With my first six months in my new home in Oaxaca, Mexico fast approaching, and in the country on a six month tourist visa, on July 7th, 2017, I set out by overnight bus to Tapachula, Chiapas, with the ultimate goal of obtaining a new six months visa from the border's Mexican immigration. Luckily I had a fellow ex-pat friend and neighbor who had done this twice, and she spelled out the details of her trips for me. Also I found a few examples written up online, all with variations of how it had been done.
Of the perhaps four accounts I read, only my friend's account was for the particular border crossing that I was headed for, and it's pretty clear that situations vary from immigration office to immigration office, and maybe even within one office, depending on the clerk whose line you end up in. This is very likely true for offices on both sides of the border. The basic procedure seemed clear though: head first to Mexican immigration, turn in your old visa, pay an probably 500 peso exit fee, and head across the border. There, after pushing past scam artists insisting that you need to change your money, you go to Guatemala immigration, where you likely are told you have to stay in Guatemala for 3 days minimum. This, as well as the fee, apparently can be negotiated. My friend paid 300 pesos, and was on her way back to Mexican immigration all within fifteen minutes. Then back at Mexican immigration you fill out forms, go back and forth from the banking window to the forms windows, and, after computer checking your passport info, you have a new visa in hand and are free to go. Total fees paid: perhaps between 800 and 1000 mexican pesos (approx $44 to $55 USD). Truthfully, I'm still confused on what fees are normally paid, or what exceptions people have found to the normal.
I was intrigued by one writeup which recounted a fellow who paid $1500 Mexican pesos all at the Mexican immigration, happy to avoid dealing with the Guatemalan side of the border, where he feared being forced to stay for 72 hours before being able to return to Mexico. This method appealed to me, except for the price, in that it told me that the whole process could be done in the one, Mexican, office.
Anyway, I took the only bus I knew about to Tapachula, Chiapas, which is about 50 kilometers from the border: an overnight ADO bus leaving Oaxaca at 7:10pm, and arriving in Tapachula around 7:30am. These busses run daily, and the returning bus is another overnight, leaving Tapachula at 7:15pm. My basic plan was to follow my friend's example, and plan on one day to get everything done, but leaving the purchase of the return bus until after the new visia was in hand, in case things got complicated, such as having to spend three days in Guatemala. Fortunately that didn't happen.
So, arriving in Tapachula, I again followed my friend's example, and took a taxi (200 pesos) from the bus depot right to Mexican immigration. Well, not exactly. The taxi can only go so far, and then for another 5? pesos you take a three wheel tuktuk the rest of the way. The taxi driver rather pissed me off, in that, after making a call on his cell phone, pulling the cab off to the side of the road just before our destination, a friend of his got in the back of the cab (I had chosen a front seat) and proceeded to tell me that I needed to change money to Guatemalan pesos. I knew from my friend that this was a scam to be expected at the border, but I didn't expect it to start on the Mexican side! Anyway, I rebuffed him, but somehow still gave the driver a 50 peso tip. I guess since I had been a taxi driver myself, I can't help handing out such tips.
Anyway, once inside the Mexican immigration office, the fun begins. Understand, my Spanish is very limited, in spite of almost daily studying for the last several months.
I was early, and had to wait about fortyfive minutes for the immigration clerk's windows to open up. Signs were clearly posted stating 500 pesos fees, and indicating the widows were for both exiting and entering Mexico. Probably I should have taken photos of those signs, and put them into Google translate to see what all was posted, but I was winging it, and didn't. A few other hopefuls showed up, but no other gringos. We waited. I had been the third person to have arrived, and soon after the windows opened for service, I stepped up to one, and, in my limited Spanish, stated that I wanted to get a new six months visa to return to Mexico. I am still confused about exactly what happened in my going from one window to another, but I'll lay it out here as best I can.
The first women I went to said a few things that I didn't understand, and sent me to the man at the window to her right. Overall I was facing a counter with I think 4 windows open out of a total of maybe six windows, and behind me was another section with two windows, where money was taken. All this was familiar, although on a smaller scale, to what I had had been through getting the visa I was turning in, when I entered from the USA six months before.
After I repeated a number of times my request for a new 6 months visa, and almost completely failed to understand what was being said to me, this guy that I had been sent to slapped a visa form onto his counter top, and I stared in amazement and pleasure, because I was mostly expecting to be told to pay and exit fee and go to Guatemala. I gladly took the form, filled it out, copying from my old form, and returned to the windows. Then I was sent to the cashiers windows, 500 pesos in hand. Was this really going to work, getting my new visa right then and there? The cashier took my papers, including passport and pesos, and proceeded to look me up on the computer. Then confusion. He handed everything back to me, including my 500 pesos, said something about my having entered at Chihuahua, and sent me back to the first set of windows. I went there, and was told again that I need to pay at the cashier's window. I went back there, even though I had just been rejected there, which got the cashier guy to go himself to the first guy and offer up his explanation for sending me back over to him.
At this point you can understand that I was a bit nervous that things weren't working out. Anyway, the first guy, who apparently was new to his job, gave me a new visa form to fill out, very similar to the first he had given me, except the spaces for filling in the information were a bit bigger. Sometime later I deducted that this was the proper visa form for someone, like me, who had entered via the northern border. No matter at the time, I happily and hopefully filled out the form, at first neglecting to put in my passport number, the day's date, and signing it. The first woman I had dealt with was patient with these lapses, and walked me through completing the form. Then I was sent once again to the guy on her left, and, as the woman who sent me to him stood behind his right shoulder, and told him one thing at a time what to do, he stamped here and there on the visa form copies. Then all that was left was getting my passport stamped. It was just me and the guy at this point. The guy thumbs through the passport, looks at the pages for visa stamps, looks up at me, and asks, "no Guatemala stamp?" Of course he said it in Spanish, but it was clear what he was asking.
I answered "No." I said it in such a way as if I was impatient because surely he should have known that all along. In reflection on all this though, I realized that I had never indicated if I had entered the office from Mexico, or from Guatemala, and, no one had asked that question either. I also think that the question wasn't asked because this guy was new to the job, and my situation was something he hadn't dealt with before.
Anyway, after I answered "No," he shrugged slightly, stamped the visa page of my passport, handed me my passport and new six months visa, and I was free to return to my beloved Oaxaca home, having never actually crossed the Guatemalan border, or paid any fees beyond the posted 500 pesos. I felt very blessed, and even that just maybe I had guardian angels looking out for me!
I got back in a tuktuk, this time asking to be taken to a cambi van (which I could have easily walked to) and, after the driver's assistant had 18 passengers squeezed in, we started off back to Tapachula. Well, not quite. A few feet down the road, and two more passengers flagged the cambi, and they too were squeezed in. I forget the exact price of that van, but it was something like seven pesos.
I neglected to follow my friend's methods, and tell the cambi driver that I wanted off at the ADO bus station, which lead me to spend an hour of confusion back in Tapachula (a bus lot with a bunch of ADO busses looked to me like it must be the terminal, but it wasn't) and so it took me an hour after being let off by a huge department store to finally get to the terminal to purchase my return ticket back to Oaxaca. I got one of only two seats left! It was however, a perfectly good window seat.
I killed the ten hours or so I had to wait for my night bus by walking around Tapachula a bit, and eventually checking into a 205 peso hotel close to the bus terminal, where I showered, put on the clean socks and underwear I had packed, and tried to nap. I didn't actually sleep, but I did use the hotel's wifi, and it felt really good to stretch out on a bed after so much time in a bus seat, and knowing that I had a lot more time coming up stuck in such a seat.
As far as the busses go, I apparently got lucky there also. My friend said that on her bus they played movies all night, and that the bus bathroom at the rear of the bus stinked up the whole bus. On the two busses I was on in this adventure, the first stopped the movies at 10:30pm, and this return bus showed only one movie, which was the latest Tarzan movie, and then the screens when blank and silent around 9:30. I did get a few whiffs of urine smells, but it was not terrible, and mostly not bothering me at all. The return bus though, perhaps because of torrential downpours we were driving through, took fourteen hours, getting us back to Oaxaca around 9:30am. I was wanting to stretch my legs, and walked a round-a-bout way to where I usually catch a bus back to my Oaxacan neighborhood of San Felipe del Agua, and, reaching home, spend the next day and a half resting, until now, as I am sitting here writing this blog post, Monday evening, July 10, 2017.
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