In Central America, things often do not turn out as planned. This was certainly the case on my recent trip to Belize…
I had initially planned an outing of a few days in order to renew my Salvadoran tourist visa. I chose the country of Belize because I was pretty sure I wouldn´t get a chance to travel there in the future, and also because I had never been to the Caribbean before. I was happily envisioning taking off an extra day for warm tropical waters and sunny beaches, but I didn’t count on the weather. It had been raining for a few days when I set out from San Salvador, but I didn’t quite realize the magnitude of the rainstorms from so far south. By the time I made it to the Guatemala-Belize border, a river, the water level had risen incredibly. Apparently, the bridge had cracked under pressure and they weren’t allowing any vehicles through. Everyone on my bus was told to get off, walk across the bridge, go through immigration and then wait (2 hours!) for another bus to pick us up.
On the road to Belize City we saw more flood evidence – our bus crossed dangerously through some rather large streams, and we passed by some buildings that were rapidly being consumed by water. But the clouds seemed to be clearing up slightly, and I arrived in the city to welcome sunshine. I walked around for a little while and realized that I had left behind the Central America I was used to. The most obvious change is the use of English, but it was still a foreign-sounding English to me, a mixture of Creole and Jamaican-style pronunciation that I found hard to understand at first. Unlike El Salvador, Belize has both a large black population and a large indigenous Mayan population, which makes for a diverse cultural mix. Belize City itself is not that impressive. The coastal city is pretty small in size with run-down buildings, unpaved streets and a reputation of being dangerous at night. I decided not to wait for that time period and took the touristy option – I caught a boat to nearby island Caye Caulker.
Home to the second largest barrier reef in the world, it is easy to see why so many tourists visit the Cayes - a string of islands east of the Belizean coast – to go snorkelling, diving, kite-boarding and numerous other ocean-related activities. When the night rains let up in the morning, I was greeted with a tropical island paradise: crystal-clear turquoise waters, white sand and palm trees. The view was right out of a travel magazine. [Trivia: Nearby Ambergis Caye is the subject of the Madonna song “La Isla Bonita”.]
I booked an all-day snorkelling trip and found myself on a sailboat with a few other tourists, heading out to the reef. We made several stops to snorkel in the Hol Chan Channel, the Shark-Ray Alley and the Coral Garden. The water was so warm that we didn’t even notice when it started pouring rain again until we were shivering back on the boat. Our dread-locked guides were knowledgeable and lots of fun. They threw bait into the water to attract Nurse Sharks right up to the boat, they fed us ceviche and rum punch, and they pointed out different fish species as we followed them through the corals. I saw yellow Sergeant Major fish, Groupers, Spotted Eagle Rays, Moray Eels and Sea Turtles, among others. By far my favourite and luckiest sight though, was a view of a fascinating marine creature: a Manatee. Long thought to have given rise to the myth of mermaids, these gentle animals are now on the verge of extinction worldwide. Belize is home to a relatively large population of manatees, now protected in designated wildlife reserves. I want to try to describe what I saw but I don’t have anything to compare it to. The most noticeable thing was the tail – thick and fish-like, yet the creature was distinctly mammalian. [Trivia: Manatees’ closest relatives are elephants and hyraxes – yes, the little guys that live in our backyard in Namibia!] Manatees graze on sea grass, a fact that probably gave rise to their nickname “Sea Cow”. At night they sleep underwater, unconsciously rising to the surface once every thirty minutes to breathe. In order to learn to survive, young manatees must live with their mothers until the age of 5, one of the reasons why they are so vulnerable as a species. Also, their only natural defence mechanism is to swim away, which is exactly what the manatee did next. One of the guides later told me that the trick to swimming with manatees is to never swim directly towards them. Instead, you have to turn your back and pretend to do something else. The manatees get curious and approach for a look!
The next day, I returned to Belize City and more water. As happens normally on the Carribbean coast once every hurricane season, the whole region flooded on account of the seemingly endless tropical storms. I was told that the Guatemalan border was completely closed due to high water levels, blocking my return route to El Salvador. I was left with no choice but to head north, travel by bus overland through Mexico, circling around all of northern Guatemala, in order to reach a dryer border post. All the way to the Mexican border I witnessed the destructive force of flowing water. It was scary. My bus passed by houses flooded up to the second floor, people swimming in their driveways looking for belongings, and on both sides of the road, a seemingly endless stretch of giant puddle. I was so distracted, it didn’t occur to me to take many pictures.
Finally I crossed the border and arrived in Chetumal, Mexico. Now I knew I had really left Central America. I saw strip malls, clean and well-paved roads, and fancy cars. All the tourism to the beaches of Cancún and other parts of the Yucatan Peninsula has brought much infrastructure, luxury resorts and Western shopping habits to the area.
In all the watery excitement I hadn’t had a chance to plan the next step of my travels. Luckily, my handy Lonely Planet Guidebook directed me to take an overnight bus to Palenque: time to take advantage of my new travel route and see some sites along the way.
I had heard a lot about the beauty of the Palenque Mayan Ruins, but I don't think I was prepared for the element of surrounding beauty. The main plaza is a large open clearing from where the trail leads up a hill to an overlooking temple, down a bend past cheerful waterfalls and winds through multiple smaller ruins rising up out of the jungle. I loved the main palace – a maze of corridors, courtyards, arches and creepy steps that vanished into the darkness of underground chambers. This building and a few others were completely open for visitors to scramble around and explore all of the nooks and crannies. I loved wandering through the trees with the sound of rushing water nearby and imagining what the buildings used to look like. The architecture is almost completely intact on many of the larger buildings though many of the carvings and sculptures seemed to be fading.
At the nearby museum, I found out about the biggest finding at Palenque: an emperor's tomb that was buried at the centre of a temple built specifically to house it. The tomb was really big, it filled up most of a large room and was decorated with inscriptions along all of its faces. A short movie described how archaeologists excavated the tomb – it took 24 hours to lift it from deep inside the temple using a winch. Inside the tomb was the body along with incredible treasures – face-masks of jade, jewelry, and small sculptures. Buried treasure!
My last stop before re-entering Guatemala also took longer than planned. I arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas in the evening. The city is up in the mountains and I found myself shivering in my raincoat, which was the warmest thing I had brought in anticipation of Belize weather. The city has wide streets and colonial architecture that are beautifully lit at night. I found a very cheap hostel nearby the main square. The area was quite touristy but that didn't seem to distract from how nice the city is. I found trendy restaurants, internet cafes everywhere, tourist agencies offering multiple adventure options, bars playing live music every night and incredibly sculpted churches. San Cristobal is also known for the famous Zapatista Revolt, where a leftist pro-indigenous (mayan) rights revolutionary force took over the city in protest of Mexico signing the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. The only evidence of this past that I saw however were people selling Zapatista t-shirts, postcards and dolls, and lots of political graffiti.
It was also during my first night that I realized that I was supposed to pay my “foreigner-fee” not at the border when I left Mexico, but at a bank. Conveniently, the banks opened later than when the bus I needed left for Guatemala. Given an extra day in an exciting place like San Cristobal, I wandered around quite a bit. I went to a fascinating museum about traditional Mayan medicine that focused on the mix of Christianity, herbal remedies and Mayan spirituality that are central to Mayan traditional healing as practiced in San Cristobal. In the late afternoon I walked up to one of the many colorful churches, this one on a hill overlooking the city to watch the sun set over the mountains.
All in all it turned out to be a great trip, even (maybe especially) with all of the delays and travel crazyness. I certainly spent a lot of time on buses hoping that it would stop raining. It took me a full day to get back to Antigua, Guatemala, and another to get back to El Salvador, which meant that I ultimately missed a whole week of work. It sounds like a lot of time, but then again, it's not that long in Salvadoran time. Also, I recommend organic Mexican coffee as a gift for coworkers and housemates.
