Three countries in one day, you better Belize it!

30 December 2014

We just crossed the border into Belize. We have a seven plus hour journey ahead of us before we arrive in Guatemala and I am excited for every minute of it.

I love long bus rides in third world countries. Let me tell you why. Taking the local transportation for one city to the next takes you through villages, jungles, crop land, etc… It allows you to experience things you have never experienced before.

In Mexico, and even more so in the villages of Belize, much poverty exists. The entire bus ride I have been asking questions to myself. Why was I born in the USA and not some third world country? Why do I have so many things that I do not need when other people have nothing? Since returning from India I have already leaned out my life quite a bit, but every time I travel it is a wake-up call as to what is truly important.

I thought the buses in Central America would be more sketchy than what we have encountered. The bus we are currently riding in has all our luggage strapped to the top with two ropes and the right rear part of the bus scrapes the bottom everything we turn left. I believe we are exceeding the weight limit on this vehicle by more than a few pounds, as long as we get to Guatemala I will be fine.

Our crazy taxi driver takes stops every 30 minutes and sits on a little mat outside the bus facing the sun. Andrew hypothesizes that he needs to photosynthesize… Who knows?! It takes him just as long to get out of the bus as he spends on his little mat. People can be strange sometimes.

Wow. Flores is beautiful. I was not expecting such a place to be in Guatemala. While I knew that Guatemala has many beautiful places to visit, I was not expecting a Colonial, European city to be placed smack in the middle of Guatemala. The streets are cobbled, the island is surrounded by a beautiful lake and even more beautiful mountains. The largest Mayan pyramids are in this area. Tomorrow we are going to hike Tikal, one of the top destinations in all of Central America. We are also going to meet up with Elder Lutz, one of the few missionaries from my home ward! Andrew and I have been enjoying our time together over the past 4 days and the amazing things is that we still have 10 days to continue to travel together! Bring on the good times! Who can beat New Years in Guatemala?

-Kylie

Start of day 4 was an adventure. To start off our hotel bed wasn’t as clean as we’d hoped so what did we do? Cocoon ourselves in shirts and the blankets we were given from our wedding! Made sleeping a lot easier for the two of us. I’ll be honest though, I’ll appreciate a hot shower in a place I don’t wear flip-flops and being able to walk barefoot in my own place!

We woke up at 5:45 in order to catch our 7am bus ride to Flores. We grabbed supplies, snacks and everything else we needed to depart and made our way to the bus station. What I’m finding about Central America is that it really matters where you leave from and what direction you’re going. Leaving the bus terminal cost us 50 pesos (quoted to us at the bus depot and by the driver when we got out to the street). But taking a cab in cost us 20 pesos. Good trick for traveling in Central America. Never take transport that is directly outside the bus station, airport etc. Do a little walking and save yourself a few pesos!

When we boarded our bus, needless to say it was different than the others we’d taken. Imagine the small mini buses that we take in Hong Kong, except we’d be traveling for 7 hours on it. Slightly smelly, bags tied to the top – yup, in for an exciting ride! We rode for a few minutes until we got to the Belize-Mexico border where we paid the entrance fee and crossed the road to the immigration desks. When we went through the Forst thing I noticed was the striking similarity between the Belizean men and Africans. The national language here is English so that’ll make traveling a much simpler process… Although Kylie and I have done well on my limited Spanish and her Portuguese. When we were passing the last stage of immigration we had to have our fruit inspected to see of we could take it through. We grabbed the fruit bags and approached the inspection officer. The officer was a boy, no more than 14 years old who simply told us we couldn’t take it through but could eat it if we wanted. I scarfed down a banana (Kylie didn’t want any) and we left for our bus. The kid didn’t even inspect the fruit and I jokingly told Kylie ‘I wonder if inspection officers just eat the food they confiscate.’ Most likely they do.

It’s been amazing to me to see the conditions which many Mexicans live in with their families. While the homes are small and somewhat rundown it seems to me they are always colorful. I wonder if that’s a thing of pride for many of these people (painting their homes) something that, besides the challenges of life they appreciate and enjoy. Just some thoughts.

The green scenery here also reminds me of my mission presidents comment to take time to notice the small things (smell the flowers). Something very simple but very beautiful.

We’ve also met some interesting travelers on this bus ride of ours. Met a younger guy from Poland who used to be a programmer for Microsoft but decided to take up a new position with a San Francisco based startup. Others we’ve met have done this trip 3-5 times each. Interesting stories abound when with this crowd.

Honestly it turned out to be a huge blessing to travel with people who made the journey before. The bus ride that we thought would take ~7 hours actually ended up taking 11 hours in all. It was a long trip. Kylie was fine and excited the whole while but I was struggling at the 6 hour mark for about 30 min but then was fine. During the drive itself it began to rain and with no tarp to cover the bags (loosely strapped to the roof) we were lucky to have: (1) waterproof bags and (2) our bags at the bottom of the pile. The ride itself was pretty uneventful, despite the loose piece of metal near the back wheel that kept scraping with every sharp left turn… Sounded like we were bottoming out each time!

The entire car ride have Kylie and I a great opportunity to talk about what we look for when we travel and what we both like to do. We figured this would help both of us have an even better time (this conversation was sparked with my 30 min grumpy phase at the hour 6 mark when we were supposed to have arrived).

As we drove, we crossed three borders today: Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. Pretty incredible. Belize felt like we were in an old colonial village in Africa from the 1800’s with has of dark skinned Belizeans.

When we finally arrived in Guatemala (city of Flores, this beautiful island city in the center of a lake – imagine lake town from lord of the rings) we were exhausted… Well I was exhausted. We were sweaty and sticky from the journey, had no place to stay and had no Guatemalan quetzal (money). We exchanged a few dollars for quetzal and took a tuk-tuk (scooter/taxi hybrid) into the city. We’d made a friend on our bus ride and rode with him into the Main Street of Flores. This cute little city looks a lot like Macau in Hong Kong with old cobblestone roads and colorful structures. In all it takes only 10 minutes to circle the entire island so it’s a tiny place to spend New Years but a beautiful one.

That’s all for now, it was an adventurous day but we made it! Crossed three borders to boot!

-Andrew