20/12/2017, we are ready to cross the border to Guatemala from Mexico.
How to get there? You can take a minibus that brings you to the border, but what you must always remember: you have to get a stamp in your passport that you have left Mexico before you can enter Guatemala. You would think that the two custom houses are close to each other, nope, you are wrong! They are 4 km apart, so if you have missed the first one, you will have to walk back for 4 km (like us).
At the Mexican border they will try to make you pay a fee (250 MXN/pp) to exit the country. If you've entered Mexico by plane, like us, you don't have to pay it because it is already included in your plane ticket. Just try to explain to them that you've already paid it. Normally they will try again, but with us, they just stamped it and let us go.
Entering Guatemala. If you want you can just walk across and enter without anyone asking any questions, but if you don't want to have problems when you exit it's best to get it stamped. Some of the custom officers will try to make you pay 3 dollars (not official!), but we were lucky and they didn't ask anything from us. If they ever ask it to you, you must ask for a receipt and they will let you go without collecting.
Step 1 in Guatemala for Jonas: buy a sim card so you're always available. It took us about half an hour and then we were ready for our 4,5 hour drive (with one transfer in Huehuetenango) to Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela). We arrived after dark in Xela and went straight to our hostel, Kasa Kamelot. They gave us the family room, it fitted 3 double beds and two single beds, because they didn't had a normal room left. You didn't hear us complain! After two night there, we changed to Casa Seibel, an old colonial house that's been changed into a hostel.
We must admit, we didn't do much the next couple of days. We decided that it was best that we would work and just relaxed a little bit. It was Christmas for us as well. For Christmas Eve our hostel kept a Christmas dinner, an initiative by the volunteers that worked there. We were with a total of 14 people from 7 different countries, so it was a cultural exchange night as well. In Guatemala it is a tradition to light fireworks at midnight, so we went to the rooftop bar of a hostel nearby, hostel Kiwi, to watch. It was amazing! We have seen a lot of fireworks, but never that much at once. We were completely surrounded by it!
Christmas itself was just a relaxing day, sitting in the sun, going to the park and have some street food... The regulars you always do on Christmas right? ;)
Comentários