May 11th, again
“Frightening experience on CA-13 from Belize to Tikal…Are we wrong to think that this is very unusual behavior for a legitimate checkpoint? Why ask the woman to exit the vehicle but not the male driver? And wouldn’t a real police vehicle have license plates?…Is our concern overblown. Any feedback?”
“I can’t fathom why anyone would chose to rent a car in a country where they can’t speak the language…”
“I speak Spanish and have never considered driving a rental on that route. Along with others I have recommended against it dozens of times on this forum. If you had come to us before your trip you might have decided against driving yourselves.”
“[our hotel host] claimed that just a few weeks ago a tour bus was swarmed by armed gunmen in military garb, and the passengers were relieved of all but their passports.”
This is from a Trip Advisor thread and frankly, it makes me sound very irresponsible for attempting such a risky journey. The question of relative danger is a real quandary for travelers.
What the TA forum ignored, however, was the hundreds of happy renters who drive that route every year. I wondered, if getting robbed was a done deal, why would the highly rated Crystal Auto Rental let you take their car without even a warning? And if tour buses were getting pulled over, why not just rent a car? After all, if you can’t trust people in uniform, can you trust your bus or taxi driver?
Back when I was a teacher in China a student once asked me if he needed to buy a flak jacket in order to attend university in California. Naturally, I said… Yes, yes he should. Just kidding, but I wanted to – but not for safety reasons. He was more likely to die in a car wreck on the way to school or from the polluted air in his own home city, for that matter.
A while back a coworker of mine went to a resort in Mexico. When I asked him if he had gotten a chance to visit the nearby city he shook his head.
“My buddy was too scared.”
“Of…?”
He shrugged. “Gangs, I guess.”
I was incredulous. His buddy went all the way to Mexico to hide inside a resort. Just to give him the benefit of the doubt, I looked it up. Of course there are specific, limited parts of Mexico that are risky but… Playa del Carmen?
“Mexican officials said late Wednesday that the Caribbean resort city of Playa del Carmen is safe, despite a U.S. security alert. … “We do not know why the U.S. government decided to emit this alert,” the government said. Playa del Carmen is near Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations…”
The point is…
Traveling around the world is statistically no more dangerous than traveling across your hometown” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding
Besides, when I was robbed in Cambodia I didn’t even get hurt though the thugs got a little scraped up when they crashed their moto into a traffic cop while trying to flee my pursuit. I shudder to think what damage I might have inflicted had I caught up with them.
Anyway, let’s not forget my hyper-vigilance.
Around 5:00pm we rolled over the border into Melchor de Mancos Guatemala. The first thing I noticed was that all the signs were in Spanish. As I set about to translating them in my head I noticed the second thing: all the speed limit signs on highway CA-13 would also need to be translated from “40 kph” to approximately “100 kph.” I learned this useful fact from a local taxi that I followed.
No one noticed; no one cared (not even the possibly-fake cop trucks along the road) – except maybe our hosts because we weren’t going to make it to the rendezvous by the agreed upon 6:00pm. I felt kinda bad about it. We had tried to use the car phone to call but the signal wasn’t strong enough on the border to complete a call. Only my suspicion that they were in fact thug kidnappers kept my spirits high. This may sound strange to my reasonable, level-headed readers but I assure you, it wasn’t vanity about watching James beat them up that buoyed my spirits.
I am safety conscious at all times. If they were thugs and if we were late, they’d probably get suspicious and miss the appointment. All the better for us. Better to win a fight by missing it than to lose a fight by missing it, I always say.
La Isla de Flores sits in the middle of a lake and is connected to the rest of the city by a two lane bridge. As you probably recall, our meeting place was supposed to be at the end of the bridge by the “I <heart> Peten> sign.
A single street light illuminated the darkness around the sign where several shadowed figures mingled. I parked the Jeep not far away and stepped out to survey the situation. One of the figures, who was sitting on the curb, appeared to be female and Guatemalan. It seemed like a match. I approached said figure and warily said, “Tania?”
The young lady rose quickly. “Jo?”
The next moment we were shaking hands and hugging – I’m not sure why I leaned in but being in Latin America, it seemed like the right gesture.
I apologized for being so late (in English since her English was good) but she waved it off. As it turned out, her friend (the other host) was still “making a massage” for someone and would be another half hour at least.
Nothing makes you feel better about being late than discovering you were comparatively early. I think they felt good about it too because they knew we were late as well. When both parties are late, it’s a win-win.
In fact, the only thing I felt bad about was saying that “we definitely weren’t vegetarians” when she asked us about food preferences…turns out she was Vegan. I didn’t know there were Vegans in Central America but it was kinda a relief because once I found out that she was Vegan I knew she probably wasn’t a thug.
So while her friend finished making the massage, we had a delicious dinner of grilled meats and tortillas at a street-side restaurant while she unpretentiously sipped a mango smoothie.
As we would learn later we were their first Airbnb guests which explained why Tania had taken their car to go buy pillows for us while Nino rode along in our car to guide us to their house. All was now clear. They weren’t thugs at all. They were two Vegan girls fresh out of college. Both worked in tourism (restaurant/hostel) and on the side were a masseuse and a yoga instructor, respectively. They had asked to meet further west in Flores because they didn’t know we were coming from the east. In short, they were just casual and inexperienced hosts who turned out to be exceptionally kind and hospitable.
Had we been more paranoid, we wouldn’t have met them. And we wouldn’t have ended up having a charming breakfast the next morning with their Argentinian friends.
Besides, even if they were covert thugs, I was sure James could have beaten them up.