Goodbye Guatemala!

Well, finally we are out of Guatemala. We hate the transportation system there. You basically have to add on AT LEAST two hours to whatever time they say it will take. Yesterday morning we got up at 4:30 and boarded a bus at 5am. The bus was supposedly 'first class' but it looked like a third-hand public city bus from the 70's. The road from Flores to the northwest, to the Belize border was unpaved and the going was slow. It really felt like the end of the road, through the jungle, very few towns.

The poverty in Guatemala is still pretty bad and the rural people generally live like they have been living for hundreds of years I think....which might actually be a good thing. Their jungle huts are made of wood planks or wood poles and palapa roofs. They still use wood for all their cooking, their kitchens are either outdoors, under a palapa roof, or inside a wooden shelter, where the smoke rises up and exits the palapa roof through the sides. When we were in Chiapas we went into one of the kitchens, and it was really smoky inside. Chickens and pigs run around the house and flowers brighten up the wet and muddy yards. Some areas are just getting electricity. Sounds kind of like parts of Alaska doesn't it?

One bad part about northern Guatemala is that the rainforest jungle is under threat by peasants who want to clearcut for farming and cow grazing, to support their subsistence lifestyles. Also, a growing tourism industry also threatens the environment because of increased added development and the need for resources. What are the answers?

Anyways, when we crossed over in to Belize, things seem to be greener and cleaner and much wealthier. The roads were paved! Belize is a really small country, the language is English because it was and English colony, and it has a very Carribean island feel. It seemed like a great place to visit, but it is even more expensive than Mexico, plus we ran out of time. After dropping some people off in Belize City, the bus driver pulled over and had to check on the engine. Everyone was really nervous, but at that point, we were used to anything happen on the rickety Guatemalan buses, but hoped it would at least make it to the border, and it did.

When we crossed the border back into Mexico from Belize, we had been on the bus for 10 hours. We were going to stay in the border town of Chetumal, but decided to continue because there was a Mexican luxury bus with DVD movies waiting at the border to go to Playa del Carmen. We were tired, but we hopped on for another 4 hour busride and arrived around 8pm last night.

Today we will catch a bus to Puerto Morelos, about an hour north of here, and move into the beach house that Luke's family rented for the week.