1987 Travel Journal: Into Belize

    I never really know what to expect when cross a border, but crossing into Belize was easy enough, well, easy enough for me.  The Custom’s Officer asked me if I had any guns, any fruit, any tobacco, or artifacts.  I told him I did have a couple of “artifacts”, but that I doubted that they were real.  He just  knowingly nodded, and waved me on.  

    It does seem that some people just attract trouble.  Purple Shirt and Miss South Carolina, were detained for a while, having to answer some additional questions.   Once they finally emerged from Customs, the small group of us Gringo tourists all piled into a cab, and headed to exchange our Guatemalan Quezales into Belizean Dollars.  The cab then drove us into San Ignacio, and I was dropped off at the San Ignacio Hotel, where I had made reservations.  My travel guide had said was a bit expensive, but “so much better than anywhere else”.  The room cost me $18, and I was delighted to see that the hotel had a swimming pool.

    All the way through Belize after crossing the border, the bus route had followed the beautiful Belize River, and from my bus window I had enviously watched people swimming and tubing in the river.  Watching them splashing around in the coolness of the river, must have registered itself deep in my subconscious, because as soon as I had ditched my bags in my room, I wasted no time getting into the hotel’s pool.  It was wonderful.

    While I was enjoying the refreshing water in a gluttonous way, another Gringo walked to the pool and joined me.  His name was Fred, an electrical contractor from Virginia, who owned an old Gris mill and farm.  Fred had come to San Ignacio to take a horse trip.  He was interested in starting an outfitting company at his farm, taking tourists through trails in a nearby National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains and wanted to experience the horse trip in Belize.  Unfortunately for Fred, the Belize horse trip never materialized, because he was unable to contact, the “contact” for the excursion.

    After all of my struggles trying to communicate in Spanish during my stays in Mexico and Guatemala, it was so ridiculously easy to be in Belize, where English as one of its Official Languages, allowing me to  communicate all of my needs and questions in my “mother tongue”.  Staying at the San Ignacio Hotel was also a treat, because, unlike the previous places I had stayed in, everything there worked.  Well, almost everything, the main tap on the sink only allowed water to slowly dribble out.

    Fred and I talked about everything.  He is quite well-travelled and was working on a Masters Degree in Tourism, something I wasn’t even aware existed.  He held liberal views and, like me, had been at the big Moratorium Against the Vietnam War March in Washington DC, way back 1969, although I didn’t remember seeing Fred among the 500,000 other demonstrators.

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