So my weekend in El Salvador with the Davilas didn´t work out because a very uncooperative border cop said I needed a visa, which I didn´t have.

It was most annoying. I drove to the border with Regina and Ricardo, and despite begging the man most kindly, he insisted that I not go into El Salvador at all. Regina had called the embassy earlier that week, and they assured her I didn´t need one, and last time I went to El Salvador I didn´t have one and they didn´t seem to mind, but this very officious gentleman had a list and Australia was on it and he could not be moved.

Ricardo told me to hide around the other side of the building at the border, and he would pick me up and we´d cross anyway, but the cops had their eyes on me and pulled the car up. The other cop demanded my passport but I wouldn´t give it to him and so he made us turn around and cross the river and go back to the Guatemalan side.

Poor Regina was most upset, as she is very organised and likes everything to be perfect. But anyway, there was nothing we could do so I hitched a ride back to Regina´s place in Guatemala City with a Chilean couple. They weren´t very chatty and it was really weird sitting in the back seat in silence, but I got to Gaute safely.

The next day, Friday, the Salvadorean embassy was closed for a public holiday, so I admitted defeat and resigned myself to the fact that I wasn´t going to the beach. Regina was ringing me up all morning, so sad that I wasn´t there, and she got her friend Cristina to call me and see if I needed anything. Cristina said she´d give me a lift to the airport to get back to Antigua, but when I asked Cristina where she was going for the weekend and she said Lake Atitlan, I thought I may as well go there, too. Antigua was getting boring and I hadn´t seen the lake.

Thus my weekend turned out to be excellent after all.