Wednesday 18 January 2017

Corozal, Sandhill and definitely not Yulin

In about 5km into the country of Belize we made a little stop so Panchito and Daniel could for the last time use their cell phones with Mexican reception and get in touch with their loved ones and say their goodbyes. While they were making quick calls there was a car heading towards us. The thing about Belizian roads is - they don't really have street lights on them. So it was pitch-dark and there was this truck nearing us at pretty high velocity with his high beams on.
Driver opened the window and to make us feel welcome in his country shouted:
"Fucking Mexicans!" and drove away. Lovely!
Corozal is a small city just a short drive away from the border. This was the place for us to sleep. First of all we needed to get some food though. After not having anything to eat for almost two full days we felt a bit peckish.
We parked our van next to a playground for obvious reasons - there was light and it was more or less in the centre with enough people around. After I redistributed our three, by this time already warm, beers, we noticed dozen of kids that were still having fun on the playground. It was already around 10-11pm and there were some adults watching them.
Daniel went to ask where we could find something cheap to eat and that's how we met Jose and his 12 kids. A very friendly guy with a sweet wife and lots of interesting stories that I shan't write about. He invited us to sleep in his garden, provided us with water, wifi and a bit of herbs to spice up our lives a bit.
In the morning we were served delicious breakfast by Jose's wife and the man himself took us to buy car insurance and to show us the way to Belize city. He also hooked us up with a contact in Sandhill, a small settlement couple hours south of Corozal.
On our way there we picked up a hitch hiker, let's call him Asparagus. He seemed like a good fellow and it was pretty chill ride. Until he showed us his hand where was a big chunk of meat missing. Now, he did tell us how it happened and the whole story was pretty surreal, to the point I was disgusted and shocked, but unfortunately I remember only pieces of it. Anyway here you go, the super short version.

There was a guy at the bar who was threatening him.
Asparagus calmly took out his knife.
With the same calm he cut out a chunk of meat from his hand.
Asparagus told the guy to fuck off that he isn't scared.
The other guy quit his bullshit.
Asparagus swore that on the day of her 16th birthday, he will rape this guy's daughter.
There is no way he could hide her.
To punish him.
To show him who is the boss.
To ruin his life.
With 16 she will be legal, therefore it's not rape.

Fucked up, huh? Well you should have seen his creepy smile when he was telling us this story and his future rape plans with such pride. The girl's life doesn't mean shit.
Needless to say the rest of the ride with Asparagus was a bit quiet. But soon enough we got to Sandhill and were looking for the contact that Jose gave us. And that's how we met Andrew, his wife Andris and their two sons - Andrew and Andris. With those two little rascals we spent quite some time playing and messing around.
Big Andrew let us stay for two nights by his house and third night took us camping to an island. We went fishing on his boat. Unfortunately we didn't catch a lot of fish that would be good enough to sell, we did catch lots of catfish though, but people here don't like it. I wasn't happy about the dead fish being just thrown back to sea, so I took a knife and tried to learn how to cut out a fillet. After 7 fish I more or less succeeded and stopped doing it for all the blood and smell.
The night was crazy. Never have I had the pleasure of meeting so many mosquitos. People in my country say that Finland or Sweden are full of these little buzzing fuckers, but trust me when I say that's nothing if you compare it to Belizean swamps by the sea. We basically woke up (that's a lie, we didn't really sleep) half eaten.
I hope you can see all the bites. It's only like couple of hundreds of them.

With the sun rising up we could fully appreciate the beauty of this place. Due to a hurricane that came through here not so long ago, the beaches were filled with Mayan jewelry, antique Spanish pottery and tons of human bones and skulls. Quite spectacular sight if you ask me. It's places like these archeologists get wet dreams about.
On our last day by Andrew's house, Daniel and Panchito fixed our can (again), while I was just writing these couple of pages because I'm maladroit when it comes to technical stuff.

Monday 16 January 2017

Borderline assholes

First we had to deal with my visa. Overstaying it in any country by 13 days can be pretty serious. But then again this was Mexico and anything is possible. (Unless you kill a cow, then you are done for good. Seriously, you can kill people and sell drugs and might get away with it, but god help you if you kill a cow.) So I was hoping for the best.
Worst case scenario I would get deported - free ride home, yay! But I didn't really feel like it, at least not yet. Both Panchito and Daniel went with me to the immigration office to translate, help and support me. In the end I just had to put up with silly jokes about shaving my beard, pay 390 pesos fine and write an explanation of why I haven't left earlier.
So I sat down face to face with a chubby Mexican officer, who was really proud of his bushy moustache that was spreading all over his greasy upper lip and began to write. I went to great lengths to explain how our car broke down multiple times, how we got cheated by the auto mechanics and that it was never my intention to stay in the country longer. "I would never dare to disrespect Mexican authorities", "I wish to come back in the future to see and appreciate all the beautiful wonders that this breath taking country has to offer" - basically I was being a little bitch that would write down anything to avoid problems.
Taking photos in the office. Yup, you can get in trouble for that.
After I finished writing, there was need to translate it to Spanish. Lovely immigration lady who was in charge really translated just my name (written Martín now) and couple of sentences about the car. The rest was useless, so I'm very happy I spent 20 minutes writing this essay for no reason. When asked about my last job I told her the truth, I was looking for bombs and explosives on construction sites in Germany...apparently that wasn't right anymore and I worked as a waiter. So remember kids, don't lie to the police, they will do the lying it for you.
After all this was done we had a little chat with this lady and she start ranting about backpackers hitchhiking around, sleeping in hostels, tents or on beaches, getting girls pregnant, selling jewelry and playing terrible music on streets to get money. How she despises them and wants to deport them all, or something like that. I was doing my best not to look like that's exactly how I live.

For your information if you overstay your visa in Mexico, you are fine if it's for less than one week. Then it all depends on your behaviour, Spanish and officers.

After two hours we went straight for the Belizian border. Never in my life have I seen more annoyed immigration officers. When they found out that the car is under a different name I thought we are in big trouble.
First officer was annoyed because we didn't have a pen to fill in the immigration form and he had to lend us his. I think it's standard procedure to have and lend pens at the border - but here it's apparently seen as something very demanding. It took a long time to fill it in completely and when one of us made a mistake and needed to do it all over again, the officer kept his cool, but I could see in his eyes that his little mind is exploding with pure hatred. I guess he liked his pen a lot and the lost of this much ink was something he feared in life the most.
Second officer granted us visa for 14 days (normal is one month), stamped our passports and let us pass through to a lady at the cashier. Here comes the trouble I thought when I saw her annoyed face that also hinted she doesn't understand our situation and is not really willing to at least try to comprehend what the deal with our license plate was.
But Daniel, the silver tongued devil that he is, swooned her with his charm and soon enough she sent us to the main and last border check.
Group of policeman and soldiers stopped our car and told us to get out. I had to stand against the wall while one of them checked me for any contraband. I was kind of expecting a cavity search. Luckily this check wasn't an all inclusive one, therefore my fears stayed unfulfilled.
Three guys got in the car and turned it inside out. Asking us what is this and what is that. They showed absolutely no hesitation when they got to our carton of smokes and 3 (!) beers, which we bought in the free zone. They took it all and put it right on the pavement.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"It's not allowed." was the answer. "It's from the free zone, you need a permission for that!"
I smelled some serious bullshit. "I thought I don't need a permission for 200 cigarettes."
"...yeah...no, uh, you need one."
When I asked where can I get one, he pointed about 1km back and said "There". So I was ready to go "there" but then he stopped me and with an assholish smile informed me that it's forbidden to go back from here.
If I understood it correctly - you buy stuff, bring it all the way here and nobody says a word during previous checks, then you get here and they take it from you, because you don't have a permission nobody informed you about and you can't return because reasons. By the end of this Kafkaesque adventure you spent money, don't have shit and the policemen get it for free. And they do it to everyone. There were so many ciggies and booze on the ground!
So the Belizian border police is a lot like Robin Hood. The only difference is that they don't only take from the rich, but from the poor as well and keep all the riches for themselves. ...also they don't wear green tights, so it's maybe safer to just call them thieves.
For the whole duration of this little border assfuckery was Daniel in one of the cubicles with yet another officer. I have no idea what they were talking about. But I'm sure he wasn't there for hours just to chill. By the end Daniel had to go back to the first office for the lovely lady.
When they returned both were smiling and joking. What a magic. She stamped everything and when asked about our beloved tobacco products and alcoholic refreshment, she told me to go with her and get it. The policemen were visibly ashamed and told me to hide it from security cameras. Bunch of stealing bastards. Nobody can take our cancer sticks away from us.
It took us more than 5 hours to get from Mexico to Belize. But we made it.


Wednesday 11 January 2017

Leaving Mierdida

Long time since I've posted anything. I will write just the most important things. The story starts in September... I think, I'm not even sure.

Panchito, Daniel and I bought a Volkswagen van. It was supposed to be in perfect condition, and perhaps it was. But because Mexico is...well Mexico, the mechanic poked a huge hole in our oil tank in order to make us come back for repairs.
So after travelling 10 kilometers heading south from Merida, we had to turn around and drive back. To a different mechanic who took about 5 days to fix it, because it was weekend and also national holiday. Bad luck, because I was already staying illegally in the country and more days just meant more problems while crossing the border.
Anyway the car was fixed once again and we were driving south. But guess what? The oil was leaking again, we found out at the same gas station like we did before. I just looked at Panchito, then looked at Daniel who started laughing. I went straight for a beer to the gas station shop and then Daniel promised me, that we will be leaving tomorrow again and that he will fix it himself.
He is a man of his word, after we got back to Merida, those two talented bastards took out the engine, fixed everything and off we went just a day later.

We were driving over night and we were blessed with a beautiful police checkpoint. Two cops stopped us and wanted to see our documents, alright I thought, no problem. What happened next was a comical example of bribery. When there is nothing to take, cops will take anything. They were almost satisfied with taking a big portion of our polished stones and stuff to make bracelets and things to sell on the way. But when they found that Daniel and Panchito are from Chihuahua (everyone there is a narco - that's how the cops said it), Daniel's license was old and broken in two pieces and the license plate is still on the name of the previous owner, they wanted cash. 50 pesos. And that's it, nobody was even mad, that was incredibly cheap. Especially if you consider me being illegal and Panchito having weed on him - none of those things did the cops ever find out, but for me is enough just to think of possible consequences. That's why 50 pesos is almost ridiculous.

Our first stop was in Bacalar. We tried to get a new drivers license for Daniel and new plates for the car. But that ain't easy.
First he needed to visit a doctor, then get a passport photo taken. On top of that he had to pass a driving test, but most importantly he would have to be a citizen of the state of Quintana Roo, to get a license. It didn't take much to fake this, he "only" needed an adress and utility bill from someone from Bacalar. A place where we didn't know anyone. Not an easy task indeed.
But luckily Daniel is Daniel and he can talk his way out of everything, so he secured the adress in no time from a random guy in a cyber café and the bill as well.
Unfortunately we still had to sleep by the Bacalar lagoon, which was nice, but it made me even more nervous due to my already rapidly growing overstay of my visa.

After a short talk with a hippie chick Nikol from Poland we were offered a spot to park our car for the night and it was right by the shore too! The night was nice, lots of music and weed with hippie folks from all over the world. Yes, there was a drum circle involved, also dancing with fire, couple of guitars and dancing with some kind of star shaped cloth. I'm not really into the hippie culture as maybe some of you already know. It just seems pretentious in many cases and... annoying as hell.
One guy - Jimmy - older American, who has taken way too many drugs in his life, has lived in Mexico for 20 years already. I guess he was hiding from the authorities and also was a bit out of it, talking about ancient aliens and stuff, but he was also a great musician therefore it was fun to be in his company. Not only for the music that is, also for the funny space talks.
In the morning Daniel passed his test and we were heading to the city of Chetumal to get new plates.
After lots of paperwork we were ready to put them on the car. What a surprise it was when they told us we would get them in December. That was about three months of waiting.
...fuck it we are leaving for Belize anyway. The border crossing was fun and I can only wish you could have been there.