There seems to be no logical reason why the Zapatistas conquered San Christobal de las Casas in the province of Chiapas in 1994. This city is not Mexican anyway. Clearly being in the hands of some militant tree-huggers and flower-power jerks it has as much charm to me as a smelly joss stick. The houses as such would be beautiful in their colonial style, but each one comprises a shop with batik clothes, after-marked dreadlocks or a “find-myself”-coffee-shop. Nothing Mexican at all. The tourists who think that they have the adventure of their life (God knows what kind of mushrooms they ate) all have a tattoo done in order to safe this magical and TRUE Mexican experience (for new readers: I am ironic here).

However, after the Cruiser was thoroughly washed and waxed, we left this stronghold of peace and made our way towards the springs at Agua Azul. Which was beautiful. And too touristy (but nice to have a swim). With a French girl who had to hurry since she had an appointment with a tattoo artist (what else?) in the back seat, we then headed to Palenque, another pyramid village (this time Mayas if I am not mistaken). Impressive and nice, but – guess what – touristy as hell.

Both David and I had enough of the 500 boys and girls trying to sell fresh Bananas to self-finding tourists and were fed up with the old hombres wanting to guard our car at each stop.  We had to leave Chiapas for the sake of our individualistic souls. Our map indicated a border crossing to Guatemala some 200 kilometres South of Palenque. The river seemed to be small, so either it would be possible to cross it or there would be a bridge.

Well, once we were there the only option was to charter some 4 small boats to carry the 3000 kilos payload of the Cruiser (one boat per wheel). The river was huge and there was no bridge in sight. We negotiated with some local “capitanos” and could not get lower than 3’000 Pesos (some 300 US-$). On the one hand, that was quite a high price; on the other hand we were not sure whether the plan would work out. Should we risk the Land-Cruiser and the world-trip?

Nope. One fisherman told us about a possible border crossing some 2.5 hours further South. He also warned us of Zapatistas being operative on this area and that they might establish road-blocks. “Es muy peligroso”, he said.

Having our precocious day, we decided to drive back to the last police station we had seen and to inquire whether we could drive on towards Guatemala without being killed, kidnapped and sold into slavery.

The police officer was very nice (they all are in Mexico!) and told us that it should not be a problem during day-time. “However”, he said, “don’t drive during the night under no circumstances!”

With about 3 more hours of daylight we set off and after passing 3 military check-points and after being searched only once (superficially) we made it to the village of Oricaba, which was of course not indicated on any of the three maps we had at our disposal. Now, where was the border? Where was the custom officer?

We asked at the local “tienda” where we also bought some more water. The shop assistant told us that we had to take the dirt road just next to his shop and follow it for about 3 kilometres. Aha?

We were not quite sure whether he had just made the joke of the day but decided to follow his direction. There was no sign indicating anything like an international border. After a while we saw some white taxis waiting in a corn field. We asked the card-playing drivers whether this was really the border and got assured that we had just crossed over to Guatemala. No officials were in sight. Nobody wanted to see our passports and we did not even get a stamp in our precious “Carnet de Passage”.

Still we had some daylight and since on military guy at the last control in Mexico had told us that one hour after the border (ha, ha, “border”…) would be a village with a hotel, we drove on.

The dirt-road was washed out and extremely bumpy. Since we had two boys hitch-hiking on the Cruiser’s rear bumper, we had to drive slowly. We came through colourful villages, saw people washing clothes in rivers and enjoyed the sunset through the green jungle. But there was no village. Our bumper-riding guests told us that it was about 30 minutes more, and see there: just when the sun had completely vanished we arrived in Playa Grande, a busy small town. For the first time in 3 hours we could find our position on the map.

We then watched out for the hotel. And that’s where I am sitting right now typing our story. In a beautiful hotel which would easily fit in a posh Swiss mountain village. Amazing. And quite wonderful to have a cold shower with sufficient water pressure.