After spending the morning dehydrating ourselves at Tikal, we packed our bags and caught a very, very full and very, very hot microbus to the Belize border where the Guatemalan official tried to charge us money we didn’t owe (we had a heads-up on this and to their request of Q20 per person, my husband’s sharp, “Por qué?” did the trick and they messed with us no more) and the unfriendly Belizean official in an air conditioned booth didn’t let us through until the third try (is there a reason they can’t tell you up front everything you need to do to get through the border?), and then there was a hot taxi ride into San Ignacio, the youngest kid wigging out all the while because he didn’t get a window seat.

We were not prepared for Belize. We did not have a guidebook, so aside from what people told us, what we gleaned from travel blogs, and what I read on the internets, we went in cold. This was not smart. But hey, I figured we were in Central America, right? People speak Spanish and ride on buses and eat lots of tortillas. How hard could it be?

Well, for starters….

*People didn’t speak Spanish. I mean, some did, I suppose, but mostly people spoke a mix of English and Something Else with a bit of Spanish thrown in for zip. All signs were in English, but I only understood about 20 percent of overheard conversations. It threw me for a major loop.

*Also, people were bigger, both height and girth. They were expressive: singing out loud, yelling at each other, smiling so big their eyes crinkled up in the warmest fashion evah.

*Some places we could drink water from the tap. There were toasters! We could flush the soiled toilet paper! Stores sold soft furniture and chocolate!

*All grocers were Asian, do not ask me why. Also, they all seemed exceedingly grumpy and did not speak a lick of Spanish.

*The money felt like actual, real money, not like the play stuff we’re used to: two Belize dollars to one US dollar, and both currencies were acceptable. Also, everything was a lot more expensive.

*The buses were huge old school buses (they got full, yes, but there was no packing in people like sardines), and travel was seamless—get off one bus and hop on the next.

*The street food was awesome, the best I’ve ever had in Central America. We ate tacos, buns with cheese, casava pudding cake (not our favorite—like cake, but with gummy bear texture), hamburgers, hotdogs, and a huge plate of beans and rice topped with a scoop of potato salad, a scoop of onion-hot pepper salad, a piece of chicken, and lots of rich, tomato sauce spooned over it all.

*Littering was taboo, glory be!

To sum up:  I was so out of my element, I didn’t know which end was up.

At our hotel in San Ignacio, we took two non-AC rooms, as the AC rooms were ten bucks more. Our rooms were on the top floor, next to a balcony. There was a great breeze and each room had one fan, so we figured we could handle the heat.

Wrong. When it got dark, the wind died down and the street’s multiple dance halls cranked it up, waaaaay up, until well after midnight. The noise combined with the sweltering heat so that even the exhausted children had trouble sleeping.

The next morning, though, there was a complimentary breakfast on the balcony, and we feasted on eggs, toast (TOAST!), fresh pineapple, bananas, and coffee.

After breakfast, we packed up and set out for our little island vacation. For only $US400 we would take an hour-long boat ride out to Tobacco Caye, sleep in little, over-the-water cabins (I had reserved two of them), eat three square meals a day, and snorkel all day long in the surrounding coral reefs. I couldn’t wait for the kids to see the amazing ocean life. I couldn’t wait to relax in the hammock. I couldn’t wait to smell the salt water and read books and get my meals served to me.

So we eagerly, happily caught a bus to Belmopan and then another bus to Dangriga and right there is where things went utterly, completely, and devastatingly wrong.

Even though the travel guides said otherwise, our source (a frequent visitor to this island) had told us that from Dangriga we should take a bus to Placencia and from there catch a boat to our little island. I must have misunderstood because this was simply not true. What we should’ve done was simply—oh, so simply!—get off the bus in Dangriga, catch a boat, and shoot out to our little piece of island-coral reef heaven.

But instead—woe is us!—we jumped on another bus to Independence (because the bus for Placencia had already left), went two hours south (what the—?), got on an expensive water taxi (because the guy selling the tickets insisted we could easily get to our island from Placencia) and traveled back up to Placencia where we learned it most certainly was not easy to get to our island. And so there we were, stuck.

On a tourist-ridden peninsula.

In a smelly cove.

Without hotel reservations.

In 104 degree weather.

No coral reefs in sight.

And no extra time or money with which to right our wrong.

The frustration, rage, and sadness completely overwhelmed. While my husband went to find a room and the children splashed in the ocean, I sat on the beach and cried. Our one chance to see the coral reefs and we blew it! And now we were spending oodles of money in a place we didn’t want to be! I was so crushingly disappointed, so insanely angry at our ineptitude, and so hot that I felt like I’d explode. I hallucinated about angels in speed boats, money-laden strangers, and miraculous turns of events. None of which happened, of course.

Instead, my husband found us a nice little cabin with a good kitchen, great stove, toaster, and coffee pot. My younger daughter made everyone coffee for breakfast—it may have been her favorite part of the whole beach experience. We ate supper at an okay restaurant. The kids played in the sand. We rented snorkeling equipment and floated around admiring the grains of sand and the raw sewage settled on the bottom (so says my husband—we didn’t say a word about that to the kids).

Also, some of the kids came down with diarrhea. The fan over the bed rattled like a jackhammer, or a galloping horse, and kept waking us up. The ocean was full of jelly fish and the kids suffered multiple burns (those buggers hurt). It was so hot that getting undressed was like peeling plastic wrap from moist bread dough.

My husband, in an effort to add levity to brutal disappointment, started referring to our offspring as The Baudelaire Children of the famed Lemony Snicket books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, which, clearly, was what we were having.

It helped, some. We told the kids they were travel warriors, that they were learning the downside of backpacking in a foreign country, that things can’t always go as intended. We apologized and said that, lucky them, they had their whole lives ahead of them in which to explore the world and find the best coral reefs, since their parents obviously couldn’t. “When you find them,” I said, “send us photos, ‘kay?”

They were tough about it. The older kids even piped up with a Thanks for the trip, Mom and Dad, as we were trudging to the bus stop to head back up to Dangriga. Somehow their bravery and graciousness made me feel all the worse. They were so excited, so hopeful, so trusting—ARGH!

While we waited for the bus, we ate our lunch: cornflakes, bananas, and reconstituted powdered milk in old yogurt cups.

This, traveling with cups, spoons, and powdered milk, was perhaps the smartest travel move to date. That, plus always carrying doubled-up plastic bags (they got called into service once), packs of moist towelettes (which I shared with the mothers of two other puking babes), and packing a ball of laundry soap, a piece of twine for clothesline, and a pack of clothespins, (Maybe Lonely Planet does want to contract with us after all?)

So we left the peninsula at noon—by now it was Saturday—and spent the whole afternoon busing back to San Ignacio where we got two air conditioned rooms, thank you very much we are so done with the heat.

The next day we re-entered Guatemala—at least we got our visas renewed!—and suddenly I could understand people again.

We got a bus and headed back through the Petén.

I still marvel that people can exist, even thrive, in such an inhospitable climate.

We drove by miles of palm tree groves (for palm oil) and thatch roofed houses and flaming fields (‘tis the season to burn the fields, la la la la la la la la la), this time without any bathroom breaks.

It didn’t matter, though, we just sweated instead of peed.

Except for this kid.

He learned the art of taking advantage of brief stops (when, for example, the driver pulls over to buy a hundred pounds of corn) (though I don’t think he peed at that particular stop). (I snapped this photo and chuckled, because last year, when we stopped to let this same kid pee in an upstate NY ditch, a cop pulled over and gave us the fifth degree. Here, the men relieve themselves wherever they pretty well please and no one bats an eye.)

We shared our microbus with a group of (mostly) European backpackers and their dog. We can tell just at a glance if a tourist comes from North America or Europe. North Americans are heavy and wear clothes. Europeans are almost always radiantly fit … and half-naked. These observations are the sort of thing one ponders when stuck in the back of a microbus for hours on end.

Oh, we did have two new-to-us experiences!

1. At the beginning of the trip, in the broiling heat of the midday, the driver pulled the bus into a gas station, the attendants shut all the windows with us inside, and then a half-dozen gas station employees proceeded to wash the bus. I contemplated having a panic attack but decided it would take up too much air.

2. Also, they filled the bus with gas while it was still running, and then about four guys rocked the bus back and forth for two whole minutes while they tried to top off the tank. At moments like this, I practice an important travel skill called Not Thinking.

And then we were home. Sad, bummed out, relieved, grateful, and so, so happy to be home.

Our next trip is in July. We’ll be hitting up at least two more countries, and we will, I can assure you, be acquiring the appropriate guidebooks.

Ps. Today I’m home with a sick little boy. His stomach is all sorts of messed up. Probably thanks to all the hours spent frolicking in the sewer.

Pps. I will get over our Baudelaire adventure. It was simply a blip in the big scheme of things. Just a small, hot, 24-hour mess. Time heals all wounds. Etcetera and yadda yadda yadda…

Thursday
morning we got up early, packed food and water, slathered on the
sunblock, and got into a private bus that we had contracted the night
before. The driver took us all the way in to the park and then came back
for us at the scheduled time. Totally worth the $US38.50.

I
knew the children were excited to go to Tikal—we’ve been prepping for
this adventure for six months now—but I didn’t realize how excited they
were until we got there. They were like a pack of espresso-fueled
squirrels. It was all we
could do to keep up with them.

In fact, we didn’t.

They zipped up and
down those temples like they were on a mission. It didn’t matter one wit to them that hundreds of tourists parade
through these grounds every week. To them, it was like they were the
discoverers. They claimed those ruins.

It
was early morning—the best time for seeing wildlife—and my husband and I were quite aware of the other tourists, all adults, all composed, all
without children (though later we spied a few young’uns), so we did our
best to get our kids to talk in quiet voices. But it was hopeless. The
thrill was too much. (They did do fairly well—perhaps we were a little hyper-vigilant.)

And then I
realized, “Everyone is excited to be here. Some people express that by
sitting quietly and looking around. Others (eh-hem, yours truly) take
insane numbers of photos. Others do complicated poses to commemorate the
moment. Still others read all the signs and charts in an effort to
absorb as much information as possible. And some—my children, for
example—express their delight by running around and up and down and
shouting with glee over every tunnel, staircase, and hidey-hole. It
takes all sorts of people and children are people, too, so there.”

No temple was too high, no crevice too small—all of it had to be investigated.

Even the ants were fascinating.

Within an hour, the kids’ faces were flushed bright red.

 We paused for granola bars, water, and beef jerky on the plaza.

Later there were apples on a park bench.

Still later, when we had run out of water and I had a headache and my
vision had gone all wavy, there were Milky Way bars and expensively purchased, and
carefully divided out, bottled water. I had to force
myself to finish my chocolate (I don’t think I’ve ever eaten an entire candy bar
in one go), but  then I started to perk up.

precious water, equally divided

Lesson Learned:
If you think you have enough water, you don’t. Also, high-calorie
snacks are the way to go. We ate every hour and that was enough, but
just barely.
 

random park worker sweeping the path with a branch

 

At one point, a park ranger came up to express concern that
the kids might get hurt. This was kind of funny, because in Guatemala,
kids ride helmet-less, carseat-less, and seatbelt-less. They play in the
road. They handle machetes. But I guess Tikal has been North
American-ized. Probably, they’ve been sued for deaths and such.

nifty swirly designs in the freshly swept path

 

It’s not like bad things don’t happen at ruins. I overheard
one of the guards explaining that the main plaza temples had been roped
off (they were open for the climbing when I last visited 18 years ago)
because there were too many accidental sacrifices. Plus, the last time I
was at some ruins (in Honduras), one of my friends leaped a stonewall-lined
ravine, didn’t quite make it to the other side, and knocked her foot
almost clean off the bottom of her leg (it was still attached, but not
by much). So the night before we went to Tikal, I fretted. What were we
doing taking our children to such a place? One slip and SMASH.

(There was the time when we went up a particular mound to catch up with the children and there, on the other side where
my kids were running back and forth like clumsy mountain goats, was a
fifty-foot drop, good grief, let’s go around to the other side RIGHT NOW PLEASE.)

But
no one went bang-crash-smash and my husband made friends with the ranger who gave
my children water from his own stash, bless his heart, and then gave us
our own private little tour.

My husband liked to pretend he was a tour guide.

Upon seeing this stone door thing, he commenced a-quoting from The Hobbit, his voice all deep and quavery:

Stand by the grey stone where the thrush knocks. The last light of the setting sun will shine upon a keyhole…

Apparently
he was pretty convincing, because on our way back when we passed by it
again, my younger daughter went over, knocked on it to find the spot,
and then starting yelling that she found it. She was ecstatic.

Upon
climbing a wooden staircase, my husband waxed
eloquent about how the Mayans used inferior wood for their other
structures, but for this one, they used the best wood and look how well
it’s lasted!

We climbed to the top of Temple IV.

It was so high that it made me slightly dizzy (or maybe that was the lack of water).

It
put the fear of death into my fearless 7-year-old. He was so paralyzed
with fright that he could only inch around on his behind.

We kissed, trying to center the smooch over the temple.

OVER the temple, dingbat son!

It took a lot of tries, but we finally got it almost right. (Tourists are so weird.)

We tried to call the States, but couldn’t remember the correct country code.

Mom, here’s the proof that your son-in-law tried to call you!

Back down on the solid ground, we took the obligatory child sacrifice photo…

…and
then headed back to the central plaza. The kids ran around for the last
little bit and then it was time to head back. If it weren’t for the
heat and the lack of water and more food, we could’ve stayed for hours.
The place is pure magic.

To be continued….

Preamble: this series of posts is long. Epically long. There are two reasons this is so: one, a lot happened. And two, the words pile up when I don’t get to write for five days and then you get this.

In order to renew our visas, we had to leave the country at the three month mark. Which meant that we had to go to either Belize or Mexico. We opted for Belize. On our way, we’d hit up the Tikal ruins and then do some snorkeling in the Atlantic, we figured. The Belize border dudes aren’t too keen on people walking across the border and then turning right around and re-entering, so since we’d be stuck in Belize for a couple days, we figured we might as well do something fun. We failed, completely and totally, but now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Note: getting residency, like we did when we were three-year volunteers in Nicaragua, is too complicated and expensive for a short term position, though after what we’ve been through, I’m not quite sure that’s completely true.

Also, note: at the six-month mark, we can renew our visas in the capital. It should, we hope, involve minimal rending of garments.

For this trip, I wanted to be as financially savvy as possible. We’d be shelling out the cash for a couple big ticket adventures, but in order to pull it all off, we’d need to be thrifty for the in between stuff. I spent hours researching on the computer and poring over our Lonely Planet guide, trying to plan the best schedule, learn the going rates, and preparing to play it smart. For the Tikal adventure, it all paid off. We saved money and had fun. For the Belize part, well, we’ll get to that later.

We got up early on Wednesday morning, took a taxi the whole way into Cobán (the buses weren’t running yet, plus, sometimes it’s cheaper for us to go in a taxi than to pay six bus fares), and found a bus headed for the Petén.

The Petén is in the Northern part of Guatemala. It’s flat and low down and excruciatingly hot. We spent five hours riding through it in a packed-full micro bus. If it weren’t for the fruit check point (where everyone has to get out while scary-looking official people root through our bags in search of forbidden fruits) (our expensive apples passed, whew) that happened to have a public restroom, thank goodness, it would’ve been five whole hours without a bathroom break.

We got off at Santa Elena and hopped another bus to El Remate. The hotel we were going to stay at happened to be shut down (oops!), so I asked a local for an economical place and she took me to her dad’s hotel. We got two rooms (four beds and communal shower, toilets, and pila) for about 13 bucks, which made me immensely proud and feel all sorts of capable, as in, we are so awesome at this backpacking stuff that Lonely Planet should hire us to trot the globe and write about it because I have this stuff down.

Turns out, the rooms were stifling hot and the shower was shocking (my older daughter got smartly zapped), but hey, the people were friendly! I was not daunted in the least.

Lesson Learned: economical might not be the most comfortable, but as long as it’s clean (and this place was), we will survive. We might melt, suffocate, and sacrifice privacy and modesty for the sake of an open window and the hopes of a hot breeze, but we’ll make it.

When we first arrived, it was lunch time. Every place looked touristy and there wasn’t a grocery store in sight, so I stopped at a place that looked like it had food-making potential and eyed the menu board. Everything ran about Q25.

“Don’t you have anything for less?” I asked. “In the market where we live, we can get a plate of beans and rice for Q10. We just want something simple—food that the locals eat.”

“I can make you spaghetti with vegetables for Q10 a plate,” the woman offered. We accepted, of course. You really can’t beat feeding a family of 6 for $US7.50.

We ate there again that night. This time it was eight emapanadas (four filled with mashed potatoes and the other four with chicken, and topped with slaw and a saucy tomato sauce) per plate, again at a cost of Q10. We ordered four servings, plus one more at the end just to make sure we were all filled up real good. The kids scarfed them down so fast that the server, the cook’s husband, busted up laughing every time he set down a fresh plate full.

Lesson Learned: ask for stuff that’s not on the menu! Tell them what you’re willing to pay and see what happens.

In between our economical lunch and supper, we headed down to a public dock for some lakeside swimming.

There were some fancy docks (swimming pools, too!), but they were private, so we kept asking around until we found a place. It was gorgeous. Hot, yes—even the water felt hot—but gorgeous.

Our youngest, the kid who I couldn’t bribe to jump off the small diving board at the public pool last summer, is now jumping off high-up docks and swimming the whole way to shore by himself. It’s now official—we have four, fairly stable swimmers, hallelujah!

To be continued…