Friday, November 25, 2005

We had assumed there would be some sort of tourist facilities in La Technica. There were not. We had assumed that even if there were no fancy bus, or even chicken bus, we would find some kind of "people's transportation," like a collectivo. We did not. There was no reason, I guess, for our stream of wrong assumptions to stop when we got to Bethel.

We had assumed during that long walk that Bethel would be a big-time tourist stopover, like Palenque town, or Tijuana. Not nice, but bursting with options for sleeping and eating and traveling onward. This isn't our ideal type of town, but it would meet our needs, and we were already imagining that we would pay a bit extra to ensure we got hot showers. We needed showers more than anything.

My t-shirt was entirely soaked through and there was a scum of sweat and dust on my scalp. (Oh, the joys of being natural - I can wash that right out without worrying about a thing!) And we were sore. Our legs creaked from the walk. Eagle Creek makes lovely travel packs, but they're not ideal for hiking and mine had carved welts into my shoulders and tired out my back. A shower. That's what I wanted most.

But Bethel was no Tijuana. There is one hotel in town, and we followed the "Casa Blanca" signposts through the rapidly cooling, smoky evening air, talking of showers and food and passport stamps. After poking about for some time, we encountered a woman near where we thought the hotel might be. Michael asked her, "Donde esta la oficina?" ("Where is the office?")

"No hay oficina," she said. ("There is no office.")

There was a general pause.

Then Michael asked her, "Hay cuartos?" ("Are there rooms?")

She led us around the side of what seemed to be her house, skirting a half-built structure, ducking under a tree and winding around a giant water tank to a building made of green boards. Standing on a narrow cement skirt edging the building, she took out a key to open a red door marked "8." Yes, yes, the toolshed. But we're looking for a hotel room, I thought. When she had the door open, we peered into the room.

"Pequena," she said with an apologetic little laugh. But small was the least of my worries. I'm used to small rooms. You should see our bedroom in Spanish Harlem. No, small was not the problem, although it did not help. The problem was that the walls were made of filthy green boards, and the last of the evening's light was shining through gaps between them. Gaps that made me remember the hand-sized black tarantula we'd seen just a few kilometers from there. A mosquito net hung tied in a knot above the bed. A nice touch, but it didn't bode well - I've never been provided a mosquito net and not needed it. The floor was plain concrete. The mattress was a thin pallet resting on a net of creaky springs. The bed, scarcely larger than a twin, held a single, deflated-looking pillow. Later we peeked under the pilowcase and found a likeness of Mickey Mouse darkened by mold. There was, of course, no bathroom.

Until then I had always thought I could sleep anywhere. I never thought of myself as a princess, but I guess I am. I was disappointed in myself, but I thought that room was just plain icky. She wanted Q50. We still had no idea how much things generally cost in Guatemala. She could have been gouging us within an inch of our lives. But it was the only hotel in town. Anyway, the sheets were clean, and there was a table fan, and there was no point in being rude about things. So we smiled and put our bags down - thereby eliminating almost all floor space - and gave her a Q100 note. Naturally, she had to go and get change from somewhere and while she did that, we looked for the bathrooms.

A little way away from the block of rooms was a small, square outhouse with a toilet on each side. The water tank above them was evidently empty, because both toilets were unflushed and unflushable. The showers we could not find. The best I could do was take off my clammy t-shirt and put on a dry one.

It was late, but we decided to see if we could find Migracion anyway. This we did easily, because Bethel is a tiny, tiny little town. We were pleased to find it open. The room was simple and plain, with a counter separating the supplicant area from the small two-desk official area. We said "Buenos tardes" and presented our passports. The Migracion guy found our exit stamps from Mexico, dated the same day. He wanted to know where our entry stamps were. We tried to explain that that's what we wanted from him. Yes, but where are your entry stamps? How can you be in the country without stamps? Well, we left Mexico today, we said. And now we are here, and we need stamps. But you need Guatemalan stamps. Yes, exactly. Please give them to us. No, no, no, he said. I will explain. He held out both his hands. Here is Mexico, and here is Guatemala...

It was not going well. Perhaps our Spanish was at fault. Then some other guy came in, a big boss type, and our friend told him we were in the country without stamps. The other guy apparently thought our guy was making too much of things and shrugged and said more or less, "who cares?" The third guy in the office, who had just hung up the phone, concurred. Who cares? But we needed our stamps. Then one of them asked us where we were going next and we said Xela.

Ahh! Then it all started happening. Forms were filled out. Passports were stamped. I can only assume they thought we wanted exit stamps? And that's why the one guy was upset that we had no entry stamp? Whatever. We got ninety days. Our form said we were going to Flores (Flores!) but we didn't argue, we just took our passports and got out of there.

There is no bank in Bethel. But one can change money with the man in the counterfront store next to Migracion. Do not ask him if he's giving you a good rate. He'll become very offended and breathe liquor fumes on you while he explains that you can feel free to go to a bank in Flores if you want a better rate. And I suppose he has a point. We changed US dollars with him and after doing a lot of confusing math, determined that he had given us the same rate as the La Technica guy. We still didn't know whether we were being taken advantage of, and for how much, but consistency is a good sign. (Isn't it?)

Then, dinner. The restaurant looked decent enough. Nothing fancy, just a concrete room painted white with six tables. It was empty. A woman emerged from what appeared to be her home in the back and asked us what we wanted to eat. We asked if there was chicken. She said no. We asked her what there was. She said carne (meat) or eggs. We went with the carne, and sat down while she sent her daughter out for onions and set about cooking for us. I have to admire the guts of her asking what we'd like to eat knowing she only had carne and eggs. I mean, what are the odds?

After a while, we each received a plate of thin bistek in a tomato sauce, black beans, rice, and farmer's cheese. And tortillas. We toasted each other a happy Thanksgiving and ate. It was a decent meal. A restaurant meal, but at the same time home-cooked. We shivered while we ate, or I did, anyway, because there was no door to the restaurant, just an open doorway, and the evening had gotten cold. In the kitchen, two older daughters were teaching the youngest to count. The bill came to Q40 for the two plates and two icy-cold sodas.

Exhausted, cold, and with nothing else to do, we went to bed at seven. Michael was about a foot taller than the bed was long, and this problem was made worse by the mosquito net barrier. And it was not really a bed for two, even two Guatemalans. If it had been flat, it might have been bearable, but its springs sagged like a hammock, so we could barely take advantage of what room there was.

It was a long night. In Oaxaca I called our room an aural Mystery Spot because it was impossible to understand the acoustical phenomenon that allowed us to hear everything that went on in the bathrooms. At the Casa Blanca, there was no mystery about why we could hear every sigh and bed-shifting of the guy in the next room - it was because there were only a few indifferently-nailed boards between our heads and his. The mattress was thin and it was impossible to lie on one side for more than an hour before the soreness of the springs pressing into us forced us to turn over.

Oh, and if you are a city person and think of roosters as nature's alarm clock, crowing conveniently at dawn and dawn only, well, think again. Roosters crow whenever they damn well please and if that's all night long and right outside your door, too bad for you.

We got up shortly after the sun came through our walls. The shower turned out to be bucket style, outside, with the flimsiest of curtains. I'm no stranger to the bucket shower, but at least give me some privacy. We went down to investigate the bus out of town. Flores, the girl in the bus area told us, was the only place we could go. No collectivos to somewhere else? Combis? No. Only busses to Flores. She sold us two tickets and told us the bus would arrive at 11:00. Or 11:30.

At a quarter to eleven, we left our room and returned the key to the proprietress. For some reason, she looked confused when we did so. I got another look at her house in the daylight and realized it wasn't much different from the hotel she was running, and I felt a little ashamed of myself for complaining so much about our room. But ashamed or not, I was still sore and covered with a day's worth of dried sweat and I wanted to get out of there.

And then we saw a bus! The driver came running out of the restaurant we'd eaten at the night before. "Flores?" he asked.

"Si! Si!" we showed him our ticket. (Pay attention here - we showed him our ticket.) He told us we could get on the bus, that we'd be leaving as soon as he'd paid for his lunch. This we did. It was a decent bus. No ADO, but fine. And completely empty. We spent quite a while choosing our seats. After we sat, the driver and his assistant got on the bus.

It would be Q50, he told us. But we already paid Q60 at the office. Oh, that's fine then. He asked to see our tickets again and we presented them. No, no, he said, this is for a different bus company. We had to take our bags and get down off the bus. He could have at least burst our bubble before we so lovingly placed our backpacks on the bus just so. When we went back to the bus area, the girl who had sold us the tickets was laughing at us and told us that wasn't our bus. I had a hard time finding the humor in the situation. It wasn't our bus, but it was Q10 cheaper than our bus and it's leaving now. It should be our bus.

At 11:15, a chicken bus pulled up. It was mostly full, and there were bundles piled on the roof. The driver, a grimy man in an astonishingly filthy white t-shirt tried to get us to come onto his bus with the same tickets. There'll be lots of stops where you can take photographs, he said. We said no. If that nice bus was cheaper than what we'd paid, why should we sacrifice an unspecified number of prepaid Quezales to get on that chicken bus? (Later we found out the chicken bus was only Q25.)

Our bus didn't show up until after 11:30, and it turned out to be a tourist mini-bus. Full of backpacker kids who'd taken a morning lancha from Frontera Corozal and had probably come from Palenque on the 6:00 a.m. tourist bus. All, like, showered and everything. And we had to wait for them all to troop into Migracion and get their stamps and didn't get on the road until after noon. I was pissed. I was filthy and exhausted and in no mood to be lumped in with the gringos. Why not the nice, clean, empty Guatemalan bus, for Q10 cheaper? Or the grubby but interesting chicken bus for Q35 cheaper? Why the expensive tourist mini-bus? And it wasn't even a nice mini-bus. Our seat was broken and it cut into the backs of my already-sore legs while I fumed.

There's a spectrum of backpackers. At one end you have the "Oh, look, more gringos! Thank God! Hey, gringos, let's go over to Cafe Nolocals and drink imported beer all night and reminisce about Khao San Road!" type, and at the other end you have the "Oh my God, why are these gringos talking to me? Can't they seem I'm practically Guatemalan? I carry a hammock with me and my flip-flops are made of old tires and I'm dozens of people's first white person ever!" I found out on that mini-bus ride that I'm somewhat closer to the second end of the spectrum than the first, except brown. All that gringo yammering was driving me nuts.

I mean, how did we end up on that bus? Hadn't we walked eight kilometers through the jungle? Gotten a ride with some guys with a shotgun? Spent the night in a shack surrounded by roosters? Why did the ticket girl think we needed to be safely ensconced with the Europeans and Americans and Israelis? I was in no mood. I'm not sure why I was so irritated, but I was. I felt resentful of everyone around me and poor Michael knew he had to leave me alone. Whatever. At least we were leaving Bethel. We had spent a lot of time and sweat trying to avoid going to Flores, but it's not such a bad place. I've been there and I know that there we can find a shower.

All this is not to say that I'm not having a good time, because I really am. I love being on the road.

 

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The mist rising off the grass in the morning was an amazing sight.

Our room at the Casa Blanca.

Michael in our doorway at the Casa Blanca.

Shower facilities.

Michael washing his face at the sink.

Toilets.

Turkeys taking a stroll in front of our door.

This is to keep us safe while we're in.

This is to keep our stuff safe while we're out.

Yes, there was gum! (Closeup of the baseboard next to the bed.)

One of many starving dogs.

Bethel's Migracion office.

Guatemalan passport stamp.