A Busito, 2 Chicken Buses, 2 Truck Beds and 3 Boats

 

Every three months, the volunteers have to leave the country for 4 days to renew our tourist visas. It’s a bummer that we aren’t awarded work visas for volunteering here, but the good news is that, because of this little problem, we get to leave the country for 4 days.

Cofradia has a special place in my heart, but lets face it, this little town is never somewhere where I would chose to live. Any chance we get to leave makes my heart flutter. Plus, for this visa trip, we not only got to leave but got to go to Belize and lay on the beach for four days. BECA, the organization that we work for paid for it and I have been looking forward to it for months.

We started our journey at 5am on Thursday morning, the 14 of us crammed in a small busito driven by a parent of the school (think of a very small minivan from circa 1983). We rode in this busito for 2 hours, crossed the Guatemalan border, and reached a bridge that was destroyed by the tropical storm that tore through Guatemala 2 weeks earlier. There were buses stopped and parked at the edge of the broken bridge and we waved to the group of  crafty Gautemalans on the other side  offering rides to the port where we were headed. They were clearly taking full advantage of this bridge incident.

Meanwhile we looked down to the rushing brown water and there were men hanging from the bridge pilons, cutting up the tree that took out this massive bridge with machetes. No chainsaws, no cranes… Needless to say, it will probably be a while before this bridge is functioning again.

There is a boat under there, somewhere.

In the meantime, a few locals were making a small fortune, charging people to cross the river. There were only 2 guys with little wood motor boats and we didn’t have too much bargaining power, they grossly overcharged us, we piled in this little boat with 4 other travelling gringos and eased across the river. The edge of the boat was inches above the rushing water and we were careful not to lean too far to one side.

When we got to the other side we were rushed into a busito for a small fee,  and were told we would be taken to the port. After 5 minutes travelling in this busito, packed like sardines with this farmer and his wife, we came upon a stretch of road that had a small river flowing through it. Ahhhh, get sus to Belize.  We were told to pile into a truckbed for another fee! We were sick of being had so we said, screw it, we will walk across the river. It was only about knee deep, but it stretched about 100 yards. We rolled up our pants and took a deep breath, and then a nice guy in another truck told us to hop in the back and he could take us for free for a bit.Twenty minutes later, he took us as far as he could, we hopped out and waited for a bus. Then another truck arrived offering to take us standing up in the bed to our port. We haggled a bit and got onboard.

The day continued this way…. Crossing boarders, fording rivers, haggling with drivers, and paying entrance and exit fees in three different countries. Two more boats later and a chicken bus we arrived at 4:35 pm, travelling no more than 250 miles over the course of twelve hours.

We stayed in little bungalows on the beach and first thing we did when we arrived was drink a cocktail and jump in the water. At that moment the journey was all worth it.

Placencia, Belize is not very far from Cofradia, Honduras, but they could not be more different. White sand beaches, perfect weather, delicious food and friendly open people greeted us and I felt instantly at home. Placencia is a touristy town, but it is the off-season and was quiet and mellow. There were no roosters, or dogs to wake us up, the homeless men there didn’t harass us and the streets were free from trash. It is almost eery to walk into Belize from the rest of Central America, like you have opened the other side of a portal.

I ate a Carribean fish stew, homemade icecream from a quirky ex-pat and laid on the beach for 2 days. For all the negative aspects of colonialism, it makes for a nice place for a four day weekend. But then there was the journey home….

Josh and Norah, a bit slaphappy.

Matt and Josh, mid-journey