Arrival to Belize

The bus is quiet and almost everyone is asleep, but the guys in front are chatting away loudly. We come to a stop and I look up and have a feeling we are coming pretty close to Belize City. With his backwards cap and annoyed tourist face, he shouts out, "Last stop" I gather my stuff together quickly and get off the bus and am thrown into 20 taxi drivers all starving for some tourist cash.

Of course, I was annoyed because I thought the bus was dropping us off at the bus station, but clearly this was not the case. It was probably some tactic for them to get money as we were dropped off on the side of road in some random place.

  

It was just a total culture shock when I entered Belize as I could not get over the run down buildings and the gang infested streets full of graffiti. It felt like I was back in my early 20s working in Compton with  bullet holes in windows and cars just wrecked. The taxi drivers cars look like they were in a gun war with shattered windshields, missing hubcaps, chipped paint, and wires coming out on the inside(this became common for cars to be missing parts inside and wires hanging out) I bet that is safe.

Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way and I wanted to go back to Guatemala. I was having one of my Priscilla brat moments. It doesn't help when I just wake up from a nap and I am pulled off the bus-that is never a good turn out.  

The English girls who were having the problem on the bus worked it out. I talked with them at the border and they were pretty nice, but clueless. They had their hotel reservation in Cabo so they needed to catch a bus to the Mexico border. Usually when you share a cab it is cheaper than going solo. And usually I ask about the possibility of walking to the terminal-not this time, I was getting in that cab and going direct to my one bus to take me to Monkey Bay(30 miles outside of Belize City). 

We agree to share a cab and a guy jumps up right in front of us.   He was asking some ridiculous amount of $5 US each to go 5 minutes and to stop at the ATM next to the bus station was extra money. It was 100 degrees out and humid and the neighborhood looks hungry for Iphones  and HP laptops. 

He throws our bags in the trunk of his beaten up 95 Camry with a broken taillight and no hubcaps. He's got our bags in the trunk with it wide open. I try to close it myself and almost slam my finger so I just let it be. There is no indication that this is even and a taxi and I am extremely hesitant with my guard up.



These girls just get right in and I am thinking this is how stuff happens with this kind of stupidity. He catches on very quickly that I'm the smart one and won't put up with his overcharging and his nonsense negotiation. We drive and stop at the ATM and I go inside to get some real info on the bus station and the cost of it. He gives me the low down and I learn that we are literally 2 minutes away, which means he was charging an extra ten dollars when the ATM was on the way.  

We get back in and I am looking around at all the greasy restaurants and the dirty streets. None of this is appealing to me.  There are all sorts of food vendors on the streets and many people without shirts- I would assume because the heat. 

With the scenery and my butt sitting on a wire I am beyond ready to get out. He is sharing some info about the neighborhood and I am just sitting and responding with my fake," Oh wow."

I am not rude, but I am just fake and my dislike can be easily read by those who know me best. 

The girls are sitting in the back with eyes wide open to the streets. They are talking to the driver about their trip and they say," It's a shame we have to go straight to Mexico- we would love to stay here for a while." I jerk my head around and say,"You would?"very loud and shocked."

"Yeah it looks like a really nice place." 

I was sitting and confused if this was a real statement or they were just trying to get a rise out of me. I think they were serious and I was very confused. I think this is one of my most judgemental posts, as Belize city has culture and a real kind of living, but it's not a must visit kind of spot. Locals don't even like going to Belize city unless they have to so I'm surprised these prissy English girls off to a resort in Cabo San Lucas want to stay here. 

Well, we arrived at the bus station and their nice comments didn't get them a discount rather he asked them for $20 each. I shook my head, took my bag, gave him $5 and walked away. He didn't even say anything because he knows his talking was not going to work with me. I was not even going to get involved with their touristy stupidity and I let them just fend for themselves. They are grown women and they travel all the time she said. 

So that was that and then I just had to catch my bus...