Still Friday, May 11th
Border Day or more accuracy, Driving Day. As far as I could tell we were about 4 hours away from where our Airbnb host had asked us to meet her in the Isla de Flores, Guatemala. The decision to take 2 of our 9 days in Guatemala had been based almost exclusively on a conviction from deep within my gut. I have honed my gut instincts for just such occasions. James and Mom didn’t see an issue with the plan so it was added to the itinerary.
The only potential issue was that I couldn’t be sure that our Airbnb hosts weren’t thugs planning to kidnap us. Sure, the picture showed two innocent, carefree looking young ladies but that might just be exactly the profile thugs would want to present. If I were a thug I would definitely not want to look like a thug because I would lose the element of surprise. Sure, I might lose some intimidation factor but why would I need to intimidate people that I’m attempting to surprise? Intimidation factor is important for music videos but not kidnapping.
The Airbnb had no reviews and seemed new. The little town it was located in, El Remate, didn’t show many Airbnbs. Thirdly, the address was unclear – hence the reason we were meeting the innocent looking ladies at a mysterious place called the Island of Flowers by a sign that read “Yo <heart> Peten.” I didn’t know why Flores would love Peten, whatever that was, but it added to the dubiousness. And why meet 30 minutes away in a big city? Communicate had been a little difficult.
Anyway, it was all very suspicious. That is why James had come along. I do the planning part and he does the beating people up part. Marriage is all about complementing one another’s skills. One person gets us into a scrap and the other one pulls us out. One falls and his fellow lifts him up. It’s a proverb and it’s how we do. Besides, having James beat them up seemed way easier than the three of us trying to fake Australian accents (you laugh but in general, Aussie’s are pretty safe because no one actually knows anything about Australia besides that its citizens are usually friendly, laid-back people so long as you don’t lie to them. I bet you don’t even know their Prime Minister’s name and neither do I. The truth is, no one outside Australia does. I suspect they don’t even have one. In the end, they seem less likely to be kidnapped).
But first I wanted some coffee. I have scoured over a dozen countries in search of the elusive $1 latte or cafe con leche but with little success (see future posts about that perilous search in Southeast Asia). After washing the salt off me from the morning’s paddle board experiment, Mom and I headed off into Hopkins.
Hopkins is a Garifuna village [Afro-Amerindian] on the coast of the Stann Creek District in Belize.
The entire village is approximately 12 feet long by 4 feet wide so we kinda felt lazy taking the car. Kat’s Coffee was about a mile down the road. It was one of the few cafes in town and even though Thong’s Cafe was closer, for some reason it just wasn’t our first choice.
“Are you still open?” I tentatively asked the barista. Google had said they closed at 11am. She affirmed they were but didn’t look too happy. Still, there were other customers around and she didn’t mention a closing time so I went about to studying the menu, hoping to find something for a dollar. After half a minute, Kat dropped a hand on her hip and asked with obvious annoyance, “So are you going to order?”
“Nope,” I said. “I just like looking at menus.” Actually I didn’t say that but the evil inside wanted to. Instead I said “Yeah,” and ordered a $3 iced latte.
This brings up another odd thing that I’d been noticing about Belize. Nobody – save our hosts and the chocolate guy (most of whom weren’t Belizians) – had seemed very happy. Or maybe just not happy to see us. It wasn’t outright anger. In fact, it was the opposite of anger – apathy. It looked like they just had zero interest, almost like they had just woken up and only wanted to go back to bed.
The Immigration lady at the airport had greeted us with the well-known enthusiasm of a DMV worker. The car rental lady was slightly more alive. She at least had blinked. Even the lady who cooked us dinner kinda wanted us to go somewhere else. Granted, no one else was there and she may’ve been closing up. And now, here was Kat blankly staring at me as I ordered.
English is the national language so that couldn’t be it – or maybe that was exactly it. Maybe, since we shared a language, the need for extra friendliness and allowance that usually compensate for words while traveling was gone. Maybe because I knew what she was saying and also what her body language meant, the meaning landed harder than if I had only understood her body language. When I lived in China, I smiled back at plenty of disgruntled shopkeepers while bumbling through their language – which usually ended with their smiling too. Poor language skills make a person seem child-like which can be endearing – or just look like big idiots, which is funny. But here it would take three tries to get the Barista to smile back (when I complimented her work).
Or maybe the humidity had simply wilted their good humor. It had been blazing hot since 8:00am and I was glad my coffee was iced
So as we drove up the Hummingbird Highway we had plenty of time to observe Belize since contemplating the potential thugs didn’t take that long. A few things stuck out as we sped past. Again, these are only impressions formed at 65mph so we could be way off.
First, much of the country seemed kinda burned out and empty. There were a lot of cinderblock houses that were literally burned out shells and therefore empty. Granted, Belize has fewer than 367,000 people,
which accounts for some of the emptiness. For perspective, El Salvador and Massachusetts (which are about the same size) have over 6,000,000. So just imagine being in Massachusetts and then remove 16 people from wherever you are. Besides that, May is also the end of the dry season so some of the plants were a bit droopy.
Second, they have a lot of jungle, a lot of delicious tropical fruit, and a lot of farmers still slashing and burning it.
Third, despite accounts of 40% poverty, the people look very well fed. Perhaps it’s the fruit trees. The only beggars we came across that I can recall were in the capital.
Fourth, they really like trucks and SUVs which might be due to the poor condition of some of the roads. We did see old beaters (like our truck at home) but there were plenty of brand new Ford 250s as well.
Fifth, judging from the signs posted every few miles, most of Belize is up for sale on ReMax. I guess foreign investment is a hot topic.
Sixth, their use of speed bumps instead of enforcing speed limits is ingenious if not a little hard on people’s brakes. I suspect tire and suspension mechanics are thriving.
Finally, the oddest thing we noticed was the Chinese folks who weirdly seemed to own every supermarket. I had not expected this since I had read it was $6000 USD for a Chinese citizen to get a visa. But sure enough, Dong Lee Supermarket, Happy Shopping Center, David’s Superstore – all had a Chinese couple behind the register. I looked into the phenomenon and its details seem a little too murky and political for a paragraph. So I’ll just sum up by saying that the first Chinese arrived as indentured servants in 1865 when it was British Honduras and then in the 1980s, when there was a citizenship by investment program, droves more came and have been doing so ever since to the point where the Chinese population growth was higher than the total population growth a few years ago. I have no idea how everyone feels about it but they are certainly upping the GDP while providing snacks. And I have a personal reason to be thankful to David’s Superstore, which I will detail at a later time.
Around 5:00pm we were parking at the Guatemalan border station. Belize charged each of us $20 USD to leave, Guatemala charged us something like $30 USD to enter with the car (fumigation carwash and all), and a small boy named Jefferson asked for a tip for pointing us in the right direction. Of course, he hadn’t indicated he would need money until after translating for us and I didn’t get a discount for speaking to him in Spanish half the time.
And that was it. We were in Guatemala, ready to see if the rumors of highway bandits (and our suspect hosts) were true.