December 11-13, 2017
Crossing To Belize
My first border crossing would turn out to be by land, but a more complicated one than I’d experienced previously (US / Canada, Thailand / Cambodia, Hong Kong / China). Among other things, what would make this one complex is that I had to go through Belize first, and then transfer out to Guatemala.
There are two main areas in Mexico where you can cross to Guatemala, one of them being a few hours south of San Cristobal de Las Casas, the other being through Belize via a border town called Chetumal on the eastern coast of Mexico. I had seriously considered going all the way back to San Cristobal and then crossing the other border, but this ended up being much longer, and even more expensive despite the exit tariff charged by Belize ($20 for a single day).
After much research, I felt that I was ready to handle the Mexican border, known to be a little more troublesome than Belize or Guatemala. Mexico charges a departure tax in the order of $30, which supposedly, if you’ve flown into the country, was already charged on your ticket. Firstly, you need to contact the airline directly to request an itemized receipt showing the tax, and then it would need to be printed out for the border patrol. This is 2017 mind you, but mobile anything will not work. So, I spent my final afternoon in Tulum walking around in the heat trying to find a place that would print my receipt. Granted, it was Sunday, but I still was frustrated walking around in the sun that not a single hotel / hostel had a printer. Finally, I found an internet cafe that was open and handled the printout. The upside, as always, is learning new vocabulary :).
The initial run was to go from Tulum to Belize City. ADO had direct buses on this route, but for whatever reason, I found that going first to Bacalar (a beautiful lagoon-side town in its own right), and then on to Belize City would save me a few bucks. And so it was that I arrived in the Bacalar bus station at around 12:30am to wait for my 3:30am bus onward to Belize City. I took the time to go through photos and listen to podcasts (my favorite being this one), but was alerted to the sound of the American English accent after an hour or two and perked up. They looked pretty upset, so I chatted with them to find out the issue.
Turns out there were two Americans from D.C. traveling in the reverse direction, trying to make a flight out of Cancun later that morning. Unfortunately, because of the issues with the Mexican border, they were out of cash, and at that hour, searching for a working ATM would be a haphazard journey. They needed to still pay for their bus ticket to Cancun and needed some cash. I took out my hidden stash of USD and handed over the $40 I had, after which she transferred it back via Venmo (god bless that app!). I thought I’d had the border crossing figured out, so I would be good with what I had left (foreshadowing?). It felt really good to be able to help this couple relieve some stress, especially at such an odd time of day. Just goes to show how much you can help out if you keep your eyes and ears open.
Finally, a driver walked into the 10-seat waiting room where telenovelas had been blaring, walked up to the window, said something to the clerk, and walked out. I looked at my watch, saw it was close to 3:30 and started leisurely packing up, thinking that the bus should arrive soon. A minute later, a woman who’d also been waiting popped back into the waiting room and asked if I’m coming to Belize – the bus was leaving. Confused that there was no announcement, I hurriedly packed up my laptop, charger, HD, etc. and got moving. The driver was upset, staring me down from the baggage compartment as I tossed off my backpack to him while the rain sprinkled down around us.
We arrived at the Mexican border around 5, and all got off with our passports. Even though it was cold in the bus (a common situation, and why I brought my sleeping bag liner on board), it was somehow chillier outside. We waited for the border guards to arrive, as again, it’s quite early, and then filed in one by one. I was feeling good as other people started to ask about exit fees, receipts, etc., because I was already prepared.
When my turn arrived, I politely greeted the border patrol guard and handed over my passport and flight receipt. She looked back at me and demanded that I pay the exit tax. I was confused, and pointed out the line that said “tourism tax” on the receipt. She replied that this was not a “departure tax” and went to her office. Immediately, I felt like I was being taken for a spin. One of the hardest parts while traveling has been striking a balance between being overly cynical of everybody and not getting swindled. She came back and showed me another example Delta receipt that clearly stated this broken out separately. Apparently, the departure tax is only paid on tickets that leave the country (duh!), and I only had a one-way from NYC to Mexico to show for it. Shit. Thankfully, I had exactly the right combination of pesos and USD to make the mark, but thereafter was effectively broke.
After I got stamped out of Mexico, we grabbed all of our baggage off the bus and then proceeded to the Belize immigration and customs. This was simply a breeze, and though I knew this in my head beforehand, it was quite jarring to hear government officials speaking native English again (the official language of Belize). We boarded the bus again and were on our way to Belize City.
We arrived around 7 and I made my way to the water taxi terminal, about a 20-min walk or $1 taxi. With nothing but a single Sacagawea $1 USD coin that I’d received as change from the Mexican border (the attendant at the public bathroom wouldn’t even accept this as legal tender!; she let me go anyway), I figured it was worth it to walk, especially after an overnight bus. A funny feeling on this walk was being able to easily understand overheard conversations on the street. After a month+ in Mexico, my ear was shocked. I made it to the terminal before most of the businesses opened, including the one I was looking.
I was booked on a 1pm bus with the Marlin Espadas company (which I would recommend, ultimately). Most of the bus operators doing this route have pretty awful reputations, but this seemed the least egregious. I had booked in advance out of uncertainty of not being able to make the trip when I arrived and to be able to pay by credit card. But, it turns out that these transfers to Guatemala are very common, and run a morning and afternoon shuttle. So, I had 5 hours to kill. I ended up hanging at the office, once it opened, using the wi-fi and chatting with the 19-year old who was in charge of the office that day, for a few hours.
Finally, around noon, I made my way to the ATM to withdraw cash for the border crossing, and to replenish my emergency supply (you can withdraw in both USD and Belize Dollars). I unsuccessfully tried three different banks, and frustrated, returned to the office empty-handed. I’d previously encountered ATMs that didn’t accept cards with chips, so figured this might be the issue. I checked my bank app and realized that I only had $11 left in my account. Oops! Luckily, after some back and forth, I was able to pay the company via PayPal for $20 to get me across the border. Problem solved, and karmic loop closed.
A general side note is that I have a minor / irrational fear of being hungry. Not in the starvation sense, but just being in a situation where I’m hungry and don’t have access to food. Hangriphobia? Thanks to Sarah’s encouragement and good advice, I generally keep about a day’s worth of rations on me at any given point, “just in case”. So, I’ve developed a habit of traveling long distances (and on long hikes too) with a lot of hard-boiled eggs. Cheap, filling and mostly tasty. Granted, the eggs outside the U.S. are usually smaller, but I like to have 3-4 per “meal”, so in this case, since I figured I was going to be out of reach of normal food for a while, I packed myself 9 eggs – pealed, salted, and hot sauce-d for my delight. This was a big learning on my road trip, and have brought it forth to my international travels too. I’m been surprised at how few weird looks I get from people when I bust out a baggie of eggs that smell a bit, but I never go hungry. And, I suppose, it’s pretty common to bring home goods, animals, and more onto buses, so eggs probably barely register.
Crossing To Guatemala
This was much simpler, though still, as with all land borders, fun(ny) in some way. The way out of Belize City was painless, with only about four people on a normal-sized coach bus. It was meant to be about 3 hours to the border, and another 2 to Flores. An hour in, as we’re bumping along the one-lane highway through the picturesque Belizean countryside, we stop and the driver gets out. He checks the engine, goes to the back luggage compartment and comes back with a new fan belt. He was completely unfazed – this must happen rather frequently.
The exit from Belize was quite orderly, the only questionable part was that the signs denoting the computation of the exit fee – $12.50 for the exit fee, $5 for something else, and $2.50 for the “border development” fee (commonly assumed to go into somebody’s pocket). I handed over $20, and she gave me back $7.50 in change. I looked at her, looked at the sign, smiled and moved on to get my passport stamped out. Now I just had to find a way to trade for 15 Belizean Dollars. The immigration guard, a flirtatious older woman, was sad to see me go “honey, why you only staying for one day???? When will you come back to see me?” And so, with a smile, I exited Belize after only 12 hours in its confines.
While normally, you’d expect at this point to go back to the bus to get your bags to process through Guatemala customs, I found out that things were much less stringent on that side. Our bus magically turned into a shuttle van, and I was told to just walk across the border with my passport and they’d meet us on the other side. The Guatemalan immigration agent didn’t even look up from his phone as I handed him my passport and he stamped it. No computers on this side, so technically, I’m not sure there was a record of me entering the country. In fact, when I left a couple of weeks later, I noticed that the immigration agent at the airport in Guatemala City had to manually enter my entry date into the computer.
At this stage, it was just myself, a mid-30s guy from Connecticut and a mid-40s South African guy in the shuttle with a Belizean woman and the driver. These two gents were really a pair – we started off by driving directly to a gas station to buy a bottle of Coke, a bag of ice, cups, and a fifth of vodka for the 2-hour journey. I refrained, as I can’t bear vodka anymore, but they enjoyed themselves quite liberally. And, of course, after 15 minutes of drinking, the South African guy was fiending for a cigarette. He asked the driver if he could smoke inside (raises eyebrow), which he shrugged off and said “so long as everyone is ok with it”. To his chagrin, the Belizean woman shut him down, but a couple of minutes later, he slid open the window and made it work anyway. Lots of conversation ensued about travel, encounters with police in Mexico, hostels in Guatemala, and of course, various drugs. The CT guy even gifted the South African a few tabs of LSD in a gesture of good faith (no, mom and dad, I did not take the LSD).
Flores… Finally
After 22 hours of travel I arrived in Flores around 6:30, just as promised. For those keeping track at home and checking my math, there’s a -1 time difference in Guatemala (Central Time), as Cancun and the surrounding state of Quintana Roo do not observe daylight savings. When I heard this in Cancun at first, I was confused because I hadn’t remembered it being the same time there as NY when I’d visited in the past. I found out from Julian that this was purely an effort by the state government to preserve more hours of afternoon sunlight on the coast for beach tourists. The rest of Mexico is on Central Time too, but observes daylight savings. This caused some hiccups on my trip to Chichen Itza, which is in a different state, and thus an hour behind.
Anyway, I arrived to the Los Amigos Hostel just before dinner, checked in, and headed directly to the bar. Adam and Adina Cohen (Sarah’s siblings) were there to greet me! Rewind some weeks, when I found out that Adina and Adam would be traveling together in December in Guatemala, and they agreed to let me crash some of their time together. Adina was on summer break from her studies in Santiago, Chile, and Adam on winter break from journalism school in Chicago. Things worked out perfectly, and we were able to spend a couple of days together in Flores, and then enough time for an ice cream in Antigua!
It’s hard to describe, but it felt SO good to see those two friendly faces after ~7 weeks of travel. It’s funny because I had become so close to a lot of people at Hridaya, but I still felt such a sense of comfort and relief when we reunited in Flores. We spent some time catching up over beers and pizza dinner, and then played some games of Shithead before calling it an early night.
I should take a moment to describe Los Amigos, which is definitely one of my favorite hostels so far. Every so often, you come into a place and you just know that they’ve got everything right, and Los Amigos was one of them. They’re not on Hostelworld (the most popular hostel booking / reviews site), but it seems the best ones don’t need to be. This place totally nailed it from the moment you walk in – TONS of plants, beautifully decorated with lanterns and couches (see photos), clean rooms, delicious food, plenty of common space, and a full-service tour agency inside that books everything for you. All for ~$11 a night in a dorm.
Flores (map) is a tiny “island” town in northeastern Guatemala of cobblestone streets that lies just off of the shore in Lago Peten Itza, and is connected to the mainland by a bridge. It’s beautiful in its own right, but is mainly used as a jumping-off point for visits to and treks in the jungle of the Tikal Mayan ruins. For that reason, 99% of the island is a mix of hostels, restaurants, and travel agencies. There was one small supermarket with an ATM, and that’s about it.
The next morning we got a nice slow start to the day and had brunch on the second-floor terrace of a cozy veggie-focused restaurant overlooking the picturesque lake. The food in Guatemala is similar to Mexico, but with its own touch. Adam and I both had chilaquiles, a favorite of mine, but it showed up in a very different way than I’d seen, with the fried tortillas left whole, with the ingredients on top and the eggs beneath (see photo). Afterwards, we made our way back to the hostel to pick up our tour to Tikal.
After an hour by shuttle, we got out to buy our entrance ticket ($20 for foreigners, much less for locals), which cost more than the guided tour itself! What was odd was that this was a stop before entering the park, and was handled by a local bank, after which you get a dot-matrix receipt. We got back on the bus and arrived at the park, where we traded our receipt for a wristband. Just makes you wonder about the system that existed before they implemented this one some years back.
The ruins are located deep in the jungle, and have an unexplored feel similar to that of My Son in Vietnam (not as touristic as Angkor Wat). I really had the feeling that I could trip over some artifact or top of a new pyramid at any point. Plus, the lushness of the place was a real treat after a couple weeks on the beach. Our young guide was hilarious, and had lots of good information and stories about the ruins and the area’s preservation. Tikal is among the most well-preserved and important Mayan sites in the world, and one of the empire’s oldest ruins, dating back to the 4th century B.C. Even after seeing Chichen Itza a week before, these were still astounding, and a much more enjoyable experience – better guide, massively fewer tourists, more ruins, and, what makes it the most fun, being able to climb on a lot of them. It really allows you to feel the power that these structures had to a people, and to try to wrap your head around the incredible architectural and construction feat to create something like this so long ago. We capped off the tour climbing one of the pyramids to overlook the tallest one as the sun set.
We returned to the island and grabbed a quick bite of tacos from a stand by the bus drop-off. I went for the al pastor and asado tacos, breaking my vegetarian streak for a bit, and these were sadly far below Mexico’s standard. Then, of course, we went in search of ice cream. Unfortunately, the island of Flores was lacking, except for the freezer case in a couple of the tiendas (little store, similar to a bodega in NYC minus the sandwiches). We settled for this, and miraculously the freezer we happened upon had frozen Snickers bars – not just the Snickers ice cream, but actual bars that were frozen, a favorite of mine and something I’ve never seen out of my own freezer. Also worth noting that the brand of freezer ice cream in Guatemala is called Sarita. There’s some kind of irony there.
That night, we video’d in with the Cohen family celebrating the first night of Chanukah. Although the connection was terrible – the one knock on Los Amigos is the wi-fi, which is understandable considering they have up to 100 guests – it was still pretty fun and special to be celebrating the holiday and hearing some of the songs from a few thousand miles away.
Adam and Adina left the next morning for a day-long ride to Semuc Champey, while I decided to stay an extra day in Flores to relax and explore the town before heading south to Antigua. I was treated to a fantastically warm, sunny day, unusual for the clouds that had been covering Flores and even Tulum for the prior few days. The temperatures during the day were unusually cold during this time, topping out in the low 70s and dropping into the 50s at night. Most of the locals noted how bizarrely cold it was. I noted it too, after a week in the tropics, I was expecting much of the same from Flores (and Guatemala generally), but I was mistaken.
I spent most of the day at an awesome cafe / bar called Cool Beans. They had a strong selection of American beers, including the hometown Brooklyn Brewery Sorachi Ace. This was $5 very well-spent, as I had beautiful views of the lake, a hammock, and good tunes to support my reading time. I was able to finish The Power Of Now, which I highly recommend, and echoed a lot of the teachings at Hridaya around spirituality and meditation, but in a much more straightforward, readable way.
Before heading back to Los Amigos for dinner, I made a stop along the edge of the island to watch the sunset over the lake, and it was glorious! At the same time, seemingly at random, a huge group of birds began chirping in two trees right next to me. It was like the tree had come alive and was upset about something. There’s a video of this towards the end of the photos. It felt very Hitchcock-esque, and I was a little weirded out, but I survived.
I spent my last few hours in Flores juicing up my devices and enjoying a delicious Thai coconut curry for dinner before my journey to Antigua. Around 9, I was shepherded with some others from the hostel to the bus pick-up / drop-off point (can’t really call it a stop, as it’s just a place on the road near the bridge). Another nice surprise was how empty and luxurious the bus was. The penultimate photo shows it, but it was mostly empty (it later filled up as we hit our first city, a very common occurrence), and quite clean and comfortable – more of the exception to the rule. The only issue was that this was the 2nd class of seats, and on the second floor, so when the bus would take a turn, it felt like I was flying out into the aisle.
Thus, I didn’t manage to get a lot of sleep, but still enough such that I was jarred awake by shouts of “Antigua! Antigua!” outside the bus. Only then did I find out that we’d arrived to Guatemala City at 5am, an hour earlier than I’d been told. From here, a group of us were corralled and taken to a shuttle bus (effectively a pre-booked colectivo) for the hour ride to Antigua.
On the way into the city, we saw Volcan Fuego erupt twice into the sunrise. More to come on that soon.
Photos
