Guatemala Border Crossing

I was sure that the Guatemala border would be a bit of a rude awakening since Mexico had been so incident-free. Leaving Mexico was straight forward enough. A clean cut guy with all the official badges prominently displayed took several photos of Randal, tripled checked the VIN number and returned the $200 dollar security deposit I fronted in Neuvo Laredo. He pointed us around the corner to immigration where we got our exit stamps.

We were surprised to find the it was about a 2 mile drive to the first Guatemalan office. Andrew and I briefly discussed claiming the land as a new country and seeing how long we could fly below the radar. The two miles flew by though and the conversation was for naught.

The crossing at Cuauhtemoc is a narrow street that is bustling with mopeds, street vendors, dogs, colorful balls, armed security guards, and traffic cones. Every 50 feet I had to renegotiate right of way and squeeze between a parked van and an oblivious taco salesman. Inch by inch, I made it up to the fumigation station where the car is sprayed down to prevent the entry of disease carrying insects. Next we stopped at immigration where Andrew's million Quetzal (about $150,000) smile won him this posed photo:

The final stop was the car registry which went pretty smoothly. While we were hassled a little bit by potential expediters and money changers, the narrow congested street was the only real difficult thing about the crossing. The officials were quick and few others seemed to be crossing. This may have had something to due with our late crossing (around 2pm). This came back to bite us as we performed some night driving on unfamiliar and curvy roads in order to make it to our final destination before sleep found us.