front of the Owner's hotel and go somewhere for a beer. Rony immediately offered to bring along the two best girls in town. We laughed and turned that down. (Although, truth be told, the little worm was gnawing away J).
The Fenix was full, but they recommended their sister hotel round the corner.
It had been dark ever since we left KFC and the streets of Guatemala had changed quite a bit, hookers on every other corner, some of them surprisingly long-legged, pretty and white! Rony claimed those were transvestites who'd had it cut off J. After our experience in SF nothing surprises me anymore.
Hotel Hernany was considerably nicer than the Felix, even a shower and toilet in the corridor, and it cost only 50 Q a room.
Sweet. We dumped our stuff there, Martin had a shower, I had another peach compote and we set off to meet Rony.
He wasn't at the meeting point, but (thank God) the Owner was there with his mate who spoke excellent human language. They wanted to see the car straight away, so we ran off there. At the car we realised the keys were back at the hotel, so Martin went to fetch them. Then the Owner got into Sršáň and said we're going for a drive. He drove all the way to the edge of town and back, while Martin waited at the paid car park where we already owed a pile of money.
The Owner then parked at the hotel, saying the car could stay there for free until morning. At the car park it's 20Q and besides we already owe there, so I agreed. Meanwhile Rony showed up and was already wheeling and dealing. (We'd already given him 20Q for his services) He spotted Jeff's tools in Sršáň's boot (a socket set and a set of spanners) and immediately offered them for sale. We agreed on 150 Q, which is still better than dragging it to CubaJ.
In the end the Owner bought them for 200Q and Rony claimed it was 150 and offered me 130. After about a ten-minute debate I squeezed that twenty out of him with the Owner's help. A 50 Q profit will have to do him.
Meanwhile Martin was going grey at the car park with fear that I'd been jumped and quartered somewhere. So I ran off to him with Rony in tow. I called M. out of the car park from a distance so we'd avoid paying (that's what crooks we are J).
Rony kept dragging us to a brothel, but in the end we only went to some vile spit-and-sawdust pub where nobody was anyway and had a beer. It was pretty decent, a litre one for everyone, and on top of that Baba Yaga brought us three greasy soups with a piece of camel hide floating in them. Rony claimed it was on the house, but he was talking rubbish. He was just hungry. Martin and I left it alone, partly because we were full and partly because it was dodgy and gross.
On those plastic chairs in the middle of the empty place we grilled Rony about who he actually is. He speaks pure English (better than the two of us put together) and at the same time he knows the streets of Guatemala as if he'd been born here.
He really was born in Guatemala, but when he was 15 days old they moved to the USA. He lived there for 24 years and then he had some trouble. He rambled on about the army, prison and murder. Anyway he preferred to leg it to Guatemala and that was that.
Then he showed off quite a bit about how dangerous and mean he is, that he can't fight just two guys, that there have to be at least five or six of them, and that his hands are registered with the police as a weapon and that he's a trainer of jiu-jitsu, judo, karate and everything.
Then followed a philosophical passage about the human brain, which is like a computer craving new and new information (all accompanied by sweeping gestures!) and most people instead feed it booze, smoking, heroin, cocaine and other crap.
Considering the shithole Rony lives in, there's a pretty intelligent mind hidden inside him, judging by his level of English, his knowledge and his way of putting things in general.
After that one beer (15 Q) he uncompromisingly packed us off to bed, saying we had loads of work ahead of us tomorrow. Meeting at 8:30 in front of the Owner's hotel and then off to the offices with Dimwit. If it doesn't work out, the Owner will buy Sršáň.
Friday 3 September, Guatemala City – somewhere in Mexico
Both of us slept badly, because if our logistical miracle creaked anywhere, we'd lose either a pile of money or the trip to Cuba.
We got up at seven and at 7:30, as planned, M. went to call Dimwit. First creak, Dimwit isn't at work! So we packed up our bits and pieces and went at least to find out whether the car was at the hotel.
And another blow. We got to the hotel and the passageway Sršáň was in was hermetically sealed off with rusty shutters. Catastrophic scenarios immediately started racing through our heads, luckily after a while we got someone to answer the bell and a lackey opened the shutters for us. We drove Sršáň out straight away to be safe, even though we had a meeting with Rony here in 20 min. I also topped up the gallon of petrol we'd brought in a jerrycan from the USA.
We drove to the Shell station right in front of the bus terminal and called Dimwit again. Martin didn't find out anything, I gave it a go and they put me through to Miss Ana, who speaks English. Then the card ran out. We made the next call at the petrol station at the till. This time they put me through to Dimwit. He immediately started stammering and trying to tell me he can't buy the car because the taxes are too high. That really pissed me off! He held us up two days, nerves with the bus like hell, and now he doesn't want it? I cursed him out for a while longer, saying he had to buy it, he didn't understand me anyway, the dimwit, so I told him to go to hell in English, as crudely as I could, and hung up. Unfortunately I couldn't slam the phone down, because it was a cordless.
Now only the Owner was left. We drove straight there, luckily he was in and wanted the car. Rony wasn't there. So we went with the Owner straight to the bank for the money (they'd only just opened) and then to hunt down money changers for cheaper dollars.
They were in a shopping centre, surprisingly in two barber shops. At one of them the Owner bought $, at the other we got rid of our quetzales. He had a rate 0.10 Q better than the bank.
Then the Owner wanted to go and eat somewhere, but we talked him into the notary first, as time was pressing.
First we crawled through cardboard cubicles and up iron ladders in a public car park where various public institutions were currently operating. The Owner was looking for some mate of his – a notary. In vain. Then he had a chat in the street with two blokes in baseball caps, who turned out to be the notary's touts.
They took us up to the fifth floor of the neighbouring building to the notary. He knew straight away what it was about (but first he made us wait in the hallway, were we fuming!) and found in his tables how much the taxes would be. Then he gave one of the lackeys a commission and the other the passport, sending him off to the customs officers to cancel the car registered in it. They claimed it takes about 45 min. Then he started typing up a complicated purchase contract where, for example, the sixteen-digit body number has to be written out in words!J Even though he had a decent computer in the office, he typed everything on a typewriter. He was this unlikeable bearded type with his shirt open, but it seemed he had everything under control.
While he was typing it up, he sent us off to eat. The Owner dragged us to McDonald's L and paid for a disgusting breakfast. Well, better than going hungry.
When we got back, the contract was written, just needed signing. Before signing we squeezed money out of the Owner (400$) and a promise that he'd pay all the fees (50 $) and give us the remaining 50$ at the hotel.
Now all that was left was to wait for them to bring the passport and we're free! It was just after ten, the passport was supposed to arrive any minute.
Then we gradually moved out onto the street to the stand by the traffic islands. And we waited. And waited. And waited. The calm slowly melted away and catastrophic scenarios forced their way into my head. That went on for two hours!! and departure time was inexorably approaching. We wanted to go to the customs officers ourselves, in the end two of the lackeys went. The whole time they kept telling us how it's all cool. Then I sat down on the kerb and wrote the diary. There was an insane stink from the cars, so Martin and I sat there and argued about which passing cars we'd take the roadworthiness certificates and driving licences off (crashed, bald tyres, missing lights, people in the back of a truck, driving into oncoming traffic, pointless honking in a queue etc. J).
Then Martin went to empty himself at McDonald's (the nice thing about McD is that they always have clean toilets…) and came back exactly at the stroke of twelve.
Both literally and figuratively. Because that's exactly when the lackey was coming with the passport. He had a face like a man facing execution and mumbled something dejectedly. I nearly had a stroke. And that's it, down the drain L
Then he pulled out the passport and showed the stamp we needed. If I hadn't been so happy, I'd probably have half-killed him for that joke!
Then we went back with the Owner to the hotel, where the car was and our big backpacks in it. I don't let go of my small backpack at all any more, all the valuables are in it (cameras, 17 exposed films and the diary, plus the plane tickets). Passport, money and credit card I carry in a money belt on my body. So it wouldn't hurt me that much if we lost the big backpacks somewhere, but better not J
We took the backpacks out of the car and reminded the Owner (now not only of the hotel, but of Sršáň too) that he still owes us about 300Q. He ran off somewhere, came back in a while with a wad of banknotes in his hand. Unfortunately, the Guatemalan currency is famous for loads of worthless notes worth ½ and 1 Q. There were most of those. About 140Q altogether. I tried to squeeze another hundred out of him (Martin already wanted to go, it was half an hour to check-in!!!), but at least I gave him a terrible bollocking, called him a Guatemalan bandit and thief who robs poor students, and all that in front of his employees at reception J
Then I even tried the trick that we've got a second set of keys, which I'll give to someone on the street so they steal the car off him! That was too much for his English, so he probably didn't get it. But he was clearly taken aback, even intimidated, and babbled something confusedly. At the end I wished him all the worst in Czech, threw the backpack on my back and laughed at him that Sršáň is missing the back seat, which we left in SF J
We stopped at McD for some food, there was nothing faster here. I didn't even finish the chicken (the only edible thing there), I took it on the bus with me.
We waited a while in the terminal and then boarded. I've never seen a bus like that. On the way here we kept passing horrible old wrecks with wobbling wheels and joked about riding back in one of those.
The exact opposite is true. A brand new Mercedes Benz, dark interior, air conditioning, clean toilet with a washbasin, TV, anatomical seats with loads of legroom and storage pockets and as a bonus – a beautiful, smiling stewardess handing out drinks, sandwiches, pillows and blankets, who on top of that helped us fill in the customs declaration. Except she was so shy she went bright red when I took her photo.
At the border everything went off without problems, we also had a great chat with a Canadian couple who were in Guatemala on holiday but, unlike us, had seen a fair bit. They talked about the great ruins at Tikal and about how people in the villages are friendly and above all happy. And we spent three days in terrible stress in Guatemala City, which is probably the dirtiest and saddest city on the globe. We didn't see a single square metre in that city you could call pretty.
The only interesting event at the border – Krypl was hanging around there again! He kept a respectful distance from me, but he pestered everyone else properly. He even got into our bus!
On the Mexican side we had to take our backpacks (they were lying in a heap next to the bus, swarmed by a horde of Guatemalan brats) and carry them over for an inspection, which consisted of patting them on the sides with hands.
We know the road to Tapachula well, so those 18 km were boring. In Tapachula we had our boarding passes issued, said goodbye to the Canadians (they're heading on to San Cristóbal) and had tacos across the street.
The bus to Mexico City (22 hours!L) was a big disappointment. Fifteen years older, smaller, no stewardess, no blankets or pillows, dirty, stinking bog, no water and above all terribly little room! Luckily I at least grabbed a double seat for myself, so I even got a bit of sleep.
Saturday 4. 9.
Mexico City
Now we've got about 300 km to the destination, so I'll manage that. We stopped for breakfast at a toll point, where we had four doughnuts and two teas for 22 PS!
then they played us some film whose stupidity could boldly compete with yesterday's, except this one was in Spanish on top of that…
Now I have to work out what all I skipped with those up-to-date interjections and fill it in.
31. 8. Tapachula – Guatemala
I'd say the normal course of the diary ended just before crossing the Guatemalan border. The sharp reader has surely worked out that in the end we made it.
Navigated by the Guatemalan forwarder's lackey, we drove to Tapachula to cancel the Mexican permit for operating the car and hand back the hologram from the windscreen. No problems, free.
I waited by the car and wrote the diary. Because the sun was blazing, I went in under the roof of a nearby house and asked a girl sitting there for a chair. A woman in Mexico apparently doesn't have enough authority, because she asked a guy sitting a bit further off. He smiled and told me to go ahead and sit down.
Then we drove to the border for the third time, parked the car among about a hundred others (mostly crashed imports) and Martin went off with the forwarder to sort out the papers. In about an hour everything was done, it cost 300Q for the forwarder and twenty PS for the lackey. (so about 1600 CZK)
Then we just drove through the Guatemalan countryside towards the capital.
Guatemala, the way I saw it, doesn't differ much from southern Mexico, neither in the landscape nor in the people. There are just more bananas and coffee trees growing here. You come across trucks full of bananas every few minutes, the roads are in excellent shape, it's considerably worse with the signage and with the state of the roads (streets) in the middle of towns. As for the cars, Guatemalans, unlike Mexicans, trust exclusively Japanese and Korean cars with small engines. Petrol costs the same as in Mexico, so about 20 CZK/litre. They count in gallons, pounds and miles. Hardly anyone speaks a human language. The landscape is purely volcanic and pretty mountainous, on the way we boiled a lot and climbed up to altitudes where Sršáň again didn't want to go (so over 2000m by my estimate).
18 km before Guat. City we turned off the motorway and ran straight into the Hotel California. It was a dive, tiled all over, but it had a garage and we haggled it down to 12$ for both of us. You got into the room from one side through the garage, on the other side a metal door with a prison window with bars led into a dirty narrow corridor. A busty girl came to peek through it whenever someone rang that they needed something. We also went to the hotel canteen for chicken and chips at 3$ each.
1. 9. Wednesday
Guatemala City
In the morning we drove into the centre and stopped in one of the dirty little streets with one-storey buildings, to find out what's what.
I pulled out a marker and started painting SE VENDE on the car, which, as we'd picked up, means "for sale", and the price 8,000Q. Within ten minutes we had three interested people there, one of them explained to us in excellent English how the paperwork and selling works in general.
The second one wanted to take us to his son, that it'd be for him. So we drove him there, the son didn't want it. The old man even asked back for the slip with the phone number he'd written for us before J
We drove around the city looking for something like a car bazaar or a car buyer and nowhere nothing.
We had no local dosh, so we stopped somewhere in the centre at a bank.
it started raining quite hard, so I pulled out the umbrella and set off. At the second bank they quite willingly exchanged one cheque for dollars and one for quetzals. The rate was considerably better than at the money changers at the border.
Before I got back, Martin had an address for a punter for Sršáň.
We found one bazaar, apparently the only one in the city (super Jack auto) and there too they didn't want Sršáň.
Even before the bank we drove through probably the worst district in the city, where the centre of car repair shops and scrapyards was. The streets there weren't even paved, here and there piles of dirt or rubbish, a terrible, but really terrible stink, around a vegetable market where a heap of old vegetables was rotting (about 100 x 50 m) with old women wrapped in plastic rummaging through it. On top of that an insane cloudburst came down (see insert), which turned those muddy streets into hell.
Endless streams of water and mud, car wrecks in the middle of it, just hell.
After the bank and the failure at the bazaar and the other car businesses we needed to find the punter's address. After our previous pretty bad experiences with finding anything in Guatemala we decided to use a taxi as a navigator.
It was an old rickety geezer with an even more rickety Hyundai and he got badly lost and kept asking around before he found it. Luckily the price was agreed in advance, 35Q. The old man drove so stupidly and confusedly that Martin had a hard job keeping up with us. On top of that the old man went the wrong way down one-way streets, turned around on the motorway and so on.
In the end we found it and the punter was there. He brought his wife, haggled like mad and mainly they kept asking about some "impuestos". We had no idea what that was, let alone how much it was. In the end the two of them got into the car and we drove to the transport office. There they worked out that the value of the car in Guat. is 30,000 Q! (we wanted 5 – 8,000 for it!) and that the impuestos (probably import duty) is therefore 9520 Q! L
That of course put the poor punter off and he backed out. We drove him home, where two dodgy young lads were still pestering us that they'd give 3,000Q, we laughed at them and drove into town.
Somewhere where we guessed the centre was, we stopped and waited for another punter. Nothing. Luckily there were at least plenty of hotels around (like one every 20 m!) whose prices of 20 – 220 Q were quite pleasing. In the end we picked one (hotel Felci) for 42Q and dumped our stuff there.
Across the street there was a supermarket where we bought food. And on the street a pineapple for 8Q (40 CZK). Bananas cost 8 CZK/kg.
At the hotel we fell asleep before we even managed to change, even though under the window there was an insane traffic jam and all those brutes were honking.
2. 9. Thursday - morning
In the morning we picked Sršáň up from the paid car park and set off to find some way of getting to Mexico City. In less than three days our plane to Cuba leaves 2000 km from here, and we still haven't sold the car. As long as Martin has it in his passport, we can't leave the country. And in Mexico it mustn't be sold!
Luckily, by pure chance we came across a bus terminal by a Shell station, where we also put Sršáň on display and dropped the price to 5000Q (700$). A moment later we already had bus tickets (72$ each), departure tomorrow, and a new punter for the car, known as the dimwit. The rest you know.
End of the confused part of the diary!
4. 9.
4 o'clock in the afternoon – Mexico City
We climbed out of the bus, I was far less broken than I'd expected, Martin was worse off.
We grabbed the backpacks and went straight off to look for something to eat. In an underpass we found a pizzeria, so we each had two slices of pizza and a drink. Pricey as hell, but you've got to eat.
Because some cop told us the metro at the airport was closed, we decided to take a taxi. Since Mexican taxi drivers were notorious thieves (like the Prague ones), they introduced a taxi ticket system here. You just buy a ticket for a certain zone at a booth in the underpass and hand it over to the flunkies at the taxi stand. Because there's insane overemployment here, at the taxi stand there were two cops, one ticket inspector and three more touts who decide which taxi you'll take. Insane. (back then I still didn't know that at the airport toilets they have a guy who squirts soap onto your hand and hands you a towel!J)
At the gas station there are at least two attendants per pump + a cop to keep watch, and in the parking lot in front of the supermarket there are about 15 parking navigators!…
The taxis (and probably half the cars in Mexico in general) are mostly VW Beetles, which are still made here in Puebla to this day. The old model, alongside the new one. So a two-door taxi with practically no trunk, that's a proper rarity you've got to try out! So I immediately crammed myself into a Beetle. Unfortunately, the flunkies pushed me out into some mangy hundred-year-old Chevrolet, saying we needed a grande cáro. That really pissed me offL.
At the airport we found out where we were flying from and that you can check in your luggage from 6:30.
Then we found the left-luggage office and for a horrible 30 PS a piece we left everything there.
The metro from the airport works just fine, of course. We rode to the familiar Zona Rosa, first we found some internet place connected with a peep show and a sex shop, which we didn't like.
Only in our familiar internet café did we settle in for over an hour and get in touch with home. I sent texts to all my mates' mobiles and Adéla even wrote me back by mail right away. Once again I'm missing a solid party in SeptemberL
After the internet we wolfed down some chicken at KFC and decided to sample the local smut. The whole time in Zona Rosa we'd been pestered by touts for sex bars, so we picked one and went in.
What followed was a series of about 10 stripteases to disco music and lights, on a stage with two poles.
Unfortunately, out of the ten whore-girls one was slim and beautiful, one was sort of beautiful, one was a gifted mover and the rest were fat asses that made you want to puke. The ideal of beauty here is probably quite different from the European one.
From the start they kept asking whether we wanted company, which we turned down. We just had two beers, but in the end three whores sat down with us anyway (unfortunately, the two ugliest ones and one old one L) and were dying to get to know us. Then they wanted to order a beer, which I refused, saying they don't speak English. That amused them terribly, but luckily they buggered off.
Then, on top of the beers, we paid some kind of surcharge, a tip for the waiter and one for the security, altogether a horrible 186PS. Pretty disgusted, we got out of there.
After 26 hours on a bus without food, overcoming a 2200m altitude difference and about 15°C of temperature difference, we were completely groggy. We took the metro to the airport, it was packed to bursting (11:30 at night!).
At the stations where it emptied out a bit, all sorts of vendors got on straight away (as always).
Kids from the age of 10 as well as adults were selling all kinds of junk, one every stop. Books, albums, figurines, dictionaries, all for a uniform 10 PS „Bonítooó preséntoóó, dieéés pésóóós“ Even at almost twelve at night a girl of about twelve got on and offered photo albums in a loud voice.
At the next station a fairly young dirty woman got on with an accordion and a four-year-old daughter and played for money.
We slept on moulded plastic chairs at the airport and it sucked!
Next up is Cuba.
