San Cristobal to Huehuetenango (10/22-10/26)

Lagunas de Montebello

La Mesilla to Huehuetenango

Puebla to Guatemala border
(black is prior trip-2006)

Driving a couple hours south from San Cristobal takes you to a far corner of Chiapas. Not far enough, however. In the town of Comitan was a new mall anchored by a Sam's Club and Walmart Superstore! I confess, I took full advantage. (You can click for a full screen of any pic/map; then click again for some degree of zoom).



view from the porch to the lake

This area is a national park and has a number of pretty lakes in wooded oak and pine forest much like you'd find in the U.S. I found this Hotel Tziscao at the end of the road on a lake of the same name. At first, the woman was going to let me camp on the lawn for 80p, but when she realized the car was part of the tent, she offered one of the cabanas for 100p (10 minutes earlier it was 300p). So, for $8 I got a rustic but comfortable cabin with a clean bathroom and hot water. It was the perfect place to relax and gather my courage to tackle the Guatemala border. A bonus of this spot was that at night I could hear neither traffic, roosters, dogs nor donkeys, just the woods.

One of my daily entertainments was watching the women who lived nearby walk over to a spring that bubbled out of the ground not 50-60 feet from my porch. They would do this in the morning and again in the late afternoon. Every day. Here are a couple of photos showing how they get it done.

  

multi-tasking

old and smart

young and frisky

Into Guatemala

It was now a Monday which promised not to be a market day in La Mesilla, reducing my stress level. A good 2 hour drive gets me from Tziscao to Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, Mexico's border town. Unclear as to where to go, I am directed to a building where a woman stamps my passport and takes my visitor pass, then points me to another building where a man takes my vehicle pass and gives me a "certificado de retorno" in it's place. This is an important document as it proves me and my car actually left Mexico. This will come in handy when I try to get back in. There is no cost for this.

3 miles uphill takes me to La Mesilla, Guatemala's border town. You drive up a narrow main street where one often has to stop in order to let the other lane through. I'm really glad to be driving the FJ. It has given me the confidence to drive right into any city or town situation, though they aren't any more fun. I'm waved over to a small - tiny actually - building on the right. This is where you get your vehicle wheelwells sprayed at a cost of 18 quetzals. There happens to be a guy standing right there to change my dollars (though I wasn't swarmed as some of my reading led me to believe) and he gives me a rate 7.5Q to a dollar. The official rate is about 8Q so it's a fair deal. Julian is the man at the spray controls here. He went to school in California and his english is most welcome. I swear the accent or something changes in Guatemala making my spanish even more useless. By the way, my Webster's New World Concise Spanish Dictionary (softcover) is invaluable, I refer to it constantly, even interrupting conversations to verify some word or phrase. I'll walk into a store with it under my arm.

once they lift this gate in La Mesilla,
you're good to go 

Julian shows me to my next stop about 50' up the road, the Aduano (customs) building. Here they check and stamp my passport and fill out several forms for me and the car. They even ask to see the certificado de retorno I got from Mexico. I'm then pointed to a building right next door where you pay 40Q for all the various paperwork, with a few more official stamps thrown in. That's it, a little less than $8 and an hour of my time (including the Mexico portion) and I'm free to enter the country. Relatively painless.

driving into Guatemala

There's a few minutes more of tight driving before I break out into more open road. After that you drive through mostly narrow canyon-like country but with small towns and topes (I had hoped to be rid of these - drat!) all along the way. After about an hour, maybe half-way to Huehue. (hey, that's funny - you pronounce the town "wayway"), traffic gets halted for 4-1/2 hours. A total dead stop. Julian had mentioned that there were political protests going on here and there, but that I should have no problems. I wish. Welcome to one of the unexpected joys of traveling.

I spent the time watching the endless attempts by locals to squeeze thru the mess, and they always made it even when the clearance was mere inches. I had to pull my side-view mirror in, that's how close. I tried talking with a truckdriver for a while, with limited success. And I finished off a pretty good book by Michael Connelly I was reading, "The Scarecrow." I also noticed that seemingly every pick-up in this country is a Toyota and that everyone has a cellphone. And I'm surprised at my relative calm in these situations. On my first trip I was a lot more on edge about this stuff.

the most interesting site in Huehue.
calzado = footware

We finally got to moving and I arrived in Huehue. a hour or so later. It was getting dark and it had started to rain, adding to my urgency of finding a room. Huehue. is a typically crowded, noisy, dirty and hectic small city. The narrow streets, often one-way and squeezed even further by vendor stalls and lots of people, turn up the intensity. I traveled around in circles and eventually, out of desperation, paid a taxi 20Q to guide me to the Casa Blanca. The parking lot at this hotel is also quite tight and my arrival via the exit causes some consternation for a while. They charge 220Q for a nice room and I'm just glad to be somewhere. I made it, I'm in Guatemala.

Walking down some grungy street the next day I came across this store. Apparently, there's a guy in Guatemala with my name who has some kind of women's shoe fetish. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.