Feb 2012

I was leaving detention in Belize (1 day too long in the country, they give me an allowance of 1 day because I wrote so - planned length 1 day - even though normally EU residents can live much longer; they maliciously settled it with the lawyers so that they unnecessarily delayed their service - namely a notary - and it took 1 day more. I forgot and thus ended kept in police prison and later in immigration office's detention.). I was entering Guatemala. They gave me 180 days and the merry officer underlined this.

At the border a guy who exchanged currencies defrauded me by taking money twice. Later I recalculated it and found out it was already paid. I lost not much, maybe equal to 50 USD. But there was another guy, who was there precisely to take me to Flores with his wife, he witnessed the exchange and helped the exchanger defraud me. He told me that I hadn't paid for that up front. It was only on the 2nd exchange, the 1st one was OK (the same guy), although I realized that the rate was very very unfavorable. (Later everybody including banks wanted to convince me that in Guatemala nobody buys Belize Dollars.)

And they somehow made people in that small border-by town to behave like they were aware what happened (various sorts of strange laughing on my sight, calculating, poker cards with a picture 100$ left here and there in a hotel's restaurant, people sometimes caughing etc. I guess somebody told them that my bank would cheat on me during funds exchange, whereas the real problem was the fraud on that evening, which maybe they didn't realize. Who knows.)