Home » Belize » Stormy Islands, Rastafarians and a day trip to Guatemala - You Better Belize It!!

Belize - this is a country that anybody will find it hard not to fall in love with. <br /><br />Sorry its been a while, since I last wrote 10 days ago,we about to cross the border from Chetumal, Mexico into Belize. We actually decided to stay one more night after I wrote the previous blog as we didnt really fancy a night bus ride, so after a final selection of tacos for dinner, we were on the road the following morning for a whole new set of adventures in Belize....

Stormy Islands, Rastafarians and a day trip to Guatemala - You Better Belize It!!

Lucian Reed-Drake
2006-03-27 14:03:05

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Japanese traveller sitting in silence, some old Mayan women holding baskets of fruit on their laps, a schoolboy passing around a cage with two white rats inside (his friends poking their fingertips through the mesh to tease the rats) and a muscle-bound Belizean Gringo bus driver in a very loud Hawaiian shirt. Kids selling tamales and popcorn pushed their way through the bus before jumping off at the next stop. A group of elderly Creole christians were jabbering and changing seats - with their leader being a tall woman in a Salvation Army uniform bossily asking people to move so that friends could sit together."

It was a strange, eye opening experience. Never before had I imagined how a bus journey can momentarily unite such a diverse stretch of faces, stories, lives when you just sit back and "voyeur" and everyone else.

It kind of brings people together. Its a shared experience. Yes its routine for some Belizeans Im sure, but especially with travellers there are new people every day. No more did we fill united when almost expectantly, the bus grumbled under the strain of overloaded passengers, and gave up and broke down.

So he we were, a motley crew of travellers, families, students, workers and a bus driver waiting on a dusty road in the middle of Belizean countryside for a new but old rackety bus to take us just 20km more to our final destination. The local rastas were friendly to us, they cant have seen so many people stop here for a long time. They shook our hands, we bought some cheap water sachets and crisps to share around. We started chatting and complaining, but laughing at the same time at the blantant lie of the bus drivers promise "10 minutes till new bus comes along". Over an hour later, I had already struck up an interesting conversation with a local Belizean student, around the same age as me, who had just come back from a friends wedding and informed me about the Mayan ruin history as he was studying to be a tour guide. ...