Border Crossings

There is always a slight sense of apprehension as borders are typically places filled with unsavoury types: money changers, scammers and schisters; looking to exploit you before you work out which way is up and how many tacos you can buy with $1 in the new country. Border towns are little better - they have never struck me as more than a place of lodging for the humourless immigration officers, industrial depots for the leviathan trucks rampaging across the country and hideouts for the above-mentioned swindlers. This all means that the process of getting an exit stamp (and as we are discovering to be in vogue in Central America, also charged a ‘departure’ tax - GBP11 in the case of Belize; and I thought that we had managed to dream up taxes on everything, but this shows some impressive imagination) and an entry stamp, whilst keeping an eye on our bikes and possessions, which obviously no self-respecting immigation hall would let you sully by wheeling through, can be quite a challenge.

However, this apprehension is seriously outweighed by the excitement of a new country. There are so many little things to notice and consider as we pedal those first few metres, some of which are confirmed, denied or expanded upon as those metres become kilometres and we start to feel we are getting a sense of what the new country, or at least this area of it, will be like.

Being cyclists with bottomless stomachs, hollow legs and a tendency to gluttony, the food by the side of the road is one thing that jumps out immediately. Upon crossing into Guatemala the other day we were very, perhaps too, excited by the return to more Mexican style food - tacos, pollo y arroz, and an abundance of pork. We immediately dispatched two empanadas each and shortly followed this up with a chicken and rice, both from road-side shacks - another trait that Belize had disappointingly lacked.

Pollo y Arroz

As well as the food and the frequency of its availability, the range and style of snack food in shops is important - that first foray into a decent sized shop is one of baited breath; are there any amazing, new snacks that are going to drag us out of the mental and physical troughs as we traverse this country? TBC for Guatemala…

The obvious flavour combo of pineapple, cactus and celery.
Very refreshing but it did just taste like pineapple

As we are more than just globe-trotting stomachs on bikes, the other key things we pay attention to are the people. Whilst stereotyping is a lazy trait, it is amazing how quickly you can get a feel for the people of the country as a rule of thumb - how quick they are to smile, how proud they are to tell you about their country, how ready they are to wave as you ride past or give you a friendly or supportive toot as they drive past (we usually opt for the possibly naive assumption that their hoots are intended in this good nature rather than “Get the *@%# out of the way you weirdo, I need space to drive my massive truck through!” alternative).

The houses, and their style, are also really interesting - whilst the vast majority of houses in Belize were brightly coloured slat boards on stilts, the Guatemalan houses sit firmly on the ground. Presumably, the border town in Belize has a similar selection of snakes, insects and rodents to keep at bay as the border town 500m away in Guatemala. We can only presume it is the effect of culture and history. Or the Guatemalans love snakes.

The landscape is not typically something that changes as a result of an abritrary manmade line on a map and this ebbs and flows far more generally as we ride. Two days before we left Belize, we were riding on flat land with parched vegetation - this slowly gave way to undulations and an increasingly verdant road side as we cycled along the delightfully but disappointingly unaptly named Hummingbird Highway; and that has continued into Guatemala. Our first day of riding we were rewarded with our first panoramic views from the top of a climb, with a beautiful sweeping landscape of lush green. Our one caveat to the fact that landscape doesn’t change with borders is that, sometimes, borders are a construct of landscape and not just two heads of state sat in a smoky room testing the straightness of their rulers. This was most clear at the Sudan/Ethiopia border (for so many reasons, one of the most stark border crossings in the world) which has the Simian Mountains acting as the border. Needless to say, being welcomed to a country by a mountain range is not something we wish to repeat any time soon...where are the Andes again?