It rained when we walked over to the
brand new ADO bus station, a bright building where all bus travel was
conducted very orderly: buses were announced in Spanish and English,
several times until their departure, passengers were only admitted to
the waiting lounge if they had tickets, there was free wifi – all a
far cry from many other bus stations we have seen during our travels.
After the bus to Bacaral and Cancun had
left, right before ours was supposed to, the waiting lounge was quite
empty: not too many people seemed to have the desire to go to Belize
from Chetumal. We, too, could have taken a bus directly from Playa
del Carmen, but it would have meant arriving in Orange Walk late in
the evening, and we prefer not to do that if possible.
When the bus finally arrived, more than
an hour late, it was only half full at the most, the passengers
consisting mainly of tourists and a few expats. Not even fifteen
minutes had passed before we reached the Mexican border. We all got
out with our passports to hand in the slip of paper we had received a
few days before when we arrived and get the exit stamp. One by one –
or, in our case, two – we were admitted to the small office of the
immigration officer. She took our papers and asked for the exit tax:
US $30 for each of us. We thought this tax had been included in our
airline ticket, but she was adamant: unless you enter by land and
leave the same way AND do it within seven days you have to pay! She
wasn't overly nice about it either. We paid what she asked for and
got our passports stamped. As we knew from former experience the last
thing you want to happen is to be caught without a stamp in your
passport.
Behind us a couple of other people were
waiting still, and the matter of the exit tax was much discussed. A
British man had a detailed printout from his airline showing that he
had indeed paid the tax when he paid for his ticket, so he was
confident he didn't have to pay. When he came back he told us he had
had an argument with the immigration officer, but he ended up not
paying in the end. He didn't get his passport stamped, however, and
Johann urged him to go back in and get it. After the argument the man
wasn't eager to meet the official again, and he got back on the bus
without the stamp.
A few minutes later the bus stopped
again at the Belizean side of the border. Here, we had to take all
our luggage with us to go through customs. We received a slip of
paper – in Spanish, strangely, although the official language in
Belize is English – where we had to fill out our personal details
and had to state the purpose of our visit; nothing unusual about that
at a border. We were at the back of the line and witnessed the
exchange between the immigration officer and a young man. He, too,
didn't have the exit stamp from Mexico, although he had been sure
that he had got it. It was nowhere to be found in his passport,
however, and the border official told him he could not let him in
without it. 'You can't enter Belize if you haven't left Mexico,' was
how he put it – although, if it came right down to it, we were no
longer in Mexico either. 'But what should I do now', he asked. The
border official shrugged his shoulders. The British man was next, and
all his arguing didn't help him: he, too, was not to enter Belize
without the Mexican exit stamp. The two of them left together,
probably to look for a taxi to take them back; since we were next in
line we didn't keep track. Without any hassle we were admitted to
Belize and joined the other passengers on the bus. I told the bus
driver about the two men still missing. 'No stamps?', he asked. I
nodded, he shrugged his shoulders, 'happens every day,' turned the
bus around in the parking lot – and drove on towards his
destinations in Belize.
We couldn't believe it: he just left
them there! We imagined them, returning with all their stamps in
place, looking for the bus which was no longer there – it didn't
seem right to do it that way. Our expat seat neighbours had less
compassion: to have a whole bus wait for two people? We thought that
the bus driver could at least have made it clear how important the
stamps are before we reached
any part of the border. It would be such a small thing to do, and
could be so important for people not used to borders in Latin
America. On the other hand, the Brit didn't listen to good advice, so
maybe it really didn't matter much.
Just like the first
time we travelled through Belize it felt different than the Mexican
side of the border from the very start. Where dense growth hid
anything beyond the highway from view in Mexico there was agriculture
here, sugar cane and cows mostly. The roads are worse than on the
Mexican side of the Yucatan peninsula, narrower and winding, passing
through villages instead of by them. The bus driver made no
difference between the smooth four-lane highway in Mexico and this
one; speed limits, even as low as 45 or even 25 mph might as well not
have been posted: his speed remained steady between 85 and 100 km/h.
People on foot or bicycle moved far onto the shoulder; dogs seemed to
stay out of our way. The guy was a potential race car driver!
The grass is kept
short all along the highway, the houses built in a different style,
squarish, often with two levels, usually a balcony, cement painted in
pastel colours or white, rarely if ever clad with metal. Gardens with
flowers are abundant, and even in the rain they looked mostly
well-kept.
We had found four
options to stay on the internet in Orange Walk, two of them very
expensive, and of the two remaining one was booked out already.
Although it is almost certain that booking.com lists only a few of
the hotels/hostels we don't like to arrive somewhere, especially a
smaller town, uncertain where we can spend the night. Thus we booked
a room at the last hotel we knew of, cheap and not too far from the
bus station.
When we arrived in
Orange Walk at a quarter to four it was raining. The town looked a
little desolate in the rain, and, not unexpectedly, the bus station
here was no brightly lit modern building but just a shelter with a
corrugated metal roof and a few wooden benches. The Akihito Hotel, I
found out when I asked someone who looked as if he might know, was
only five or ten minutes away on main street, and, he said, if in
doubt we could ask anybody on the way. We shouldered our packs once
again, didn't bother with rain jackets for the short walk, and were
on our way. I didn't stop to wonder why everybody knew this
place, and if it was a good thing ... We found it easily enough, a
big old building displaying 'Akihito Hotel' high on the wall in big
letters. It seemed to have seen better days. When we opened the door
we found a small room crammed with construction material and people.
Could this be right? We were waved in with friendly 'Hello's,
carefully stepped over cables and other things lying on the ground
and came to what served as the office: a very narrow hallway where a
Japanese woman was sitting on a chair, a little table with keys and
papers beside her. She had been expecting us, so booking.com must
have worked. Our room, on the second floor where more workers were
building a new wall, the smell of wet concrete heavy in the air, was
ready for us. It was big, bright and clean, and had undergone a
renovation but, like so much of the place, was far from being
finished. The lights were working, and there was an A/C unit in the
window which led to the busy main street. The bathroom was freshly
redone, it seemed, but the bathroom fixtures needed to be permanently
installed and improved upon. As it turned out the shower didn't have
hot water, at one point not even cold. Wifi didn't work either,
although it did in the entrance where all the people had been
assembled.
This all sounds
pretty awful, and yet it wasn't all bad. The Japanese owners were
friendly and helpful, and the woman phoned the tour operator for the
trip to Lamanai the next day, our sole reason for stopping in Orange
Walk. We had a dry place to stay, room to spread out and sort our
packs, even a little table to write on.
Now, after the
second night, it will soon be time to move on: later this morning we
will take a bus from here to Belize City, then find another one to
take us over the border to Flores in Guatemala. It is not quite clear
yet how exactly this will work out, and the buses leaving from here
are, as far as we can see, mostly converted school buses instead of
modern air conditioned tour buses. We have booked a hotel in Flores,
and this time it sounds as if it should be nice – but we will see.
The trip to Lamanai yesterday was beautiful, and I'll report on it when we have arrived at our next destination.
