Breaking Point

Corinto, Guatemala
9255 Miles

After a long drive from El Salvador and a few nights in Copan Ruinas I made it to Corinto the northern Frontier of Guatemala and Honduras. On the Honduran side there is a large new customs building. A man there glaced at my passport and handed it back to me. I asked if there needed to be a stamp. He told me, “No we don’t give stamps here.” The guards down south had insisted they did. I cancelled the driving permit in Honduras and headed into Guatemala. When I came across the small shack housing the guards there, I stopped and pulled out a paper with 2 names on it. I had been given the names at the first border I was turned away from, they told me that they had telephoned these 2 guys in Corinto and they would be expecting me.

When I found 1 of the guys listed on the paper he didn’t know anything about my problem. He took 1 look at the expired permit and said there was nothing he could do. He said he could let me into the country but when I tried to leave they would want to see my permit. I’ll take my chances, this whole mess started when I was waved through this very border by the same guards who are telling me I will have to show a permit to get out. I’m likely to find the same thing on the other side.

During those 4 days when I was stuck on the Guatemala/Salvadorian border I reached a point where I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry. I didn’t care what happened to the bike or if I ever got home. I had hit my limit and didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.

This feeling of hopelessness, and despair is what I had come for. To put myself in a position where only I could help myself. Where there is no one to pat you on the back, and tell you everything is going to be all right. Your mind begins to fracture with each side pulling you to a new stage in your life. Whether you become a blathering idiot begging a Guatemalan border guard to let you in, or keep your cool until you can catch your 2nd wind is up to you. Travel is beautiful, enlightening, and sometimes heartbreaking, but never taking the journey means never finding out.

--Ryan

Sleeping at the Border

One of the Mormons has a friend of a friend that works at a Guatemalan border. So today I drive north to where this hook up works. I was disappointed when I got there to see that he was just one of the “Border crossing experts” who hound tourists, and not actually a border official as I had been told. He took all my papers and went off to get me a permit. Which I knew was impossible from the last 3 days of trying.

By the time I had become completely fed up with everyone, those trying to help and those who didn’t give a damn. Everybody at 2 borders knows me now, the local people who live, and sell food and goods there felt bad for me, the border officials hated me for giving them so much trouble.

Had I driven up and given them my fake permit they probably would have let me right in. But I let somebody else help and now my cover is blown. Everybody is watching me now, but I am also a crazed lunatic and not thinking straight. So I drive up to the border guard and try the fake permit anyway. They see through it straight away and take the copy away from me, I have more but knowing I want to run they have the road blocked.

Before I get arrested in Guatemala I turn back for Salvador. But I have already cancelled my permit there, and they won’t let me pass. When I try to get a new one they tell me I can’t cancel 1 and get a new 1 in the same day. Which I know is a lie, because I had cancelled 1 and received a new 1 the same day at the first border I tried when all this trouble started. But I have stepped on enough toes for 1 day so I stay quiet.

I pull my motorcycle across a parking space to protect where I will set up my tent and sleep for the night. An older Salvadorian woman comes over to see what I’m doing; I explain the situation as best I can. As she wipes the mud from yesterday off my helmet with her fingers, she starts to cry while apologizing for all the problems I’m having with her country. She walks back to her shop and comes back with a large piece of black plastic and starts to spread it over my tent, to protect from the rain. I thank her and explain the tent doesn’t need it and she understands after awhile.

The night in the parking lot was uneventful. 18-wheeler trucks passing through all night with brakes hissing, and engines grumbling made sure I didn’t get much sleep. But nobody messed with me, and as promised I had my permit at 7:00am to go back to El Salvador.

--Ryan

Just 5 more minutes

This morning at 5:00am when the Bishop went to teach seminary I left on my motorcycle to try the border 1 more time. Being Monday I thought, maybe there will be a manager there who can do more to help me. I waited until 6:00am for him to show up, but I was already out of patience. So I asked 1 of the other Guards to write down the address where I needed to go in Guatemala City. After he gave me the address and phone number, I walked back to Salvador and rode my bike to town. I parked my bike back in the garage, and packed a bag with a change of clothes.

Before getting on the bus I called the number I had been given at the frontier. No one answered, so I took the bus back to the frontier and asked again where I needed to go. This time the manager was there; he looked at the address and told me it was wrong. Through a translator he told me that maybe he could help me, and I should stay there while he made some calls.

As I wondered around the frontier the “Expert” from yesterday shouted “Mister Mister Mister! You give me $5.” “Why would I give you $5?” I asked. “Because I help you yesterday, cross border very fast.” “Really? Then way am I still here?” He had a disappointed look on his face as he realized this was an argument he could not win. I laid down on a bench with my backpack on my chest, and fell asleep for a while, once startling myself awake with my own snoring. I was still so tried from trying to sort all this out. The Manager wanted to see the stamp in my passport from when I left Guatemala the 1st time. I told him that where I crossed there was no building giving out stamps. Then he wanted to see the stamp from Honduras, I searched through my passport a dozen times but couldn’t find it. Maybe they didn’t give me 1, maybe Mitch has 2 in his I don’t know what happened. Now after 10 hours of listening to this guy tell me “Just wait a little bit longer, I will help you.” The solution is for me to go back the 600 miles to Corinto in Northern Guatemala. Since I can enter Guatemala, and my bike can’t I asked if I could take a bus to Corinto, it is only about 100 miles from here. “No they will want to see the bike.”

After 10 hours of listening to them say, “Just 5 more minutes.” I walked back to El Salvador to get a bus to town, the Guards there wanted to know why I was being turned away from Guatemala. So I was taken to an office and asked questions I didn’t understand for 30 minutes. After I said “tourist” enough times they let me go.

I honestly can’t remember anything being on the Guatemalan side of the border, and feel that if I drive all that way I will be stuck with the same problem even father from home. The people here tell me that the form they need to cancel my permit is in Corinto. The guards in Corinto just need to push the “send” button and email it down, but they won’t do it.

I have one last hope; the sister who is letting me store her bike at her house has a friend of a friend who works at a Guatemalan Border. She doesn’t speak English so she called her sister in Calgary, Canada where I served my mission. We passed the phone back and forth as her sister translated the conversation. She is going to call him to see if he can do something to help me.

While she is checking on her connection, I went to an internet café scanned the expired driving permit, and emailed it to JaggiLines. In his control room he will be able to change the date on the document no problem. I have driven to the edge of insanity, and it is Guatemala.

--Ryan

Border Crossing Bureaucracy

“Mister Mister Mister!” The Guatemalan border-crossing “expert” shouted as I pulled up to the Frontier. Another know-it-all to help me through the process of getting my passport stamped, and a driving permit for the motorcycle. I ignore him, but he stays with me shouting “Mister Mister Mister!” Pointing in the direction of the next office that I am already walking to. After a while he gives up, and leaves me to figure it out by myself.

7 hours later I left the Guatemalan border and headed back to El Salvador a broken man. On my way south we passed through northern Guatemala, but Mitch and I left the country through a seldom used border crossing. There was a building on the Honduran side but nothing in Guatemala. There was no obvious place to cancel my motorcycle permit. I found it in my mess of papers while I was at this border, but it had expired 2 days ago.

The 1st person who helped me told me I would have to go back to were I left Guatemala the first time. That means back through El Salvador, and Honduras nearly 600 miles out of my way. I was polite at first, but it didn’t last long. Our conversation ended after I pounded my fist on the Lonely Planet book several times, crumpled up the expired permit, and threw it on the ground. The guard with the 9mm picked it up, straightened it out and gave it back to me. I noticed he kept the hammer on his pistol was cocked, anybody who carries their gun that way means business, so I walked away to cool off.

I went and sat by my bike, and thought about how far I needed to back track for 1 stupid paper. Some middle aged men driving 2 white vans from California showed up and asked what the problem was. 3 of them were from Poland, 1 Costa Rican, and 1 American. They had loaded their vans with toys to give out to children while on their roadtrip. Some very cool, very helpful dudes, the Tri-lingual (Polish, Spanish, English) Costa Rican took me back to the office and helped plead my case. During the arguing in Spanish he turned to me and whispered “Go outside and put $50 in your passport.” Which I did, but the Guard would not take the bribe. He said he wanted to help if he could but the computer would not let him make a new permit. I would have to leave the motorcycle here at the border and go to a government office in Guatemala City to take care of the expired permit. But wait, the 1st guy I talked to tried to send me 600 miles back to where I crossed the 1st time. My new friends reached into their bag of toys and gave me a yo-yo shaped like baseball. “Looks like you might be here for a while, you could probably use this.”

So after 7 hours I turned back for Salvador. Unfortunately I had cancelled my driving permit there, so I was stuck trying to explain why I cancelled 1 permit and needed a new 1 the same day. Quickly I am being strangled to death by all the red tape, and being polite to the border officials is becoming more and more difficult.

On my way out of town to the border I passed a Mormon Church. Since it was Sunday I stopped and caught the last part of Sacrament meeting before heading to Guatemala. But after being stopped at the border, I would need somewhere to store my bike while I took the bus ride to Guatemala City. When I got back to Ahuachapan the Bishop was still at the chapel, and helped me to find a member with a garage where I could keep the bike. Then he took me back to his house and gave me some food. During dinner the Bishop told me there had been an assault on the road to Guatemala City today, and it could have been me. He thought it was a blessing I was stuck in El Salvador with them. I probably deserve a punishment more than a blessing, but as a Bishop he is the expert. I asked if they knew an Elder Dunn 1 of my best friends from home who severed his mission in El Salvador. The name sounded familiar to them so I pulled out my laptop and brought up some pictures I have of him. They recognized him right away, and said, “Elder Dunn needs to come back to El Salvador to loose some weight.”

I would have happily stayed in a hotel, but they insisted I stay with them. The Bishop pulled a mattress into the small front room of their house for me to sleep on, and asked if I would need anything else. I was exhausted from all the craziness of the day and just wanted to sleep. So he said goodnight and walked into his room. The 1 bedroom in the house had 2 queen size beds, 1 of those I was sleeping now. Which meant that he and his wife were sleeping on the box springs, or sharing the other bed with their 2 small children. So much kindness from these strangers made me uncomfortable.

--Ryan

Border Crossing

Crossing borders can be difficult. Crossing them with a vehicle you can be strangled to death by red tape. On average you will have to visit 5 different buildings per crossing. Shell out money at each place, fill out forms, get stamps and stickers wait in long lines out in the heat. Through the whole experience you will wonder how you could have arrived on everybody’s first day, since nobody will know for sure what you need done.

When we crossed from Guatemala to Honduras we came to large new looking facility. It was a welcome sight, maybe this would be over quickly. We filled out some papers and our passports were stamped in minutes. Next came the permit for driving in Honduras. Apparently the office was down the road and we would have to be escorted there. So a guy who spoke about 3 words of English gets on the back of my bike to show us where to go. We end up driving an hour to Cortez, Honduras where they issue permits. But when we get there the office is closed for the day.

Our helpful friend wants to keep our passports and original titles for our bikes, to make sure we don’t skip town without the permit. After talking him out of that idea we stayed in a hotel for the night, and were back at the office bight and early. 6 painful hours later we were back on the road. Time stuck waiting for a permit: 30 hours.

Yesterday we left Nicaragua for ecotourism friendly Costa Rica, if any country down here would have the system streamlined it would be Costa Rica. But in the fifth building we came to the computers were broken, and some of the truckers trying to get through had been there for 6 hours. With the computers down there was no way for them to do it manually.

Mitch and I tried just going for it, but got stopped at a checkpoint and escorted back. After a few hours the computers came back online and people started to move very slowly. The girl typing in the information must have been going at about 6 or 7 words per minute. We were stuck there for 8 hours, didn’t get out until after dark, and it had started to rain. We had to do 15 miles in the rain and dark to make it to the next town.

Hassles like this make miss the chicken bus.

--Ryan

Look Ma. No Brakes!

Entering Guatemala was surprisingly easy thanks to a 7 year old boy. After getting our motorcycles sprayed at pest control and having our passports stamped, we were directed by immigration to the customs building for our driving permits. It is at this time a helpful young Guatemalan speaking very little English informed us that we needed copies of our passport, title, and drivers’ license. I was hesitant at first because our place in line was well established and no actual official had indicated that we needed such copies; but Ryan to see if this boy’s claims were true followed our new friend out of the customs building and into the crowded street disappearing from site. Ryan returned moments later when I was approaching the front of the line, its at this point that I noticed a small piece of paper no larger than a post card listing the required documents, the boy was right. Switching places with Ryan now I am being led out of the nicely cooled building and into the hot street to receive my necessary copies; thanks to the lack of information by yet another government agency, if it were not for this young boy looking out for ill informed tourists we could have been stuck at the border for an extra hour or more.

After tipping our new found friend we hopped on our motorcycles and were off to Tikal. The first 23 miles of road into Guatemala from Belize is rough dirt and gravel containing ruts, large potholes, and rocks the size of coconuts, no wait that was a coconut. After dodging the seemingly endless barrage of hazards this country calls a road we reached pavement but I soon came to the alarming realization that this paved section of road is much much worse. There are long evenly spaced gouges in the road; it looks as if a drunken grader operator was sporadically dropping the front teeth just for fun. The potholes are replaced with pot-lakes Ryan is in the lead and at one point he all but disappears when he is unable to steer clear of one. “Thank goodness for the Body Glove snorkel or he may have drowned.”

We reach the turn off to Tikal and pull over to check my rear brake; after installing the new sprocket and chain earlier that day there was some noticeable rubbing from one of the brake pads. It has apparently gotten worse because the caliper is now too hot even touch I purchase three waters from the nearest store one for Ryan, one for me, and one for the brakes. Upon removing the caliper and separating the badly worn brake pads we reinstall the caliper and were off. Only Twenty more miles to Tikal I make it a point to not use the rear brakes but when we reach the parking lot the brake is fully compressed and now there is no brake pad left. We decide to wait until our tour of Tikal is over before trying to fix the bike giving it time to cool.

Removing the brake was easy deciding what to do was a bit more difficult. Every person we asked said the nearest mechanic was in Flores located 40 miles away. With some debate and 6 zip ties the rear caliper is now securely attached to my swing arm. I never saw the need for a rear brake in the first place they are highly over rated. We reach Flores and find a hotel but it’s to late in the evening to find a mechanic, maybe tomorrow.

--Mitch