Mexico to Guatemala – by land and river
Staring down at the Rio Usumacinta swirling and eddying it’s way northeastwards into the plains of Mexico, my stomach began to mimick the thick brown water gushing its way between the land borders of Mexico and Guatemala. We’d known that to get back into Guatemala this way involved a river boat ride between the two countries, but spying the ramshackle wooden boats and staring into this torrent of dark brown gunge sweeping down in front of us made us begin to think that maybe this hadn’t been the best of ideas!
After a sleepless night at the Casa “we play bombastic music until the wee small hours” Inn in Palenque, neither of us had felt eager to rise at 5.15am for our transport due at 6am. But we had, and hastily stuffed rucksacks on our backs and a glower at the man behind reception as we daparted through the front door without a word to him brought us out into the still dark night. A man approached us, asked if we were going to Flores in Guatemala, and led us to his taxi. Inside sat two people already, and with a mighty heave on the boot lid the cabbie managed to get our rucksacks in with other luggage already loaded.
We bounced our way across the topes of Palenque town and into the countryside, with Em falling asleep on my shoulder almost immediately. Our other companions were quiet, and the sound of the car engine was only punctuated by the squeak of the rear suspension as a succession of vicious topes halted our speedy progress along a (thankfully) relatively straight Mexican highway.
Hugging the foothills on our right, to our left was a small valley that ran parrallel with our road, and ever so slowly as dawn began to break a beautiful lake of mist could be seen below, shrouding the land beneath other than for the occasional treetop peaking above the mist’s surface. Immediately in front of us the huge globe of the early morning sun began to appear, glowing crimson red in a fiery ball of energy and casting mysterious shadows across the lake of mist below us to the north.
We seemed to have travelled hardly any distance at all before we pulled into a layby alongside the road and were instructed to get out and buy some breakfast. This didn’t appeal; it was too early, and we knew that as the roads gradually deteriorated the chances of keeping down fried bananas and sticky-treacle covered pancakes were slim. Even so, we sat under an awning with our car companions and as the sun began to make its presence known on our skin, even at 7.30 in the morning, we learnt about Dan & Elysabeth’s lives. We were to spend a fair bit of time with them over the following days, although we didn’t know it at this time.
Our driver beckoned us over and proceeded to unload our rucksacks from the car, alongside a mini bus that had pulled up next to it. Suspecting we were switching transport here, we prepared to load the bags onto the roof of the van, only to be told that we were staying in the car and Dan and Elysabeth were going in the mini bus. This was a double edged sword. While it immediately meant 100 per cent more space for us in the car, it deprived us of Elysabeth’s skills in the Spanish language, and it placed inside of me a gnawing fear I’ve always had when travelling alone with Em in the back of a strange car.
It’s probably an irrational thought process, but I can never get from my mind the stories of couples being driven to remote spots and subjected to levels of violence that don’t bear thinking about. It’s borne from being on your guard when travelling, but then again, if we were constantly living in fear of what might happen we’d never do anything. Perhaps it’s wise to be alert but not comfortable to be paranoid, to have a game plan if things do turn out badly but enjoy the experience of travelling through stunning landscapes all the same.
Away we went, and for the time being we were reassured that we were trailing the mini bus in which the other travellers were cramped, heading ever eastwards to the river border with Guatemala. Comfort levels were maintained until our driver cheerfully pipped his horn, hung a hand out of the window and waved bye bye to the minibus as it went in one direction (towards the border) and we went the other way. Em was still using my shoulder as a pillow, and I tightened my grip on her as our road became a single paved lane, and then became nothing other than a dirt track leading through dense jungle and crossing a series of rivers over rickety wooden bridges. Where were we going??
At the end of the track our driver turned the engine off. There were a couple of tin roofed shacks and a sign saying that camping was allowed. He jumped out and went to one of the shacks, before returning with a Latino-looking man who carried a bag on his shoulder and an old SLR camera slung around his neck. The man got in the front and wished us good morning, and then we were back along the track, to the single road, and eventually back to the junction where we’d left the minibus. Paranoia had struck again! This was simply another pick up on the way to the border. The clammy feel that had developed across my neck and shoulders began to go away.
Forty minutes later, and with the temperature still rising, we came to Frontera Corozal, the end of the road as far as Mexico goes. Well, if the road didn’t end here we’d get very wet, put it that way! Out of the taxi we fell, grabbing our rucksacks and thanking Speedy Gonzales for the trip. We needed to find the Mexican immigration post and hand in our tourist cards, but it was closed!! Oh great!! Having had the major hassle of getting into Mexico in the first place when I’d ripped the immigration form up after making a mistake, we now couldn’t hand our cards back in to show that we’d left the country. That’s a problem to be sorted another day.
It was still only 9.30am, and we seemed to have been on the road for ages already. Sat in a thatched hut on the bank of the mighty river we were about to travel on, we spied the ‘fleet’ of wooden boats nosed up onto a sand bank below us. Uummmm, I wonder which one we’ll be lucky enough to travel on, eh?
Dan and Elysabeth appeared from the mini bus, friendly faces that brought a further sense of relief to the situation. We hung around for a while, in which time Elysabeth revealed from her well packed guitar case a book of song lyrics. “Did we know ‘Streets of London’?” she asked, and “Can either of you sing”?. Answering in the affirmative to the first question and sheepishly in the negative to the latter, we still managed to string a few words together, mainly the chorus to Ralph somebody’s song. Elysabeth was pleased since she’d been unsure whether she’d been singing it correctly or not to date, while a flush of sentimentality swept over the both of us as we remembered home and the fact it was Christmas Eve. Needless to say the song stuck with us in our minds for the rest of the day, which was a pleasant relief from the drone of the bass beat that we’d endured some hours previously in the Casa Inn.
Then it was time to drop down the side of the river bank and board the thin narrow wooden planked boat with an outboard at the back. Our skipper appeared little more than just beginning pubity, but he waved cheerfully at all of us as we tried to decide whether the ‘life jackets’ were worth putting on or using as cushions on the wooden benches that lined each side of this tiny boat. With the outboard in reverse the boat slowly crept away from the sanctity of the sand bank upon which it was nosed, and all too quickly began to shift downstream as the current seized it and its human cargo.
My, my, this was truly a mighty river, at least 400 metres across and peppered with swirling eddies, some drawing down like plug holes and lowering the water level around by many inches. There was also not a little debris coming down – trunks, branches, general detritrus, and our skipper did his best to avoid these, while also steering clear of the worrying eddies. But he wasn’t so quick almost as soon as we’d started our journey upstream. With a sickening clunk and thud the outboard propeller had struck a submerged piece of wood, and it lost power immediately. We looked at each other nervously as we began to drift backwards, and then to the skipper who didn’t seem too cool about this event either. Mmmmm, maybe our makeshift cushions would come in handy after all! The young lad hauled the outboard up on its mountings and tried to start the engine by the rip cord, something he failed to do on the first two occasions. On the third attempt the engine roared into life, and he quickly put it back into the flow of the water and we continued upstream, now even more anxiously watching the murky brown waters ahead of us for other unseen obstacles.
The ride was 40 minutes long, in which time we ducked and dived across the river, avoiding the eddies and generally aiming for the quieter waters. The river banks were steep in most places and shrouded in jungle above a water line that told us the river was in a fairly relaxed state at this time of year. Thoughts of what it would be like after the rainy season were quickly dispelled!!
Not sure where we would land, the ride against the flow was a memorable event. Along with keeping a nervous eye out for anything untoward coming downstream (and not being too sure whether crocodiles were around), we spent time listening to what Elysabeth and Dan had been up to on their travels. They were crew for an exclusive boat that spent time touring predominantly around the coast of the States and Alaska (tell us if we’ve got this wrong please guys!), Dan as a wine connosiuer and Elysabeth as a masseur. With a crew of two to each passenger they certainly spent time with the upper classes of the world, a far cry from our current circumstances on this tiny wooden boat attempting to navigate the thrusting Rio Usumacinta.
Unexpectedly, since the boat permanently weaved its way between each bank, we beached on the Guatemalan side of the river, simply by running up on a small sandy beach beneath a drooping tree. Our skipper held the engine in forward and the sweep of the river’s flow brought the port side alongside the boughs of the tree. Time to jump off. I grabbed both rucksacks and offered a hand to Em as we touched base with Guatemalan land once again. Climbing the slope away from the river we came to a simple shack with the smell and smoke of food cooking drifting towards us. Strung across a concrete platfrom out front of the shack were two hammocks, occupied by what turned out to be our onward guide and the bus driver, lazing in the shade of a hotter than usual day after a trip from our ultimate destination, Flores, on the edge of Lake Peten in northern Guatemala.
Dropping our sacks and greeting them cordially, we learned that the less than salubrious ‘tourist bus’ stood in the shade of a tree was our transport, and it would depart at midday, one hour from now. A quick check of the tyres showed that the smooth concrete slab beneath which swung the hammocks had more tread on it than the six faded spheres that held the bus on its axles. Nothing new here then!
Leaving Em in the shadow of the shack, a delegation (or was it a motley crew?) of truly international travellers departed to find beer and comida (food) within the vast expanse that is Bethel, the entrance point to Guatemala. It’s simplicty was overwhelming, with a straight forward layout of simple dirt tracks connecting intermittant shacks doubling up as homes and stores, all in one go. One Englishman, one Canadian, one lass from the US-come-Ecuador, one Columbian and a Frenchman, all in search of the holy grail. No wonder Bethel’s inhabitants wonder what was going on as we questioned each person as to the whereabouts of food and drink in a broad mix of accents and varying degrees of Spanish.
I found beer first! Good old Gallo Cerveza, the national beer of Guatemala. Buying three cans from a senora’s living room was something different, and passing one to Dan and stashing the other two in my pockets I headed back to where Em and the bus was while everyone else continued their quest for food. Fortunately we’d stocked up with cheese slices and bread in Palenque and had a pleasant time making butties and eating them as the sun rose to its zenith for the day.
From one of the hammocks the bus driver stirred. Time to get on our way, but none of the rest of the motley crew were to be seen, so I loaded the various sacks through a window in the bus and hoped they’d be back soon. The engine roared into life with a belch of exhaust fumes, and it was clear our driver for the next part of the trip wasn’t in the mood for hanging around. Just at this point the international clan hoved into sight on the short hill up from where we were and quickly made it down to the bus in time for the beginning of one helluva a rickety 72 mile long ride along an unpaved road.
But within minutes we’d stopped. Our guide swept along the bus aisle asking for our passports and $5 each for Guatemalan immigration. Never too comfortable with losing sight of my evidence of nationality I disembarked and wandered around the corner of the squat white-washed building we’d pulled up alongside. I could see the sign for ”migracion” hanging from a doorway, but what caught my attention more was the earnest game of football going on next to the official’s building. This was no ordinary kick about, but a full blown match with each team in professional strips and a crowd of onlookers cheering on from each side. Blimey, in this heat as well! As I watched, one of the white team’s wingers crossed tha ball and the centre forward stooped to head past the goalkeeper. Goooaaaaaaaallllllllll!!! I cheered loudly before realising I was stood at the opposing end’s goal. Wrong move! I returned to the bus rather quickly and waited for my passport to come back. (Another excellent stamp, and the Guatemalan’s do us passport stamp collectors proud!).
Then we were off proper. The bus rumbled out of the village and we began one of the most memorable journeys we’ve ever undertaken. And that’s not counting what had already gone before today! For the next 70 miles we rumbled along only hard-packed limestone dirt tracks past landscapes of deforested jungle and the bizarre rocky hillocks that seem common place in this neck of the woods. While the flatlands alongside the track were largely devoid of growth above six feet high, save for the odd stunning Baobab (I think) trees that stood starkly against the sheer blueness of the sky, the hillocks were richly forested with many types of jungle growth, clinging to the hillsides in a verdant miasma of life. These soaring hillside trees were, depending on their height, either proud of the land or smothered in lianas that created the impression of troops of mysterious monsters without shape, not dissimilar to the frightening beasts seen on episodes of Dr Who from yesteryear.
The bus rumbled on with a cloud of dust bellowing from its underside, its passengers in various states of sleep. I pushed back the slide window and slung my right arm and head out of the window, revelling in this remote landscape and feeling the warmth of the sun on my flesh. Ever so slowly more and more signs of habitation passed by, simple shacks gradually replaced with impressively fenced off Rancheros with stocks of cattle grazing in pastures dotted with stagnant pools of water. Each cow had its own white sentinal bird, in effect a parasite in its own right, picking from the aninal’s hide the flies that buzzed around it.
And suddenly, as sleep through the constant rocking and bumping of the bus over stones seemed inevitable, if only to escape from the discomforture it afforded, the passage along the road was smooth. Tarmac was here! The bus’s occupants stirred themselves, we passed around the remainder of the biscuits we’d brought for the journey, and we were in Flores. Ah, Flores, the pretty island that once upon a time was the spiritual stronghold of the Mayas. Right, time for some serious R & R!!
Tags: Bordering on the ridiculous???
mihai