Belize Please

Hello All,

I am glad to be writing this blog again, because that means I have safely returned from my recent trip to Belize. Every 90 days we are required to leave Honduras for 3 days because of our passports and so I choose Belize. I actually like this requirement, it forces you to travel. Before I started out last Monday I knew how to get to Belize, which is rather complicated (buses, minibuses, taxis, boats, feet and border crossings), but I didn't know exactly what I was going to do when I got there. I knew Belize has good snorkeling and diving as well as Mayan ruins, so I figured I would find something worthwhile to do even without a lot of money.

This is a map of northwestern Honduras, northeastern Guatemala, and southern Belize (ignore the blue line, I pulled this from the web). This will help give an idea of where I am talking about in the following.

So where to begin...well, I left Juticalpa Monday morning. All day Monday and Tuesday morning I took buses, minibuses and taxis winding up at the northern Honduran city of Puerto Cortez. Everything was smooth up until buying some fruit before jumping on the next bus. Little did I know that somewhere between getting off my bus, buying fruit and getting onto the next bus, someone opened my backpack and reached inside to grab the first thing they found. I only realized this when I had gotten on the bus leaving Puerto Cortez. Luckily they only took my first aid kit (if they get a cut I hope their wounds don't heal).

Anyway, from there it was more buses toward the Guatemalan border and then to the Guatemalan town of Puerto Barrios (not on the map, but it is on the coast east of Livingston).

From here I hopped on a boat with an Aussie I met while crossing the border. The Aussie, Douglas, was traveling in his 3 of 5 months around Central America. Had lots of stories about where he had traveled else in the world. We were mates fast. We boated across the bay to the seaside city of Punta Gorda.

Punta Gorda is one of the bigger cities in southern Belize, which isn't saying too much. Besides meeting a group of college students (many from California) doing a semester abroad in Punta Gorda, there wasn't much going on.



Douglas and I did find a good motel to split with some cool hammocks.

By the next morning though I was ready to hit the road. Douglas was heading north to go diving but with my budget I had different plans. An ex-pat lady at the tourist info. center told me about little Mayan villages west of Punta Gorda where you can stay in a guest house for pretty cheap. Cheap sounded good so that was that.

This is one of the main bus stops in town where I waited for an hour and a half for a bus going my way. While waiting I met some new people. A couple Mayan ladies trying to sell bracelets, some Caribbean African-American descendents who were speaking some sort of English. All I could understand was when they cussed. Lastly I met a guy from Brooklyn named Michael, who was also traveling around Central America and who also needed to get out of PG.

Finally the bus came.

Michael didn't really care where he went so he decided to follow me to the little villages.





You can see at the bottom left where we were heading.

I was told that it was pretty rural out there but we didn't know we would be in the middle of nowhere. We bumped along on this dirt road for an hour and a half sometimes going through muddy spots I wasn't sure we would make it across.

We crossed rivers (on bridges). All this was happening with a bus filled with Mayan villagers, a black guy from Brooklyn and whitey here.


This was our village destination called Santa Elena...population 200. I have always been raised to be a man of faith but getting off that bus with the hope that there really was guest house was difficult. There weren't any more buses until the next day. Luckily there was a guest house, and the mayor (or chief maybe) said Michael and I could stay for $10 a night. This is the trail to the guest house.

Here's Michael happy that he had really found a change of pace from the Big Apple.

This was our house (or hut rather).

The roof was made out of palm leaves.

Bathroom and water supply.

There was no running water or electricity in Santa Elena. But we were happy to be having an adventure. After putting our stuff down, taking a swim in the nearby river, and eating some dinner at one of the village houses we decided to have a look around.

It only took us 15 minutes to see the whole village, but we found the primary school.

And then the regular evening soccer game. I forgot to mention, that besides speaking their own dialect of Mayan, everyone spoke English as well....not much spanish.

Well the next morning, Micheal continued heading west to Guatemala. I decided I would pass the rest of my time in Belize here in Santa Elena instead of trying to head elsewhere for other adventures. With Michael gone I had to come up with my own ideas for passing the time. I spent a lot of looking at this view from the front of our guest house while reading.

But luckily I made friends with some of the children who showed me what there was to do in Santa Elena. Here is Heraldo who is in 7th grade.

He took me on a water along the river where some kids were swimming while there mom washed clothes.

At one point I got hungry and so Heraldo introduced me to the chipichapa plant, which you can eat the stem of. Pretty good actually. They also make baskets out of it.

After the river Heraldo wanted to play his Twister game. I think God has a sense of humor. One minute all you know is that you need to leave Honduras for your passport and the next you're playing twister with little Mayan children.

It was still early after that so I decided to go searching for some Mayan ruins I had heard about. I asked Heraldo if he wanted to come but he declined, which turned out to be a good thing...

This is the road to the next village where the Mayan ruins were next to. It was probably 4 miles each way.

It was a nice walk with the sun out and the rivers

and the countryside.

Finally I reached the ruins.

But there wasn't much to see besides things like this. Actually I was more worried about stepping on a snake or getting attacked by bees, which Heraldo had said the last group of visitors to the ruins had been attacked by. The mayor had instilled a healthy sense of fear of the snakes into Micheal and I when we first arrived, telling us that someone had died less than a week early from a snakebite.

At the initial ruin's site there was a sign that directed you toward another. Seeing that I had walked for 4 miles to be less than impressed i decided to go to the next site. That turned out to 3/4ths of a mile along a muddy, hilly path which no one probably passes through more frequently than once a week. Not exactly settling when you are by yourself and you have snakes and bees on your mind.

Above is the picture of what I found. More piles of rocks.

It was on top of a hill though and so had a great view.

As I was enjoying the view some clouds rolled in. You can see the clouds above.

Which then turned into a full storm with wind, rain and lightening. Again, not settling when you are by yourself in the Belizean backcountry on top of a hill. Needless to say I headed back pretty quickly.

I began the trek hom along he muddy path.

But the storm quickly passed and the sun came out again.
This is the countryside.

The village of Santa Cruz, which I passed through on the way back from the ruins.
The wall of the Santa Cruz school.

and the library

Eventually I made it back to Santa Elena very happy to find a chair after the long hike.

That night at dinner I was talking to the mayor's son, who was about 17, and I asked what he was doing with his days since schools in Belize are also on vacation like schools in the States. He told me that him and the other guys had been working out in the corn and pumpking fields outside of town. I got invited to join him the next day.

Here is what I found them doing. They had these piles of pumpkins and they laid a tarp next to it to work on.



Next, some of them chopped the pumpkins in half with the machete

Then others would take the seeds out by hand

Heraldo was there to help too.

After several hours of this we had 4 five gallon buckets full of seeds. They told me that they go to Guatemala to sell them. There are not sure what the Guatemalan's use them for (they guessed the oil from the seeds made good hair gel), but they said they love them over there.

That was the last morning of mine in Santa Elena, and so it was time to head back to Punta Gorda to catch a boat to head home. There was a rainbow on the bus ride back to Punta Gorda.

I spent the night in PG before catching the boat back to Perto Barrios the next morning. I was literally down to my last dollars because I could not exchange my Honduran lempiras for Belizean dollars. Luckily I had just enough for a hotel, dinner and breakfast. Anyway, Saturday morning was a great morning for boating.

As we pulled into Puerto Barrios we saw some of the big fruit ships that used PB for its taking off point from Guatemala.

Ever wonder where your bananas come from?

The boat arrived safely and I was happy to be back in Guatemala, which I had some of the currency for. So I immediately bought myself a big meal.

After that is was taxis, walking, minibuses and buses back into Honduras. Before getting back to Juticalpa though I stopped at the little city of Valle de Angeles outside of Tegucigalpa. It is known for its souvenirs and cool mountain climate. Many of people from Tegucigalpa like to come here on the weekend as well as foreigners.

Here is the central park.

Some cool paintings in one of the souvenir shops.

This one was my favorite.

The church.

where i went to mass

and then I got a nice lunch outside the park.


After that it was back Juticalpa. That about wraps up the trip. It was a good time and I am grateful everything went smoothly. Sorry if there weren't more pictures of me, but that's what happens when you're traveling alone.

Now that I am back I have a few days off before a volunteer group from Ohio arrives who will be working on water systems up in the villages near San Francisco. I am going to be helping them as their interpreter. More on that when I get back in a week or so.

Thanks for staying with me and hope all is well with you.

Hasta proximo vez (until next time).