For those in the know…… Frontera Talisman, Mexico – El Carmen, Guatemala > RN1 > Xela > Antigua > Pan Americana 2 > Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado (border Guatemala-El Salvador). A small technical detail that can be better summarised as “the mountain road traversing Guatemala”.
It wasn’t the best of introductions to a new country, and first impressions have strong, and in the short term, lasting, signatures. I’ve never sat down and calculated the score of Latin borders that we’ve negotiated, but it’s fair to suggest that we’ve encountered the full gamut of the various selections on offer. Still, every one is in some way unique, throwing up a new permutation of officiousdom, new ways to to be confused and entertained, all in equal measure. Poor exchange rates, slow queues, hidden offices are the norm, but not what caught us on this occasion:
‘The Crossing Assistant’.
For our final few hundred kilometres through Mexico, we were being passed by convoys of wrecker autos towing totally wrecker autos, invariably with Texas or Californian plates. Then for a piece of variety we would be passed by a US icon: the ‘school bus’, filled not with students but with once-used lorry tyres. North American castoffs travelling south to a new incarnation. So when we start to approach the border it was no surprise to find kilometres long queues of these composite wrecks waiting at customs. We were watching them, and hadn’t fully noted three semi-official men waiting by the roadside. On hailing us, we reactively slowed down. Probably our first error, for we’d nibbled on the bait. The second error was to stop.
It only seemed polite, but the fishhook was already set. Semi-official, in that they had laminate neck tags that they kept flashing and alluded that they were customs officials. It didn’t take them long to start reeling us in. It’s only later that, in retrospect you conjure how you might have handled the situation better.
The one big difference between the rucksack-toting backpacker and the pannier-encumbered cyclist is this: they can haul their kit through the various offices at a border; we have at some point to abandon the bike. It’s a most exposed position to be in. For the ‘crossing assistancer’ has now followed us around the corner where we find a perfectly normal border control. Normal in the sense that there’s a barrier, rifle wielding police, toll both style cabins and obvious lines of procedure. It’s also quiet. A simple, normal, quiet border.
Our ‘shadows’ insist that we need to leave our bikes with him, ‘muy seguro’, whilst we visit the immigration office. By now we know that we’re in a ‘situation’, the only question is: “how much will it cost?” Still, we take it in turns to process and acquire an exit stamp, whilst the other watches the bikes, precisely as we would if the ‘shadow’ was not in lurking, in avaricious attendance.
Part one completed, we push into Guatemala.
Where the ‘shadow’ miraculously multiplies, apparently we will now need a ‘shadow’ each to fill out a very obvious tourist card, still implying that their knowledge will help us past immigration. We’re now in the position that we just have to go with the flow, for its become obvious that they’re in league with yet another shadow, that’s three now, the last of whom wishes to take our passport away to photocopy our entry stamp. This is to supposedly placate the dozing customs official, who’s roused by our ‘shadow’ with a shaken hand. I assume the purpose of which was to imply that his specialist contacts have eased us past a potential problem.
The whole scam was so obvious. The hook was set early, the line yanked tight, the sinker pulling us down, reeling in, reeling-in, reeling-in, all this whilst we pointlessly try to disentangle ourselves. Always knowing that there will be the gutting at the end.
Does a fish know it’s impending demise when it first nibbles on that baited hook, that it will end in a gutting.
An expensive gutting.