— Dare to go explore the world ?

— Sure !

It started with a joke. We were both young adults, both sick of our cur­rent life, both a bit crazy and inno­cent. We jumped on a bus and went South. Across coun­tries, across cul­tures. We were free, noth­ing could have hold us back. We packed a few stuffs and stepped in the unknown.

El viento viene, el viento se va, por la fron­tera, el viento viene, el viento se va…

The wind just comes, the wind just goes, across the fron­tier, the wind just comes, the wind just goes…

We started off in Mex­ico. We each had a pass­port, a Cana­dian one and a French one. Surely, it made things easier.

The Mexican-Belizean bor­der was fairly straight-forward, even includ­ing the three hours spent wait­ing for a bus which never came. And the night arrival in Belize city in the mid­dle of the slums. The bor­der offi­cers were nice and didn’t ask much. Noth­ing to pay, pass­port stamped, wel­come to Belize, a coun­try I didn’t even know existed before I went there.

It was much messier between Belize and Guatemala. The bus cut a way through the jun­gle and dropped us off in the mid­dle of nowhere. We fol­lowed the crowd to the bor­der stop. The bor­der between the two coun­tries was marked by a tree trunk in the mid­dle of the red clay dirt road. We just stepped over it and didn’t look back. A young offi­cer asked for our pass­port and we spent ten min­utes argu­ing over the bor­der cross­ing fee. Go ahead amigo, I can’t do math any­way. The chicken bus was wait­ing on the other side and we quickly dis­ap­peared again in the jun­gle – the Petén jun­gle this time, on the road to Flores.

We took another local bus to El Sal­vador from south­ern Guatemala. It stopped in the mid­dle of nowhere – we were used to it by then. Pedro de Alvarado. We walked about 500 meters to a guarded bor­der. Two boys, around six­teen years old, stopped us. They both had machetes and machine guns – alright, bor­der offi­cers. We explained our where­abouts and we were searched for ille­gal sub­stances. Appar­ently, El Sal­vador doesn’t get that many vis­i­tors from the North. Mira los grin­gos ! Los grin­gos are indeed a bit stu­pid. They wanted the cam­bio but El Sal­vador now uses US dol­lar. We still man­aged to catch a bus to La Lib­er­tad, our first stop in Sal­vador and we trav­eled with a bunch of goats in the bus.

Going to Hon­duras was as slow as going through Las Manos in Nicaragua was fast. I should have swam across the river, would have been faster. Although for the lat­est, the bor­der offi­cer made a big mis­take: he stamped our pass­port before ask­ing for a bribe. Too bad, no tengo dineros, puedes cam­biar traveler’s cheque ? I’m bad, I know. But that’s the rule of the game, right ?

t was pretty bad between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The entry point was absolute chaos. As soon as we stepped out of the bus, we find our­selves stuck on the wooden bar­rier. A car fought its way through the crowd and we soon heard some­one scream­ing. A man laid there, blood every­where and angry peo­ple quickly gath­ered around him. We ran away and started queu­ing at the bor­der post we had finally found. Kids came and went around us, sell­ing pens and the stan­dard immi­gra­tion form. No one wanted to lose his spot in the huge line-up. We tried a short-cut but we were quickly kicked out by the secu­rity guard. It was Christ­mas time, fam­i­lies were wait­ing on the other side of the bor­der, at Penas Blan­cas.

El ham­bre viene, el hom­bre se va, sin mas razon, por la carretera…

Hunger comes, the man goes, with no other rea­son, along the freeway…

We took another bus a few weeks later to Panama, our final stop in Cen­tral Amer­ica. We will then fly to South Amer­ica since cross­ing the Darien Gap was less than advisable.

We were the only for­eign­ers in the chicken bus and the dri­ver had to stop at the immi­gra­tion just for the two of us. We stepped out of the bus and make our way to the near­est build­ing : a phar­macy where we have to buy a Red Cross stamp, promptly glued on our pass­port. Right. We then got the exit stamp.

Sixaola, in Panama, was close, right across a small river. I asked the bus dri­ver the trunk keys since our back­packs were still in the bus, but he told us to go back on. What do we do ? Does the bus go across the river, or are we walk­ing ? I’d have walked. The inter­na­tional bridge was fairly high but very nar­row and rusty. No way the bus could drive on it. We walk away but the bus dri­ver call us back on board one more time. We obeyed, won­der­ing what was next. For the next twenty minute, we watched our bus strug­gling to stay on the bridge. Some­one guided the dri­ver from the other side of the bridge. Ten cen­time­ters on my right, ten cen­time­ters on my left – that was the breath­ing space. We could either dive into the river or make the bridge col­lapse under the bus’ weight. Great. We even­tu­ally made it to Panama, and spent Christ­mas at Boca Del Toro.

We felt pow­er­ful. We hated bor­ders and we had no trou­bles going through them. It didn’t make much sense, these guards, these machetes, the machine-guns – all that for what ? Bor­der offi­cers wrote down our names count­less time, our pass­ports num­bers, we were given forms to fill up, addresses, we showed more ID’s, had more doc­u­ments stamped. Who cared ? Did my pass­port num­ber mat­ter that much ? Noth­ing was computerized.

Cross­ing land bor­ders made us fell invin­ci­ble, unstop­pable. Same kind of feel­ing you get when a cop stops you and you have noth­ing to fear. Go ahead, keep on clos­ing these piece of land, pre­vent peo­ple from leav­ing the coun­try. I have a pass­port. I don’t care.

I kept on think­ing of the unthink­able. What if I wasn’t French ? What if Feng didn’t have a Cana­dian pass­port ? Would we be treated as cat­tle as well ? Would we have had to fight for the basic right of free­dom of travel ?

La suerte viene, la suerte se va, el ham­bre viene, el hom­bre se va, sin mas razon…

Good for­tune comes, good for­tune goes, hunger comes, the man, he goes, with no other reason…

If you can’t choose where you are born, you should be able to choose where you live. Right ?

Related arti­cles:

1. Bor­der Cross­ing — Panamá To Costa Rica
2. On The Road Again
3. My Brand New Cana­dian Passport!
4. Our South­ern Neighbours
5. On The Way To France