Debra, Gary, and choosing caravan partners ---
Due to the chaos surrounding the vehicle exit requirements, and the ensuing wild goose chase through Tapachula, we quickly found ourselves in this border town at dusk (which I have coined the "witching hour") and ducked into a legitimate, incognito hotel with secure parking before the vampires came out to suck gringo blood.
The next morning we pulled up to the Banjercito office (see previous blog) behind a black 2004 Mustang with Nevada plates. What a couple of tools, right?
Enter Debra and Gary, whose names and vehicle descriptions have been changed to protect their conspicuously fugitive identites.
Gary: Hey there! Where you headed to? Costa Rica? Let me guess, English teachers, right?
Brad: Uh, no, just travelling.
Gary: Yeah, I'm headed down to teach English with my wife, we're totally sick of the states. Yeah, she just couldn't live without her Mustang.
Debra: She's my high maintenance girlfriend. The roads have been a real bitch on her though... They're going to get better in Costa Rica, though.
At this point I'm thinking, what planet is this woman from, has she never seen the Volkswagon bug size potholes seeping throughout the Costa Rican roadways? And a Mustang? Please. We've designed our vehicle and packing job to be as low profile as possible which makes what is about to happen next all the more asinine.
Gary: So, you want to caravan down?
Brad: Uh, yeah, that'd be great.
I agreed as well and in hindsight I think I did so just to see what would happen next.
We later learned that the Mustang was recently purchased, that Gary was making payments on it and it didn't even have plates yet. Debra just had that Nevada plate on hand and threw it on so the federalis wouldn't think it was so bizarre that she's driving a $40,000 car without plates in southern Mexico... because that's totally normal, right? I mean I've got plates in the back of our truck from 5 states and 2 South American countries...
This sort of behavior appeared to be totally normal to Debra and Gary. In fact, Gary heartily informed us that he wasn't planning on actually paying for the car anyway. These sort of bizarre comments arose virtually every time we stopped the vehicles.
At one point, Gary asked if we wanted to share a hotel room with him because he was just too cheap to pair for one on their own. Then he did the unthinkable and actually stopped a ¨police officer¨for directions.
When we got to the El Salvador border at dusk. I was pissed. If I hadn´t been on the fence about sticking with these two, we would have been in a hotel by now safely watching telenovelas. When he said he didn´t want to pay for a border guide to get him into Nicaragua, we split, we were through the border as night fell and onto our next problem of finding a safe place to stay pronto. For all I know, Debra and Gary could still be at the Nicaraguan border.
The lesson here is to choose your caravan partners wisely. Just because someone speaks the same native language as you and is also driving south does not mean that you will be safer driving with them. Safety in numbers only applies to intelligent people.
The upside of Debra and Gary is that I might actually get to call someone in on America´s Most Wanted one day.
