I made it to Costa Rica, and I made it back to the United States. Barely. I thought I would put out a friendly warning to anyone thinking about transiting through Mexico/Guatemala, DON'T. On the way back, every single day there was something different that was going to kill me. I won't say the towns or the cartels involved, but I met a few big players. I made it through, some real Dios me guia shit.
Something happened in a town. As I was driving out of that town, I was thinking of telling the cops (check points everywhere), but when I drove by they had 100% of them inside the oxxo, a convenient excuse to not hear 50 shots. It is suicidal to have no one pulling security, unless they are corrupt.
I also was directly stopped at cartel checkpoint. I should have seen the signs driving through the town. People look afraid, there's zero remotely attractive women, only old people. I was only driving through, they walked into the road and stopped me. They let all cars pass except me, obviously a potential target. Having absolutely nothing visible of value saved me, several visible signs of poverty, and my car had a lot of visible damage. I was surprised that out of 8 people not a single one had a visible tattoo. New kids I guess. The head honcho told me in Spanish that he was going to get in my car to show me where to park. I just kept repeating no para, solo transit. united estates. He eventually said to the kids in Spanish that I don't speak any Spanish and it wouldn't be worth it, so they let me go. The policy in that town was very clearly to simply smash and grab anything of value, so I should have seen those indications.
That made me more wary than the other things, I guess because I knew there Wasn't much I could do. On the highway near the USA I saw another cartel checkpoint. before the checkpoint I saw remains of a pile of 4 burning tires, right after a sharp turn on the mountain. there was also a junk car that was burnt. They target cell phone dead zones as checkpoints. They always have Lookout | checkpoint | action | checkpoint | lookout. they were only interested in the semi truck drivers. They had 2 trucks stopped, their bosses hadn't paid protection money. I'm guessing they had until dark to figure it out, I saw the truck driver panicking and trying to call someone on his phone. They used private security companies and off duty police at the cartel checkpoints. To a tourist they look legitimate that way. I knew the security guy was cartel because his expression/eyes. It's too obvious.
There were other incidents, but I can't say them without specifics. It was constant in Mexico.
El Salvador was great. It's like a tropical Texas, and everything is super cheap. $6 subway subs, $3 for a car wash, everything is in USD. Nicaragua is trash. The people are great, but the officials are all corrupt. The head honcho of immigration (3 stars on his shoulder) took $2500 Nicaraguan (60usd) and put $15 USD in my passport to stamp it. Be warned for Nicaragua, the police and gov officials are always treating themselves to gifts. In Nicaragua the police and corrupt politicians replaced the cartels, so now The only types of police/gov are corrupt ones, new ones, and super fupas.
Edited by maug (07/17/26 02:56 PM)
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