Crossing into Guatemala

To avoid taking the Guatemalan chicken buses with all our packs (and to shorten the length of our trip), we upgraded to our own private van. We left San Cristobal early in the morning, eating breakfast as we drove. It was an "interesting" trip. Our first snag was a road block, causing us to have to turn back and find a route around the protest, adding about 20 minutes to our trip. 3 km from the border, we stopped at the Mexican immigration building where D took our passports to be stamped. I'm not sure why they didn't need to see us, but noone was complaining!

We drove the last few kilometers to the border, unloaded our bags, and walked through the open gate surrounded by market stalls into Guatemala. D still had our passports, and after we had changed a bit of money into Quetzals to pay for our tourist cards, D stood in line again and did all the paperwork for us. Unfortunately the computer system was down so it took about 30 minutes to get it all sorted out, but we beat the other large group of tourists who were all standing in line individually. It was definately not your normal border crossing - no one ever compared my to my passport ... and people were walking back and forth across the border the whole time we were there with nobody stopping them or checking who they were.

We got a new van in Guatemala ... one with a driver who had a hard time finding gears (lots of grinding) and road the brakes going down hills (stinky!). We got to the look out over Lake Atitlan just after sunset and stood admiring the hazy view for a few minutes, then continued down towards the lake. We didn't get far before we had to stop again - this time waiting over an hour for an accident that was blocking the road to be cleared (it would have taken 4 hours to drive around). We managed to entertain ourselves pretty well though, singing along to songs off of Mm's iPod! The people behind us must have wondered what was going on as our van rocked from side to side :P

We finally made it to our hotel in Panajachel, and went to a great asian restaurant for supper.