Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #7: Tapachula, Mexico, to Ratalhuleu, Guatemala

Dear Reader, Today involved a lot of standing around at the border. And then some crazy driving in Guatemala to get to our hotel. We’re tired. We’re cranky. We’re ready to be home already. We spent five hours at the border. Getting our personal visa stamps to exit Mexico and then to enter Guatemala went smoothly enough. I first wrote “went smoothly” but it occurred to me that you would think that that meant that it went smoothly, as in when things go smoothly in the United States. So I qualified my statement by writing “smoothly enough.” Because first the …

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Florida to Nicaragua Road Trip #6: Coatzacoalcos to Tapachula, Mexico, and the Guatemalan Border

Dear Reader, Today we drove from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, from sea level up to 3,300 ft and then back down to sea level. The roads were primarily two lane, sometimes potholed, and for the most part very crowded until we got past the large town of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the highlands, about halfway through our day’s travel. If the cost of tolls is any indication of the quality of the roads, today we spent $21 on tolls, yesterday we spent $40, and the day before, when we were bypassing Mexico City on those lovely roads, …

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