Accompanied by some brilliant Coronavirus/quarantine themed cartoons, since I was too busy to take photos.
The Great Escape – how I got out of Guatemala after the borders closed, and managed to get back to Sydney.
I had so many plans for this year. On this exact date, I was meant to be in Guanajuato, Mexico. Later on in May I was meant to return to Australia for about a month, before heading on to Peru and Ecuador.
But instead of being in Mexico, I’m already back home and currently sheltering at my parents’ place. I don’t know when the borders are going to open again, and whether I’ll make it to Peru or Ecuador this year.
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But every time I hear about Aussies stuck in other countries and unable to get back, I’m so incredibly relieved to be here – because I was almost one of those people. This is the story of how I managed to get out of Guatemala after they closed their borders.
1. The Coronavirus comes to Guatemala
For the longest time, the Coronavirus didn’t seem like something that actually affected me. Sure, I’d heard of it. But it hadn’t reached Mexico when I’d been there, and at this point, in early March, it hadn’t yet gotten to Guatemala. It felt like a very foreign concern.
And then, in mid-March, things suddenly changed. Worsening conditions worldwide led to the Guatemalan government taking precautionary measures before there was even a single recorded case of Coronavirus in the country. They closed their borders to anyone from countries that had high infection rates. Events and public gatherings got cancelled. People started walking around in masks, and there was a tension in the air, as if everyone was waiting for something bad to happen.
It didn’t take long. They had their first recorded case of the virus within a few days, and the first death from the virus soon after that. My AirBnB hosts cancelled on me. At my coworking space, almost everyone bought a ticket out and left the country. I wondered if I should do the same, but I already had tickets for a flight that was leaving in a week. I tried to bring the dates forward, but all the earlier flights were sold out.
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Besides, I thought, how much is going to change in one week? I was pretty keen on enjoying that last week, too. I’d booked a trip to Lake Atitlan, where I’d spend my time swimming, reading, hiking and generally relaxing. I’d worked extra hours in the weeks before so I could take that last week off.
But on the 16th of March, the government announced that they’d be closing the borders at midnight that day. The airport would shut down, and there’d be no way in or out.
Shoot. What was I meant to do now?
2. Quarantine prepping
We had a Whatsapp group for everyone who’d done the hike to Acatenango together, and one of my Acatenango buddies, Alistair, had been meant to fly home to Australia the next day. He headed to the airport to see if there was any way he could get on an earlier flight. He and another girl ended up getting put on standby and she made it on, but he didn’t. I told him to come back to my AirBnB.
Another friend, Alex, was here doing Spanish lessons, and had been in a homestay. His host’s son had learning disabilities, and the Coronavirus situation made him scared and angry so that he got violent. He started breaking things, causing Alex to pack up and leave in a hurry. He also came over to my AirBnB.
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We wondered what we should do. One of the other girls who’d been on the hike with us sent us a message from her hostel. One of the guests in her dorm had shown symptoms, and now the entire dorm was forced to quarantine together – in their tiny, cramped dorm room – and she said that it was hell. Other hikers in different parts of the country had stories about tourists getting blamed for the virus and beaten up, and about concerns that there might be shortages of food or medical supplies.
We contemplated going to Lake Atitlan, but another government announcement said that all public transport, including group shuttles going between cities and villages, were now banned. We’d have no way to get there, and even if we could, we might not have a way to get back should the airport open again. The current travel ban was for 15 days, after which the government said they’d reassess and see whether to extend it. We were hoping they’d open the airport after the 15 days, at least for one day, or for some compassionate flights.
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So in the end the smartest thing seemed to be to stay in Antigua. The airport wasn’t too far from there, Antigua wasn’t very crowded, and we didn’t really have any other options anyway. Alistair, Alex and I decided to find an AirBnB all to ourselves, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about infecting any locals (or more importantly, worrying any locals. I already had a cold, and we didn’t want to get blamed for anything). We booked a fancy AirBnB and got a taxi over the next arvo. It was lush, with a projector screen, popcorn machine, a huge well equipped kitchen, and a private garden.
Alex said he’d be our personal trainer and that we could all use the opportunity to get ripped. I was up for it. We had cards, we had books, we had movies – we were set. Alex had already purchased a box full of beans and pasta and canned veggies, and we did another run to the markets to grab enough fresh fruits and veggies to last us for the 15 days. We had everything we needed for a relaxing and maybe even fun quarantine.
3. We have to get out, now!
When we got back, I unpacked all my things, and we settled down to watch a movie. It wasn’t very good, and Alistair walked out shortly after it started – which we assumed was because he found it boring. Alex and I gave up a little while after, and went to find Alistair.
He was on the phone, looking grim. He hung up and turned to us. “Australia’s closing their borders this Sunday.”
“What? No, they can’t do that. Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“My Dad works for the government. He said there’s rumours that they’re going to shut the borders. We have to get out now, or we’ll be stuck here long term.”
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I looked it up and posted on Facebook to see if anyone had more info. It was true, the borders were closing for international travellers, but Australia nationals were still allowed back. “We’ll be fine,” I thought for a moment, relieved – until friends started posting news about Qantas suspending service. We’d still be ‘allowed’ back to Australia, but we’d have no way to actually get there.
Alex started getting messages about a possible lockdown in the UK too. Even now, to get back to the UK he would have to go through other European countries – and his options were getting smaller and smaller as more European countries closed their borders.
We had to get out. It hadn’t seemed like that big a deal when it was 15 days, but we didn’t want to be stuck in Guatemala long term. What if we needed medical care? I’d been to the doctor before in Guatemala, and it had been both incredibly expensive and fairly sub-par. We couldn’t afford to keep staying at our fancy AirBnB indefinitely. What if there were food shortages? Or water shortages? Or any shortages, really. Guatemala has terrible infrastructure, and the government might take steps to help their own people but I doubted they’d help us.
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We started messaging around, trying to ask if anyone knew of a way out. Eventually, we heard of some friends of friends, Rosalie and Bianca, who were going to try to get through the Mexican border, and who suggested we join them.
It felt risky. Incredibly risky in fact. We knew of other people who’d tried going across the border and who’d been stopped by police or who’d been turned back. But they’d found an article online saying that the government was allowing foreigners to leave across the land border to Mexico.
We couldn’t verify it. I checked the government website. I asked around. I Googled for ages. Nothing. And the article was in Spanish, so we were translating it and it wasn’t clear whether people were only allowed to leave if they had registered as a foreigner stranded in Guatemala, and if these border crossings were done in a coordinated way with the government. So much uncertainty.
When we told the other travellers in our Whatsapp groups, the reactions were not comforting. “You’re going to get stopped by narcos.” “Are you insane? Do you know how dangerous that is?” “You’re going to get held up, and have everything stolen from you.” “You’re going to get pulled up by the police.”
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These were all valid concerns – there had been kidnappings of tourists on these routes before. People had gotten stopped and robbed. And the border crossings were used for trafficking humans, drugs, and arms. And we still didn’t know if we’d actually get through. If we didn’t, we’d have to come all the way back to Antigua. It was already expensive, and I didn’t have enough cash on me to pay to come back.
But Alex and Alistair were determined to try it. I thought maybe we could wait a day or two, just so we could rest and enjoy our fancy AirBnB and the mountains of food we’d bought. But the government had been doing press conferences twice a day, adding new restrictions each time. Alistair had already narrowly missed getting out once and he didn’t want to risk that happening again,
So that made my decision for me. I didn’t want to stay in Guatemala alone. We went to Somos hostel to book the ride, paying for a driver to take us to the border, and another one to meet us on the Mexican side and drive us to San Cristobal.
4. Crossing the border
It was late by the time we got back. We cooked together – a large pot of this stewy-veggie-rice – and ate as much as we could before packing the rest into my collapsible boxes for us to eat on the way.
By this point it was past 11. We were getting picked up at 2. The boys went to sleep for a bit. I showered and packed, making sure I slipped my cash and cards into the pages of my books and into my clothes and shoes and basically all through my belongings. This way, hopefully, if we got robbed, I’d still have some cash somewhere.
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Packing took an age because I was so tired and so stressed. I kept wanting to sleep, and would lie on the bed for a moment or two before the guilt and anxiety would get me up again. When I was finally finished, it felt like it didn’t make much sense to sleep now because I’d have to wake up so soon.
2 a.m. came and we dragged ourselves and our bags outside to wait. I was so glad we were together. If I had to wait outside alone with all my bags at 2 a.m., knowing that there were police patrols enforcing the curfew, I’d have been pretty anxious. I was worried enough as it was – the driver didn’t have our phone numbers or any way to contact us, so they wouldn’t be able to let us know if anything had gone wrong.
But at 2:05 a.m., a sleek grey car pulled over, and the driver – a woman – softly called out our names. As we got into the car, I felt a little guilty for feeling safer than I would feel if the driver had been a man.
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My heart was in my mouth as we left the city. I kept expecting to get stopped. The whole experience was a bit awful – we’d thought it’d be warm in the car, but our driver had the windows down the whole way and the aircon on. It’s freezing in Antigua at night. I hadn’t packed a jacket – none of us had – and we were all shivering violently. I think she wanted to keep it cold so that she wouldn’t fall asleep.
My stomach was not having a great time either. I felt nauseous and bloated and was cramping. To make things worse, I don’t think our driver owned the car – she would get stuck on the low gear often, and didn’t know how to defog the windows. For a long time she kept pausing and manually wiping the windows down. Eventually the guys very politely asked if they could change the aircon settings, and set it to automatically defog the glass.
Eventually I managed to sleep. I’d popped a Dramamine, and I drifted in and out of consciousness, waking up every now and then needing to pee, gulping down water because I had cotton-mouth, falling asleep again, and then repeating the process.
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The trip dragged on. We’d been told it would take five hours, which would have gotten us to the border at 7am. It became 8am, then 9am, and we still hadn’t gotten there. We ultimately reached the border town at around 10.
We’d heard that we’d have to pay to cross. We’d heard that they’d check our temperatures. We’d heard that large groups would have problems getting across. We told the girls in the other car to go without us, figuring we’d have better chances if we crossed separately.
When we got there, they were doing some sort of construction or cleaning, and they told us to wait as clouds of dust were blown out of the office. When it cleared, I got nudged to go first and do the talking because I actually knew Spanish. I tried to be as friendly, warm, and non-threatening as I could be.
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We had literally no problems. They stamped my passport, and I was good. I didn’t even have to pay. It was the same for all of us. I wonder if our timing helped. We heard, later on, of other people who did have to pay fees and got their temperatures checked.
That meant we were out of Guatemala, but not yet officially allowed in to Mexico. We had to get in a van and drive to the Mexican immigration office. Some of the girls hadn’t been in Guatemala for over 21 days, so they had to pay an entrance fee into Mexico, but the rest of us got away without having to spend a cent – except to use the bathrooms across the street.
Mexico felt like a different world. The mood had been serious and sombre in Guatemala, but my Mexican immigration officer broke into a grin when I spoke to him in Spanish, welcomed me to the country – ‘Bienvenida amiga’, and stamped my passport without a second glance. We all got through just fine.
What a relief! We’d made it.
5. San Cristobál, Mexico City, and back to Sydney
The hardest part was done now and the rest of our time was not exactly fun, but definitely less stressful.
The drive to San Cristobál was rough and painful, but at least at the end of it I got to shower and sleep in a private room.
I spent the next day desperately trying to change my flights – since I already had flights to Australia for May – with no luck. I couldn’t even cancel them.
But I did manage to change another flight that I’d booked, and after paying some hefty fees, I switched my Mexico – US flight into a Tuxtla to CDMX flight. I applied for a US ESTA, then booked a very expensive flight with Qantas from CDMX to Sydney via Dallas Fort Worth.
I had a series of unfortunate events in the interim. In the morning, I had to vacate the private room and move into a dorm – but I accidentally left all my chargers behind, which I didn’t realise until I went to bed that night, after the room’s occupants were already asleep. This was a problem because I was leaving at 5:30 a.m. the next morning to get a shuttle to Tuxtla airport. I didn’t get much sleep that night either way, partly because I was worried about my phone dying before I could get to my next hostel in Mexico, and partly because my dorm-mates were loud snorers.
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My flight wasn’t scheduled to leave till 10:20 but the shuttles run according to a timetable, and the next one would get me to the airport too late. I nodded off a bunch of times while waiting for check-in to open, but still managed to make it through okay, onto my flight, and back to Mexico City.
Mexico City was busy. I had a bunch of errands to run, including going to Coyoacan to pick up some things I’d left with my friend Azucena. I had a brief fright when I found out that the Mexico-US border would be closing the next day. Did that mean my flight would be cancelled? But the borders would close at midnight, and I would get there a few hours before that. Thank goodness I was making it through in time – I’d almost booked a later flight because it would have been cheaper, but my parents had urged me to get back ASAP and ignore the costs.
I woke up early the next morning to pack my things, and then dropped by Alex and Rosalie’s hostel. They were staying closer to the airport because they’d gotten a different flight to Mexico City that was cheaper but arrived at midnight. They’d brought my chargers with them from San Cristóbal, and I ran in, picked them up, and continued on my way.
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My flight to Dallas Fort Worth was with United, which is an absolutely awful airline. When I was checking my bags in, the woman at the counter told me I may need to collect and recheck them at Dallas Fort Worth, but she wasn’t sure. ‘Just go look,’ she advised me.
Then I was seated next to two guys who were both very loudly sick, coughing and sniffling loudly. One of them kept trying to talk to me even though I was so clearly dead tired and just wanted to sleep.
When I arrived at Dallas Fort Worth, the machines that check your ESTA kept having errors with my passport. I tried again and again, feeling increasingly more frustrated. I asked one of the officials for help and he looked at me like I was an idiot and then patronisingly told me to follow the exact same instructions that I’d just tried ten times. I tried again, on various different machines, but it still wouldn’t work.
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I asked another official for help and he told me the same thing, but when I insisted it wasn’t working, he sighed and came over to do it for me. I felt so vindicated when it wouldn’t work for him either. It turns out that because my L1 visa was still valid (even though I wasn’t using it anymore), the machines wouldn’t let me go through on the ESTA. I had to wait in line and speak to a real person.
But after I got through, rechecked my bag, went through security, and ate dinner, I felt a lot better. Dallas Fort Worth, I’ve heard, is usually crowded and chaotic, but it was fairly empty at this point. I settled into some well stuffed couches, plugged in my phone and Kindle, and read until it was time to board my flight.
The Qantas flight was way nicer than the United one. I had a little bottle of shiraz and ate a lot of apples in between the meals. I slept a bit, and filled my waking moments with a bunch of movies. The time passed quickly, and before I expected it, we touched down in Sydney.
6. If I have to be quarantined anywhere, I’m glad I’m quarantined here
I’d made it. I was home. My Dad picked me up, and I spent the first 14 days here in isolation, kept to one half of my parents’ house, not allowed to touch anything outside of the rooms they’d kept for me. It felt amazing once the 14 days were up to actually be able to give my parents a hug and be able to use the whole house.
Life since then has been a little strange but good. I run almost every day, and it’s the highlight of my day. I made a few batches of a mango-chilli sauce using chillis from my parents’ backyard. I’ve finally actually made progress on my novel, and gotten into a daily writing practice. And I still practice Spanish every single day.
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A lot more happened than I could include in this blog post. When I talked to parents and friends as I was going through this, I was struck by just how many things kept going wrong. I was constantly busy, and I was so tired and stressed and sleep deprived through it all. But so many friends sent me kind messages and words of encouragement or offered their help, and it legitimately made such a difference and made me feel so much better.
This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing at this time, or where I thought I’d be. But I’ve heard from friends who contracted the Coronavirus in the US, or who got stuck in other countries, and their experiences were rough. I’m incredibly grateful that I get to socially isolate here in Australia, in relative comfort, with a backyard full of fruit, and surrounded by people I love.
The Way of the Potato 
What a relief I felt reading the last part ending with the phrase “…and surrounded by people I love”.
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