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For those of you keeping track of our border crossings, we crossed into Guatemala this morning. If you can believe it, this border crossing was even easier and quicker than when we entered Belize.

Tikal - Guatemala

Dbg
2005-11-04 19:47:18

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March 16

For those of you keeping track of our border crossings, we crossed into Guatemala this morning. If you can believe it, this border crossing was even easier and quicker than when we entered Belize.

We arrived at the border about an hour after it opened. Belize immigration required us to pay about $19 US in exit fees, customs gave us a quick stamp indicating that we were taking our Fuso out of the country (although they didn't bother to check to see if we actually were), and we were on our way.

At the Guatemala border, we had to change some dollars for Guatemalan Quetzals then pay $49Q (exchange rate here is 7.4Q to 1 USD) to have our tires sprayed with insecticide. This included our spare tires too! Then we were directed to park at the border gate itself so that the guard could keep an eye on our vehicle while were did our Guatemalan paper work.

Immigration was quick, a stamp in the passports and a fee of $20Q. Then inside the customs office to fill out our vehicle documents and check our vehicle title. The inspector pocked her head into the camper to verify what it was as she didn't want to climb up into it, a payment of $40Q to the bank and we had our documents. One hour to accomplish everything.

The big surprise came as we drove the road towards Tikal. Everyone we asked told us the same thing - that this road was really bad. This was quite an over statement. Although it was dirt, and very dusty, we were able to drive faster than on the road to the ruins at Caracol in Belize. The real surprise came in about 20 miles when the "bad" road turned into pavement. We think that people told us this lie because they really wanted us to pay to take one of their tour vans to Tikal and didn't want us to know just how easy it was to do it ourselves.

So after detouring to the town of Santa Elena/Flores to run errands, we arrived at the ...