Arriving in Belize City ....!

Last dinner at Tulum with our waiter, Neo. Hostel in Tulum 

Bus to Belize

Yesterday we left Tulum and said our bittersweet goodbyes to Mexico as we crossed our first border into Belize. Yesterday was a rough day's travel where we left Tulum early in the morning and got to Chetumal, Mexico 4 hours later, and then took another bus from Chetumal to Belize City for another 5 hours. Unluckily, we took a local bus instead of an express bus, and unluckily, our bus happened to be breaking down so it went 2x as slow as the engine's mumble grumble drowned out Enrique Iglesias' spanish ballads on the radio.

Neko.
We got dropped off at a very shady bus station on the south end of Belize City - the wrong side of town ! We started walking in the general direction of downtown but speed walked straight back to the station after being scared silly and not knowing where we were at all. A few people helped us out and advised us to definitely take a taxi to downtown to avoid getting mugged, so we met our taxi driver - this Jamaican guy who called his taxi "The Machine," and called himself "The Machine Gangster." Nina and I just nervously stared back at each other in the backseat, holding on to a breath or two...

Yesterday was the first time that we actually felt like we needed to carry our mace around and be on our tip toes. Despite only eating some cornflakes and a cup of coffee 12 hours ago, we were too scared to walk downtown to grab dinner, so we skipped across the street to a convenience store where all the products were behind big bars, and a small lady greeted us in front of a little window opening asking us what we wanted. And this is what we got: 

2 water bottles, chef boyardee, and stale plantain chips.
It's strange when in moments of risk/danger, you're immediately forced to trust complete strangers with a part or all of your safety/money/life when you're somewhere helpless by yourselves. And it's all based on good judgement. It's a scary reality, but we've been fortunate enough to have been meeting people who are still kind and have helped us along.

The Northfront Guest House

It's morning now and Belize City in daylight isn't as bad as at night, but it's definitely the poorest of the towns we've seen (the hostel we stayed at smells like pervy sweaty old men). But nevertheless, we are happy and crazy to be doing this.


We're off to Cayes Caulker in about an hour to hopefully meet Sra. Rosado, the principal of the school where we're planning to help out at for a few days.


Till then, ciao !