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.