Welcome to Belize

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.