By the time we got to the Guatemala border we were feeling a little weary and not at all in the mood for the usual border-crossing circus. We had ridden a long way out of our way to avoid the major commercial crossing from Mexico at Ciudad Hidalgo and opted for a little used crossing at Las Champas/La Mesilla but border crossings are always fraught. We braced ourselves for a long, expensive and frustrating day.

Our first surprise came at the Mexican immigration office four kilometres short of the border. We were the only customers and our passports were stamped and cleared in a few moments. The customs man was next door and, despite my poor Spanish and his poor English, we had sorted the export of Elephant in about five minutes. Once again, I was the only customer. We were back on Elephant within 15 minutes and weaving our way through the crush of market stalls spilling out onto the road selling all manner of cheap Mexican goods to the Guatemalans. Border towns have the same feel to them everywhere. They are always dusty (or muddy) unkempt and full of desperadoes looking for the cross border arbitrage or an easy rent. They are, for the most part, places to get through as quickly as possible and certainly not the place to stop for a quiet lunch!

The Guatemalan immigration and customs were right on the border and side by side which is a great treat. Once again we were the only customers. We imported ourselves and Elephant in about 15 minutes with only the need to change about $30 into the local Quetzales with the handy (but expensive) money changer. On both sides the authorities had been a delight to deal with; helpful, friendly, cheerful. We decided it had been worth the effort to detour into the mountains.

The road from the border to our destination city of Huehuetenango (known henceforth as Huehue) is the CA-1, the legendary Pan-American Highway and within a few kilometres the reality of this new land had dawned on us. A prosperous Mexico was behind us. Guatemala was a different land altogether. The 80km from the border to Huehue took us three and a half hours non-stop. The photos will give you the idea. This is a place where time and distance have a different relationship.

Huehue has a population of 155,500 and sits at 1909m altitude. The city has a few pre-Spanish ruins of no particular merit some of which have been diminished by botched renovations about 30 years ago. There are also some minor tourist attractions but it is, for the most part, a working city, struggling and striving to make a living as an important hub for the highlands. We found a rambling hotel near the centre and spent a few days enjoying this unpretentious, colourful and lively place.

Huehue did solve one travel problem we had been struggling with in Mexico. One of Guatemala's main exports is coffee and cafés serving good coffee were everywhere. Coffee culture is just getting underway in much of Mexico and, while the inner cities often have good coffee, elsewhere it can be a long search for a decent espresso doble. A few doors up from our hotel we stumbled on the coffee museum café, a great place for breakfast unless, that is, it is Sunday when the place is inexplicably closed. Beyond the cafés, the city is a busy bustling place full of crowded markets and congested traffic; unremarkable but good fun nonetheless.

We stayed only three nights in Huehue so we haven't yet qualified for the T-shirt but we did make one observation. The city has a large number of competing religious groups. Not just the usual Catholic presence, but Pentecostals aplenty, Jehovah's Witnesses and some other relatively evangelical protestant sects. The only other foreigners we saw seemed to be in the conversions business and I don't mean the renovations type!

We didn't know what to make of all this, but it seemed to us that in a country beggared of all but good coffee, a surfeit of religion was as useful as a clockwork orange. A meagre investment in infrastructure would do a lot to raise some of the 49% of Guatemalans who live below the poverty line to a more prosperous life and might be a more practical investment.

We were out of Huehue three days after we arrived and managed to cut nearly an hour off our return run to the border. We found ourselves the only customers again and the officials on both sides matched their previous record setting performance in clearing Team Elephant out and in. We charged back up the Mex 190 on our way to San Cristobal de las Casas feeling, bizarrely, as though we had come home from a trip away. I pondered on this for a while before deciding that we must have settled into Mexico pretty well.