I (thought I) Love Bus Travel

I climbed onto the 8 a.m. bus in Punta Gorda this morning along with about 8 Belizeans. I was all set to travel all day to get to San Ignacio, in the north. I thought to myself: "I love bus travel. It's great. You get a real feel for the country, the people, the culture." 6 hours later, I wasn't so sure. I think I'm old.

Belizeans travel mostly by bus. Before we even left Punta Gorda, we'd driven all around town and the 8 people turned into more like 30. Few people outside the cities own cars and air travel, while relatively economical, is still expensive. Buses here are ALL, I repeat, ALL, old school buses from the United States. Have you ever travelled 6 hours on a school bus? Maybe. I don't really remember. I might have when I was 10. But not full-sized, and not in 95 degree heat and not when there's a billion people on the bus with me. I'm a wus. I'm an American, spoiled wus.

My knees hurt, my legs hurt, I was hot. When it started to rain, I almost cried when the bus attendant guy came around and closed all the windows, in an attempt to suffocate us all. When I changed buses in Bamlopen (the capital of Belize), I didn't get a seat and stood in the back where I had stuck my pack in the crack between the back seat and the window. Every times someone opened the back door (which was a lot to load stuff and people), my bag almost fell out. Luckily, that ride was only about an hour of the total trip and I got to sit down for the second half.

The buses are painted bright colors. They actually look pretty cool. All along the highways, there are dead buses parked in lots, in people's yards, all over. If you ever wondered where all the school buses in the U.S. go to die, the answer is apparently Belize. Use that in your next Trivial Pursuit game and get your final pie!

On the bus. Women travel more than men on the bus. They are often in pairs or groups and often have 2 or 4 or 6 kids with them. One woman today, I kid you not, had an infant in a piece of cloth. It was lying down sleeping and she had gathered the cloth at the top like a bag and was carrying it. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I wasn't the only one staring, and I was the only non-Belizean on the bus.

The bus stops every 2.5 feet to pick up whoever wants to be picked up on the side of the road (a la Paraguay). This, my friends, is why it takes 5 hours to go what should have taken 3. Not only that, but if you remember, school buses do not stop on a dime, so often, we would overshoot the person on the road and then BACK UP to go get them!

Belizeans speak English, pretty much universally. They speak it with different fluency, depending on where they are from, how much education they have received and how much they come in contact with tourists.

They also speak Kriol. This was, for a long time, sconsidered a form of bastardized English, but has recently been linguistically proven to be it's own own unique language. If you listen really closely, you can kind of figure out what people are saying. It sort of sounds like reggae-talk. There's "mans" a lot and "das" a lot. It's interesting.

Some people speak Spanish. It depends on the region. In San Pedro lots of people did. Down south in Punta Gorda, not so much. Here in San Ignacio, more.

Then there are Mayan languages. The only one I've come in contact with so far is Kertach (no clue how to spell it or say it). There's also Mopan and probably a million others.

There are black people, brown people, Mayan people (who clearly look Mayan) and there were lots of blond headed little kids with Belizeans in San Pedro. It's quite a mixture of people here. It's lovely, actually.

Last night, I spent the night in Laguna, a village about 10 miles outside Punta Gorda. It is part of the Toledo Ecotourism Association (TEA). They have a guesthouse. I took the bus from Punta Gorda at 6 a.m., got off a the "Laguna Junction" (not a real place, just where the road to Laguna meets the main road) and prepared to walk in the 3 miles to get there. It was pouring. Luckily, a car came along, driven by Vicente Sakul, who happens to be the President of the TEA! (I'd been told about him ahead of time.) He took me to the guesthouse and then Rosa came by. The families in the village who are working with the program rotate being the "attendant" when visitors arrive. It was Rosa's turn.

I got settled in the guesthouse, which was lovely! It had two rooms with bunk platforms and she made me a bed. There was a back patio and then a side building with a toilet and sink/shower with running water.

I had breakfast at Rosa's house with Seffina her daughter. Tortillas, beans, and eggs with a sweet kind of hot tea to drink. Then I had a village tour, which really amounted to just a walk around the circle of "road" that makes up the village. Rosa pointed out flora of interest and the buildings (school, church, health center, shop). 300 people live in the village, 85 of whom are children. Rosa has 8. Justina, who fed me lunch and gave me a "craft lesson", is 29 years old and has 6 kids. She goes every three months to Punta Gorda for a Depo shot for birth control. She's heard rumors that Depo gives you cancer in the long run, so she's worried, but she's trying to balance that with the idea of yet another child. She was obviously worried enough to share the whole story with me.

At lunch, John showed up. He did the same deal as me, but 4 hours later. He's Australian, but lives and works in East Africa. Just finished a temp job (enviornment stuff) in Hondurus, and is traveling around. It was great to have someone to hang with all afternoon. We went on a walk through the jungle up the "Farm road" which led to no where, talked for 2 hours about the US, Iraq, Bush, Michael Moore, privelege, travel, diving, and more and then ate a very weird dinner at Patricia's house. It was beans, fry jacks (which are flour tortillas, but fried and puffy and delicious), and hard boiled eggs. The house had dirt floors and only hammocks for sleeping and it was Patricia, her very old husband (I think), her son and then two young girls showed up. I have no idea the family make up and no English was really spoken. I was sort of glad to have John there.

Then we showered (well, bucket bathed) and went to bed at 7:45 because there wasn't electricity in the guesthouse. It was a good thing, though, because we were up at 5:30a to catch the "market bus" back to PG. All in all, it was a great experience and the entire $55BZ ($27.50US) I spent went directly to the folks in the village. No middle man. Oh, and I bought a hand made caxtal (bag) from Rosa and a gift for my dad from Justina, each for $10BZ, so that helps them too.

I have now apparently arrived in the northwest having left my good sense and frugal ways on the school bus. I just booked a trip to Tikal in Guatemala for $85US (which I had planned on doing from the start). I also booked Caracol, which is a Mayan ruin here in Belize which was recently featured in Nat'l Geo Travel magazine. I ALSO booked a trip to ATM (which stands for some long Mayan name I can't remember right now) but is essentially a living museum that was discovered not too long ago with human remains, Mayan artifacts, etc and is supposed to be the coolest thing ever. All together, the three will run me $245US, which, I supposed, for 3 full days of tours which include transport, guides and lunch, is a bargain. (That was the price for a one-day, three-dive trip to the Blue Hole.)

I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to stay over in Tikal for a night. The trip doesn't stay over, but I could do the whole thing and then just not go back with them, and stay overnight and make my own way back on the bus the next day. That's prolly what I'll do so I can have a sunset at Tikal. Since I've had it in my head for DAYS that I fly out of Belize City on Saturday and just realized at about 3 p.m. today that I don't actaully fly out till SUNDAY, I just found a whole extra day! Yippee.

So all is well in Central America. More later.