filmakers without borders

So I'm sure you're all dying to hear about our high speed car chase and the machine guns so better late than never and better alive than dead. Where do we start?

We were in Mexico. We swam in the pacific, filmed our first shots, had our car searched in three places, and were chased by dogs. At borders, dogs and men behave differently than they do elsewhere.

The border of Mexico and Guatemala is seperated by a river and a bridge and is a magical place called Guatmex. Guatmex has a lot of employees. Maybe 200. They all want to help you cross the border and practically lay down in front of your car to get you to stop. All of them have very nice badges that look like press passes and are lamenated. They're insistant, persistant, and they like Pearl Jam. If you've ever left your car door open for five minutes and every fly in the vacinity enters you might have a slight understanding of what these guys are like.

We finally acquiesed to one man's english pleading to let him help us get through this experience. I am used to people working for tips in such situations so I consented to accepting his help. First, we went to the Mexican passport office and had all three of our passports stamped with only myself and this Pearl Jam lover present. We then had to cross the bridge, the geographical border, and Pearl Jam wanted to ride with us but we did not let him so he walked on the driver side. A man dressed as a sherrif that looked like Wilfred Brimley charged us 5 quetzals to cross.

The next step was much the same where me and Pearl Jam got all of our entry stamps taken care of and then began working on our car permit. I was told that this would cost 20 Quetzals a day and since we were staying 70 days this would be 1400 Quetzals or about 160 U.S. dollars. Thats about would our Mexican permit cost, so why not?

Pearl Jam wanted my passport, drivers liscence, and registration to go by himself and take care off everything for me. I'm dumb, but not stupid, so a no go there. He also wanted us to park in a gated parking lot while all this happened but we also refused. Some things that seem convienent are obiously not. Anyway, we finally get all the paper work taken care of and drive into the line of cars crossing the border. We are the only car not towing another car. A little weird. I ask why other cars are driving through on the other side and he says they're not supposed to, but I am smart enough to check with the border guard and make sure we're not in a line to sell our car in Guatemala.

So, to this point, we've been rather good at avoiding a scam; until we are supposed to pay the 1400 quetzals at the bank at the end. They only except quetzals, not pesos, and don't take credit cards. Weird. Pearl Jam says thats OK and we can follow him and his buddy 10 miles up the road and take care of it at a bank where they live. Would you do that? Would we do that? Who would do that?

The decision is we tell him we don't need his help anymore and we'll take care of it from there. He says thats not possible, he's vouched for us, and has to make sure the payment and reciept are taken care of. This ends in a ten minute argument where no matter what we say he and his friend are going to follow us on their motorbike. We have a car. We will win.

We follow them for several miles, look at the map, acess an escape plan, and let several other cars pass us to create a larger divide between us and them.

As we're driving I realize that the bill we are supposed to pay is not only not to the government, but a deposit slip to Francisco Cordobo in BanRural which is a major bank here. Not gonna do it. So, at the fork in the road they go left and we go right. Fast!

Many problems occur here. There are speed bumps taller than our car, dogs in the road, children in the road, and cars coming at us in our lane. Long story already but to make it shorter they actually catch us on their moped, pull in front of us, and stop our car. Bummer. Plus they caught up to us in the rain. We were nervous before, but now we are all shitting our pants. PJ says looks pissed. Comes up to our car and is all what the f and we're all what the f and everything is f'd.

Fortunately a cop car comes by and we stop it. These are the guys with machine guns. One police officer that must be 17 years old holding a shotgun and an older guy in fatigues that is presumably a member of the Guatemelan military with an SKS assault rifle 10 feet away. Later we'd notice that there were 3 more like him around the perimeter of our car. Not speaking good Spanish is a disadvantage here. Not speaking good english is another disadvantage. Finally after much pleading and showing the officer that what were supposed to do is obviously unjust the officer descides that we should definately pay the guy but not nessicarily what he's asking. Forgot to mention that we gave the bike riders three hundred pasos as a tip when they stopped in front of us to make everything cool.

With only pesos and no quetzals, I ask the officer if he could accompany us with these banditos to the bank, but he replies that he has two corpses in back of his truck with their throats slit open so he can not.

Fortunatly, Rafael has a U.S. one hundred dollar bill given to him by his aunt a week before for, "just in emergencies," that we negotiate our way out of this situation with. The armed coppers agree, (they probably took a cut), we all shake hands, and the deal is done.

Its now almost dark, we have to figure out how to get back on the actual road, and drive three hours to Xela over one of the craziest mountain passes I've ever been on. Could it get worse? Dogs, children, and a complete white out of fog on the road is the answer. Finally we make it, get a room, and have a drink. Fin.
john