Teacher on Two Wheels

Thursday 12/20/07 Outside Mazatenango, Guatemala

I knew my entrance into Guatemala wouldn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped when the man at the Mexican immigration desk in Ciudad Hidalgo saw my bike and rolled his eyes.

With his feet propped up on a stool and his body slumped in a nap-friendly chair, he asked for my Mexican visa. I gave it to him. He looked at it and tossed it back to me.

“Here. Go take the visa to the bank. North Bank, two blocks away. Pay this amount,” he said as he pointed to my Mexican entrance fee receipt.

“But that’s the amount I paid when I entered Mexico,” I said. I was confused.

He glared at me for a second before speaking. “I said go to the bank. Take your bicycle and go to the bank. It closes soon. If it closes before you get there, you can just pay it tomorrow.” The man slumped back in his chair and stared at the wall ahead of him. He had said all he was willing to say.

*****

The teller at the bank was confused when I showed him my visa.

“What? Where is your other form, the one that looks like this?” He asked as he showed me a form I didn’t have.

“I never got that one,” I said. “Maybe they kept it when I crossed into Mexico from Matamoros?”

“Go back to the immigration office. I can’t help you until you have a different form.”

I started to get frustrated. I looked at my watch. The bank would close in 30 minutes. I rushed back to the immigration office and the stern immigration officer I spoke to earlier was eating his lunch. As I started to speak to him, he held out his hand and, with his mouth full of beans, stopped me.

“Do you see I’m eating? Wait until I finish my lunch.”

I glanced at my watch. Suddenly, I realized that the man was trying to hold me up just long enough for the bank to close.

“Look, the man at the bank said I need a different form. Please give it to me so I can go to the bank quickly. It will close soon,” I said in broken Spanish.

The man slammed down his plate.

“I don’t have another form! I don’t know what that idiot at the bank is talking about. Go back there and ask him what he wants.”

I didn’t have time to keep running back and forth to the bank.

“Can I please have the phone number for this office so if there is a problem the man from the bank can call you?” I asked.

“There’s no phone here,” the man said.

I looked at the cell phone clipped to his belt.

“Please, sir. If there is a problem, you can talk to him. I need to go to Guatemala today.”

He paused a moment.

“Get me a pen,” he said.

*****

When I got to the bank, the teller repeated what he told me before: I needed some other form that I didn’t have. I passed him the number of the immigration officer and asked him to call. After he made the call, he came back and told me to return to the immigration office. I looked at my watch. The bank would close in 10 minutes.

I raced up to the immigration office and it seemed as if the official wasn’t expecting me to return. He saw me, said something mean about my mother, and slammed the door to the immigration office. I laughed in disbelief. There wasn’t much else I could do. Another immigration official saw his partner’s tantrum and I asked him for help.

“Please, sir. He won’t help me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I need. This is crazy.”

“Come here,” the man said as he opened the door to another room. I followed him inside. “Give me your passport.”

I handed him my passport and he opened it to a blank page. He pulled out a big stamp and slammed it down on the page.

“OK, go to Guatemala. Good-bye.”

*****

It was only after I started pushing my bike across the bridge that separates Mexico from Guatemala that I realized that the first immigration official was trying to squeeze a bribe from me. He was trying to frustrate me and waiting for me to try to pay my way out of confusion. It was the first time on the trip that anyone was other than overly friendly to me.

I passed through immigration in Guatemala without a hitch, found an ATM to get some of the local currency, quetzals, and rode off down dusty city streets, intoxicated with the buzz that comes from entering a new country, smelling a new place, and trying to decode a new environment.