Belize Blog
The Honduran immigration laws say that we have to leave the country every 90 days in order to obtain new visas. Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala are in some sort of free trade agreement that makes it so you don’t need a passport to travel through those countries. Thus, it doesn’t count as “leaving the country” to go to those closer countries. So, last week, we traveled to Placencia, Belize and spent a few days. This trip involved four total days of travel and three days of relaxing in Belize, so it wasn’t they typical “tropical getaway.” Plus, we pretty much live in a tropical paradise, so it wasn’t too different from home. Anyway, we rode by car to La Ceiba, by bus to Puerto Cortez, Honduras, spent the night, and took a two hour boat ride to Belize. We had a little time in Puerto Cortez before the boat left, so we strolled around and took a few pictures. There was a huge statue of the woman breastfeeding. Honduras maybe decades behind the rest of the world on some things, but it’s definitely up on its breastfeeding!

The boat trips to and from Belize were actually pretty calm most of the way. But we wore our life jackets nonetheless.

While in Placencia, we stayed at Julia’s Guesthouse. We liked the colors (bright orange and yellow), and it was right on the beach. The water was crystal clear and nice and warm. Guildy did her usual wonderful job of charming complete strangers…..

Johannes and Magdelana, the German couple staying next door in the guesthouse. They were delightful to hang out with and they loved playing with Guildy.

Stephen and JJ, the Mayan boys who were selling native art – baskets and purses and such. They spoke five languages – Mayan, English, Garifuna, Creole, and Spanish.

Jordan, the guesthouse owner’s grandson.

The people on our boat back to Honduras were fascinating. In addition to us, there were two women from the Netherlands who owned a hostel in Copan, Honduras; a lady from Italy; two English medical students; a scuba instructor who was born in Brazil, raised in Honduras, and currently lived in Belize; a Brazilian guy who worked for a German company making artificial flavors; and a large, somewhat obnoxious American named Richard. The owner of the boat was Creole and didn’t have shoes. It reminded me of the people on the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tails. Those of you familiar with the Canterbury Tails will find it interesting to note that Richard had a gap tooth….as does Guildy.

Our trip progressed well until we boarded the bus from San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba. It was a pretty high class bus, certainly not a chicken bus. We left about 4:30 p.m., well before dark, and Josh and I sat in the front to avoid motion sickness. As darkness (and rain) began to fall, it became apparent that the bus had no headlights. It actually had some light coming from the right headlight, but it was shining way off to the right. As a result the driver drove down the center of the road in order to catch a little headlight on the road. We kept thinking that the driver would pull over and try to fix something or at least mess with the switches, but he seemed completely unaffected by the fact that he was pretty much driving blind in the rain. We moved to the back of the bus thinking it was better to be there in the event of a wreck. We finally stopped at Tela, about half way between San Pedro and Ceiba, to let some people off. We decided we had had enough danger for one night and got a hotel. Before departing we made sure the others on the bus (mostly the same group that we had traveled with from Belize) knew that there were no headlights. Most of them said something like, “man, that’s bad.” I would have expected more of a response, but none of them opted to leave when we did, and we didn’t hear about a bus wreck, so they must have made it okay.

We caught a bus in Tela the next day and got home safe and sound without mishap. Well, not completely without mishap. I had to sit way in the back of this particular bus, which leads to greater motion sickness. A nice lady with a baby let me have her seat so I could throw up out the window. Another nice lady held Guildy for me. Before, during, and after my puking display, a well-dressed young man selling health food/home remedy books had been giving a speech about how to treat all sorts of maladies. The ladies sitting next to me thought maybe I needed some pineapple skin tea:o)