Guatemala – or … Mexico, with Boba

Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico – Coatepeque, Guatemala

A few weeks ago I mentioned that my Grandpa built a little family motel in Duluth in 1954. Now, my Grandpa was a very liberal guy. But that was a different era, and he used to tell me the story of when things changed in the hospitality business.

I think this was the late-60s. A guy came to the desk and wanted a room for the night. No problem. 

But I guess my Grandpa asked for identification or something. The guy did not have any. 

Thinking that the guy was “shacking up” with a woman, my Grandpa told the guy that, “we don’t run that type of establishment.”

The guy came around the counter, grabbed my Grandpa and threw him up against the wall: ”My house just burned down along with all my posessions. Give me a _____ing room!”

After that my Grandpa stopped worrying about whether his patrons were married . . .

I tell this story because of the prevalenace of Love Motels – or, Auto Motels as they are sometimes called, in Mexico, and now in Guatemala.

No one seems to worry about the whole marriage thing around here. We were wondering if maybe this was just a Mexican thing – but we have seen a ton of these places so far in Guatemala as well. They don’t rent by the night. Generally two hours or four hours. 

Today’s best tagline: “Auto Hotel: Mountain Love Secrets.”

Now, I guess I don’t know whether Guatemala is a capitalist country or more socialist. But it’s hard to imagine the politicos planning the economy saying, “Well, let’s see, we need four factories, three farms, and eleven love motels . . .” 

So I’m guessing these places are here because there is real demand. But that’s what I don’t understand. Why is there so much more demand for these places in Mexico and Guatemala? Or maybe prostitution is legal here? In which case it is much easier to just openly declare the purpose of your visit . . . One of those mysteries that you ponder as you ride . . .

Okay, I know, I know . . . The big question is how did the border crossing go? Pretty simple really. But, of course, that is in good part because of the investment we made in our return trip to Nuevo Laredo all those weeks ago. We had our stamped passports, our tourist visas, and the receipt for the money we paid for the tourist visas and the stamps all ready. 

The Mexican passport-checker guy totally wanted to do a gotcha with us too. You could tell because he started with Diana’s passport and, when he looked it over, he asked for the receipt (which was stapled to my visa). Just as he started telling us that we would need to pay for our visa I pulled out the receipt and you could tell he was kind of deflated.

Ha! We were prepared this time. Sorry sucka!

Then we crossed the bridge into Guatemala. All good – but once we arrived we were once again confronted with the stamp issue. I think us Americans just assume there is going to be an orderly process. You cross the bridge, but before you enter the country for real you have to wait in a line where the Guatemalan border people look at your passport. 

Nope. That’s now how it works at all. You cross the bridge – and then you are just kind of in Guatemala. Just like it was when we crossed into Mexico. You want something official? You have to seek that out . . .

We asked one of the Dutch tour group people that came into Guatemala just before us and they pointed up the busy road:

”See that red car up there. There’s a building next to it. You can get your passport stamped there.”

Or you can just walk on by . . .

I swear, you need a PhD. in border crossing to figure this stuff out. Fortunately, I think at this point we are pretty close. Proud graduates of the school of hard knocks . . .

Which brings me back to the migrants. One of our loyal readers requested that we say a little more about we saw yesterday – now have a little more energy because we didn’t ride so far . . .

I would say that we saw about 300-500 people – maybe more – strung out along about a three-mile section of highway. This was about 35-40 miles from the border – so presumably these people had crossed a few days ago.

The first few folks that we saw were younger men – probably in their early-20s. There were a little ways out ahead of the main group. Some shirtless – because of the heat. None of them had much with them. Maybe a small backpack. 

Then there was some type of outpost along the road – with about 30 Doctors Without Borders vehicles and about 30 Gobierno (Government) vehicles. And lots of police/military type presence as well. 

It looked like people were queued up at the Doctors Without Borders outpost – I’m not sure if they were receiving medical attention or if there was food or supplies there or what. 

And then there were much bigger groups – with families and kids. The biggest group was sitting in the median type area between the northbound and southbound portions of the highway. 

The last group I saw was in one of the many rivers that we crossed yesterday. Looked like they were bathing there.

I’ll supplement all that with a newspaper article I kind of read this morning at the hotel. 

(By the way – this was the first newspaper of any kind that we have seen since crossing into Mexico. Diana and I were just talking about that yesterday . . . I think it goes along with the lack of toilet paper and the dainty – and almost completely ineffective – napkins they seem to have in Mexico and Central America. My theory: they don’t seem to have the pulp type trees here that we do in the U.S. And with the peso so weak against the dollar it’s too expensive to import paper from the U.S. So I think the Mexicans just do all their news online.)

Anyway, when I saw the migrant article in the paper at the hotel I used Google Translate to see if I could get an idea of what it said. What I understood was something like the following . . .

We need to stop allowing the migrants to cross into Mexico illegally. With the election of Donald Trump the U.S. is going to stop allowing much migration and they may actually be sending migrants back our way. Chiapas and Mexico are going to end up bearing the burden of all this.

I’m not going to weigh in on the main underlying policy discussion – not the lane of a travel journal like this. But what I will say is that if there is anything that we can do to help stabilize the places where the migrants are coming from – so that they can rely upon the rule of law, attract investment, and create jobs and wealth – so that hopefully there is less reason for the desperation that underlies all of this, we should be doing that. If that means aid, investing in things like the World Bank, and helping democracy stay strong I think those are things that we should be doing. 

Difficult to switch gears back to our day . . . But we are well into Guatemala now and I wanted to share some thoughts there . . .

First off, Guatemala seems much more densely populated than Mexico – where you could sometimes go 15-20 miles without any services. In contrast, so far Guatemala almost seems like one continouus town. 

We did end up making one small mistake at the border. When we first arrived there were people asking to see our passports. I may be a naive Minnesota boy, but even I recognize a full-on scam when I see one. The first guy that called out us to was wearing shorts and a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Nice try buddy – but if you really want to scam someone you might want to put a little effort in . . .

Anyway, I tell you this because after that our anti-scam detectors were on high alert. Once we procured our passport stamp from the building where the red car was there were a few guys asking to change our cash. Again, they were clearly not official and we just assumed they were scammers as well. 

We bolted.

And we found ourselves in town – with some leftover pesos – but with no Guatemalan Quetzal to buy lunch. Well, that was a mistake.

No problem. We’ll just get some cash from an ATM. 

Umm, nearest ATM? Sixteen kilometers up the road . . .

Bummer. 

So we start biking along . . .

But before we have gone a mile a car pulls up alongside me. The very nice guy says something to the effect of “Great job!” And then he hands me something – which I later figure out is a $50 Quetzel bill (about $6). Diana joins the discussion and we talk for a while about where an ATM might be. Kristian – the guy in the car – has his teenage son, who is in the back seat, helping look stuff up on his phone. They are not ultimately helpful in finding an ATM – but what a welcome to Guatemala. 

Turns out that ATMs are a thing in Guatemala – and the whole banking system is different in Mexico and Central America. People are always standing in lines at the bank – like long lines. Assume they are cashing checks or something, but hard to tell. 

We find a bank branch in a gas station, but no ATM and they cannot change out pesos because we don’t have an account there.

After 20-something miles we find an actual ATM. After a lot of work we figure out that it’s broken. 

We’re about to pass out from hunger by the time we finally find one that works. But once we find cash, all is good. There’s actually a boba shop in the small town. And right around the corner there’s a rotisserie chicken place. So now we’re on a good trajectory . . . Kind of the best of both worlds . . .

Rain. I have to mention the precipitation. There’s a reason the jungle is so green. Lots of rain. And we experienced plenty of it today. But the thing is, rain at 80 degrees actually feels pretty good. 

Last thing. Diana found us a nice hotel (no – not the auto variety – there are no mountain love secrets in this room . . . or at least none that we’re going to tell you about . . .). Within a minute of pulling in two things happened. First, it started REALLY raining. Like cats and dogs. Wow! Glad we stopped when we did . . .

And two, we met Eric – a fellow biker who is from Switzerland. Erik has been biking around the world for like 20 years. We ended up having dinner with Eric and he shared some amazing stories. Quite a guy. 

One of the big takeaways . . . Eric has been using the same bike for 20 years now. He changes tires – he only uses Schwalbe tires (“good German tires) – chains and drivetrains every 15,000 to 20,000 kilometers (10,000-12,500 miles).  

Tomorrow we start climbing up toward Lake Atitlin. Looking forward to it!