November 9, 2021
Tenosique de Pino Suárez,
We are back. Back in Mexico, back in Tenosique, back in the Hotel Central and soon to be back on our bicycles. We even ended up back at the grilled chicken shop where we had eaten before in Tenosique.
Our trip today started with a three hour minibus ride to the border at El Ceibo with the bicycles strapped rather precariously on the flimsy roof rack. The bus was going to Pelenque but we would be dropped off outside Tenosique. The other passengers were two young Dutch couples (who were traveling independently of each other), a Swiss guy just a bit older than us and an American guy aged seventy one. I knew he was seventy one because he told the bus driver he had last been to Pelenque forty years ago when he was thirty one.
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The minibus dropped at the Guatemalan emigration shack. where I swapped the last hundred Quetzcal for pesos. Checking out of Guatemala was as easy as it was coming in. However, the Mexican entry became a bit of a nightmare. There is a five hundred and sixty peso fee to enter Mexico by land and they only accepted card payments. The card machine was excruciatingly slow and rejected any payments attempted with foreign debit cards, which is what all the youngsters ahead of us tried. Each attempt took about five minutes and they seem to try multiple times. Eventually everyone worked out that only credit cards were working so there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing so those with credit cards could pay for those who only had debit cards.
The delay was tempered by the lovely young Japanese couple in the queue with us. They have been traveling around the world for almost five years but have been stuck in Peru for most of the COVID period. There was lots of overlap in the places in which they and us have traveled so we had lots to talk about.
Once through emigration we had to be checked out by a sniffer dog. The older Swiss guy panicked a bit and smoked most of his stash there and then, only to be told by the officials they were only looking for harder drugs. He was pretty much out of it by the time he boarded the second minibus that would carry on to Pelenque.
The older American guy who has been living in Guatemala for a few years, didn't seem to be able to pay at all but somehow he managed to get sorted out with the emigration officials. He hopped into the minibus with an apology for the delay and the announcement that he was "back on the horse".
The driver of the second bus had some time to make so the last hour had some white-knuckle moments. We got dropped on the edge of town and cycled back to the Hotel Central.
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Tomorrow we head for El Triunfo, about seventy kilometers north-east of here. I am looking forward to riding again.
Today's ride: 3 km (2 miles)
Total: 2,066 km (1,283 miles)
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