Mexican Maneuvers

Once reunited with Barry (see earlier post for details on shipping fiasco) we headed south west, from Veracruz, across the country to Acapulco on the Pacific Coast. Mexico had been described to us as "like Colombia 20 years ago". This is not an accolade; Colombia was not a nice place 20 years ago. Fortunately the very worst places were not on our route. However, we did get varying opinions on the level of peril we were setting ourselves up for by driving north along the coast road.

Our first stop after Acapulco was a campsite north of Ixtapa, conveniently located next to a 'nice break' (that's surf-break; see Point Break the movie for a comprehensive education on all things surfing, and bank-robbery); we got stoked and totally ripped some sick walls, I think.


Our next attempt to find a campsite was less successful. We got stuck. We're good at getting stuck, really good. Driving down a track along a dried riverbed trying to find a spot to set up camp we hit some soft sand. Unbeknownst to us our 4WD was broken so Barry stopped. Fortunately we had trees this time so we spent a couple of hours winching ourselves out of our predicament.


We continued along the beautiful Pacific Coast and, after camping on a beachside restaurant's lawn followed by a fair amount of searching the following day, managed to find a surf break known as Punta Burros. It was down a long twisty dirt track, the entrance to which is all but invisible from the road. In fact a lot of those surfing there had got there by boat from a nearby town. Our efforts were more than rewarded by perfect little waves served in a fresh ocean of warm water. The secluded beach also provided an ideal camping spot.


We were then Baja bound so caught a ferry from Mazatlan to La Paz. Dutifully arriving at the port at 4 in the afternoon we then sat around until midnight before being loaded. "It's always difficult" we were reassured. The very calm seas must have also made things difficult because the 12 hour crossing took 18.


Once in Baja California we were blest with more of the beautiful Mexican weather, a little cooler but just as sunny; very difficult of course! After watching the England vs USA World Cup match in the tourist hole of Cabo San Lucas we camped our way up the Baja Peninsula sampling some of the surfing along the way. This time a combination of Google Earth and our GPS made finding our way to the breaks a lot easier. The coast is littered with luxurious holiday and retirement homes in enviable locations in sight of the Ocean. A kind American chap by the name of Drew let us stay at one he was watching over for his business partner. An equally kind old Mexican guy let us camp the following night in the grounds of the offices of a marina-type place. He turned not-so-nice the following morning when his boss found out he'd let us stay for free and put on a comic finger-wagging, foot-stomping-performance presumably for the latter's benefit.


Whilst getting supplies in Loreto we bumped into a Brit/German couple (Bret and Sylvie) who were working on a house in the remote (15 miles down a rocky dirt track) coastal community of San Sebastian. They invited us to camp outside the house and so we got a unique glimpse of an ex-pat community hidden away from the the rest of the world. Fortunately we'd tracked our way in with the GPS (the modern equivalent of a Hansel and Grettel scenario) as people have been know to spend literally hours finding their way back to the road.


Once back on said road, after a hearty breakfast and a bit of DIY repair work to our disintegrating exhaust pipe, we continued to blast our way north through desert, mountains and cactus fields.


Mexico is a huge country; have a look at a globe (rather than a distorted map) to see what I mean. With that vastness comes incredible variety of landscape and climate. It has jungles, forests, deserts, mountains, coasts. The Copper Canyon is bigger than the US's Grand Canyon but few have heard of it. We only got to see a small fraction of Mexico but what we did see was stunning. Unfortunately Mexico is blighted by corruption and plagued by drug trafficking and drug wars (current 2010 drug related murder total in Ciudad Juarez: 1,400). There is a quote from the late Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz: Poor Mexico, So far from God, So Close To The United States. Wherever one lays the blame (many blame not just the US narcotics market but also its 'War on Drugs' for much of the troubles - a saying about omelettes and eggs comes to mind) this has probably never seemed more true. Hopefully things will change because, despite its frustrations (as always its the people who mess things up), Mexico is an amazing country and in many ways sad to say goodbye to.

Central America From The Ground

Now reunited with computers we can bring you some images from the last month or so of our trip. With the car sadly stuffed in a container at the port, we left hot and sweaty Cartagena and flew to hotter and sweatier Panama City.


We rattled through most of Central America in the frosty air conditioned confines of a bus. We only had a limited time in Central America so we chose to spend the majority of that time exploring one country. That country was to be Guatemala so we cruised on through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador fairly rapidly.


On arrival in Guatemala we headed straight to the rather charming town of Antigua. Set at a moderate altitude it had a very pleasant climate. Whilst reasonably touristy it certainly wasn't spoilt by the fact. It also had the added bonus of a free meal in one of the smartest restaurants in town (thanks to Tom and Tim chatting up the guy who owned the place).


From Antigua we went north to the pretty town of Flores, the old town of which sits on a spit of land reaching into a large lake.


We spent an afternoon there wandering round, taking a boat ride, swimming in the lake and sweating profusely whilst sitting still.


The following day we arose at 4am and got in a minibus bound for the Mayan ruins of Tikal. We'd heard great things about Tikal but having done Machu Picchu were suspicious that old-hands like us would be so easily impressed. We were wrong. Tikal was quite incredible. Nestled in, and rising from, the jungle, these giant ruins were clearly someone's attempt to show off.


Star Wars fans can be forgiven for confusing the site with the jungle moon of Yavin 4.


Being set in the jungle we encountered all sorts of plants and animals including howler monkeys, frogs, racoon type things and rather friendly tarantulas.



From Tikal we headed south again to Rio Dulce. It was just how you'd imagine a tropical river to be. Very green and lush with trees growing out of the river's edges and sweltering heat and humidity. We stayed at a place built on stilts tucked away up a small inlet and paddled around the rivers edges in dugout canoes.


We took a boat trip out to the Caribbean coast and the town of Livingston.


On returning to Antigua we visited a nearby volcano and attempted to cook sausages on a fresh lava flow.


Two days later the volcano blew it's top and brought the surrounding area to a standstill for a few days. Guatemala was then hit by a hurricane and a large building in Guatemala City was swallowed by a sink hole. By this time however we were across the border and into Mexico (country number 13). We stopped for a few days in the beautiful city of Oaxaca where we enjoyed a bit of culture, art and finally good coffee.


We took a trip to see the largest (in circumference) tree in the world - it's very big - a traditional rug making factory and Zapotec or Mixtec ruins - not sure which; our tour guide was nuts and I don't think it's wise to believe a word she said.


Having thoroughly exhausted what Oaxaca had to offer, time had come for us to head to the port town of Veracruz to attempt to reunite ourselves with our trusty traveller The Baroness.

Free Barry

Stressful. Not entirely unexpected, but stressful none the less. The colonial town of Cartagena is, as our blonde (and ginger) bombshell described, both incredibly pretty and predictably infested by parasitic street hawkers. It is also so spectacularly humid that you are probably at your dryest when standing under the shower. These conditions are not particular conducive to handling the Colombian unitards responsible for stealing our money and wantingly withholding any and all information related to freight shipping. South America, for all it´s scenic beauty and overwhelming friendliness, can be characterised by the unimaginable stupidity and complacency of it´s customs agents and officials. However, fast forward to the land of Tequila and tacos if you want to experience Latin America in all it´s glorious ineptitude. As the World Cup is approaching, the football one for those of you who think it´s upper middle class to pretend to not know, like all self-respecting footie fans I´ve been scouring the net for snippets of information I can impressively regurgitate in the pub. And I couldn´t help noticing a long standing contradiction that the international community needs to address. Mexico has qualifed for the World Cup, which is perfectly fair. They are a decent side with a good footballing history and a passionate fan base. However they qualified as one of the "North American, Central American and Carribean" teams, and worse still they are classified as North American. This is untrue. Doubleuntrue. The geography is irrelevant, they are clearly South American. Like all of Central America and in all likelihood the majority of the States too. In fact I strongly suspect we will not actually cross into North America until we reach Canada. And maybe then not until the French part. Merde.

Anyway as you have probably summised we are now in the latter stages of negotiating Barry´s release from Mexican customs. We had been told by our Colombian customs agent we could pay the shipping agent (Seaboard Marine) when our car arrived in Veracruz, and that on arrival we would have 5 days to clear our car before we would start incurring fees for the non-returnance of the ships container. Unfortunately customs agents only operate in their own country, so we had to find a Mexican agent to custom clear our car. The agency we spoke with informed us that we had to pay a deposit, in addition to the shipping agents fee, for them to to release the Bill of Lading to us. The Bill of Lading lists the contents of the container, ie 1 * Barry, white. It also appears to represent to the customs officals what the sun represented to the Pre-Spanish civilisations, the beginning of life on earth. So, reluctantly we rocked up to the shipping agents on Monday with a proverbial shed load of Mexican mula, only to be told that they didn´t take cash but that we could deposit the money at a bank. A little frustrating but, like a good doctor, we knew we would need patience. Unfortunately their fee needed to be paid in dollars, paying them the peso equivalent would be "impossible". A term we´ve grown accustomed to. Now although the shipping agent is confidant in it´s ability to withhold the Bill of Lading and subsequently my favourite member of Team Pan-Americana, they are not responsible for helping us with the custom clearing. They did happily remind us though of our 5 day deadline to release the car, and then gleefully informed us that even though we had been told nothing could be done over the weekend, this counted against the 5 days. Oh and also that Monday, the third day, was a bank holiday in America so they wouldn´t accept our payment, which we currently couldn´t make anyway, until Tuesday. Super.

So we decided to meet with the customs agents we had spoken with to start petitioning for Barry´s release (or whatever it is they actually do) with the hopelessly optimistic view that they might be able to help with our payment issue as well. It is here we learnt of the holy reverence in which the Bill of Lading is held. Nothing can be done without it our agent passionately decried. Worse still Barry´s release would take at least 5 days and the process, predictably "very difficult", would cost rougly the GDP of China. Obviously in addition to this we would incur the daily costs for the non-returned container. Hmm. We returned to Seafraud Marine to have another crack at their payment, hoping they could come with us to a bank where we could make a cash deposit. Instead they helpfully phoned a money exchange house, explained to them what we needed to do, wrote the address down for us and gestured to the door. At this point I broke ranks, more on that later. Tom and Phil dutifully took a cab to the address indicated, and then spent the next hour trying to find the actual address, only to be told that the Money Exchange House could not take any money from us. The boys left the House, with the Money, they had wanted to Exchange, a little perplexed.

This morning we went directly to a bank, a big bank, probably the biggest bank in Veracruz, a bank that our shipping agent had an account with, to try again. They happily accepted our deposit (which could be paid in pesos) but not the agent fee. "Que differenza?" you might reasonably ask. Well, the deposit is simply to cover any damage they may have caused to their container while mishandling our car, however the fee needs to be paid directly to Florida in northen South America, and can only be done in dollars. So be it. "Please change our pesos into dollars at the exorbitant rate advertised on your tacky sign please" we confidantly requested. Feel free to take a moment to try and guess the answer. You´ve probably got it right, but if not I admire your posiitve outlook on life and genuine belief in the goodness of humanity. The answer was in fact no, they wouldn´t change our money. "But you´re a bank, there´s a bloody sign advertising the exchange rate" we laughed. Still no. "You need to open an account". They said. "Well, how do we open an account?" we begged. "You can´t."

Eventually, we managed to procure the dollars needed to pay Seafraud. I won´t say how, but if you ever see Phil staring vacantly into the distance, please do not question him as to why. Seafraud were at least satisifed enough to reluctantly hand over our Bill of Lading, unfortunately Phil and I had had to shoot off to another appointment so did not witness the official handing over ceremony, but Tom said it was quite spectacular with a fireworks display to put Beijing to shame and the appearance of several minor celebrities. My earlier disappearance and Phil and I´s subsequent meeting were to follow up on the infamous and underused "Plan B". Prior to arriving in Veracruz we had contacted every company we had dealt with in the UK and Buenos Aires to see if they knew anyone in Mexico who didn´t make Wayne Rooney look like a dangerous intellectual. And shortly before our arrival two of them had come back with the same name. Step forward Victor Lau. Unfortunately Viktor was a busy man and hard to track down, but when we got him on the phone he was refreshingly direct, assertive and, God forbid, proactive. His proficiency in English also made us wonder whether he was not in fact Mexican but European, potentially Dutch. While Phil and I gushed over his claim he could release Barry in a day or two, Tom extracated himself from the Handing Over Ceremony After Party and joined us with the Bill of Lading. In a whirlwind of activity Viktor completed several of the steps that should have taken days, procured us our certificate to allow us to drive in Mexico and arranged for our container to be manoevered to the customs office where, with us present tomorrow morning, it will be opened, customs inspected and (as long as they don´t find Tom´s imported hair growth hormone drugs) released, all in a matter of hours. I should really say "touch wood" or something similar but I really don´t feel I need to. Why?

"Viktor, I can´t place your accent, are you originally from Europe?"
"No, I am Mexican. But my parents were German"

Forget the A-Team, the Ghostbusters or 118 118. If you need efficiency, contact ze Germans.

Uber und aus.