The road back to Belize or how many ways can you try and rip off the gringos!
To leave Tikal we took a colectivo bus (microbus). We paid our money to the tourist booth that arranges transportation for people and we were told the bus would be here in about 30 minutes. The booth even gave us a receipt to show the bus driver when we loaded onto the bus. It was cheap and easy or so we thought. We took a little walk and were gone about 5 minute. When we returned some random man asked us (in Spanish) if we were taking the colectivo. When we said yes, he told us in Spanish that it was leaving in 2 hours. Confused, I responded in Spanish that the tourist booth said 30 minutes. He said no, and then the guy from the tourist booth walked over and said again 30 minutes till the bus left. We were then directed to wait at a bench in the shade.
30 minutes later the same guy who tried to change our departure time came over and told us that the bus was here and pointed to a van that had been there the whole damn time. We walked over to the bus and waited. No one was on the bus and there was no driver. Slightly confused we looked around until the same jerk walked over to us and asked if we had bought a ticket yet. We realized this was our bus driver! We told him we had but he insisted that we hadn’t. He wanted to see out tickets. We showed him our receipt and he said that it was not a ticket. Mind you this is all in Spanish. I know my Spanish is not that great but its not that bad either.
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Typical colective microbus in Guatemala |
Finally the guy from the tourist booth realized there was a problem and walked over to us and straightened out “Mr. Lets Extort the Gringos”. Thank you random tourist booth man! What it came down to was he didn’t want to drive just 2 people back to town and waste his gas. He was hoping to put us off until he had a whole bus full.
After that is was relatively smooth sailing. We had to change buses 2 more times. The first time was problem free except for charging us slightly more($.70) that than the stated price and a language barrier that finally got worked out.
The second transfer...well it was well... loco! After finding the waiting area we waited for the next colectivo. After 10 minutes a OLD toyota corolla comes to a screeching stop The door said Taxi and had the register numbers in the front window. There were 3 adults including the driver and 2 small kids in the car. He told us “Taxi, taxi”. I replied we were waiting for the collectivo (“esperamos para el colectivo”). He said “es colectivo”(this is the colectivo). We told him there wasn’t enough room for us. Then he said something about when the next one would be here and I caught enough that it would be a long wait. I asked the price for each person and it was sesenta quetzales (60 Guatemalan dollars roughly $9.) It was about a dollar higher than the going rate but whatever at this point it was hot (96 degrees) and humid. The people moved over, kids sat on the adult’s laps, I jumped in the back and Chris jumped in the front. Now there are 7 bodies in a toyota corolla. It was slightly uncomfortable and there was no A/C but everyone was all smiles, very polite and friendly.
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not this one but pretty close in condition |
Like I said this was an OLD corolla and its very mountainous where we were and the corolla kept starting to overheat every time we started to summit the mountains. As soon as we would get to the top of the mountain or hill the driver would exclaim “caliente!!! Agua agua!!" and pull over to the side of the road and open the hood. If there was a market around he would grab a bucket and fill it with water and dump it on some part of the engine...if there was no one he grabbed a bottle of water from the back of the car and poured it on the engine area. This repeated 4-5 times and the other passengers did not seem bothered at the least.
Apparently this is a pretty common happening in these parts. I noticed that every market at the top of the hill or mountain had a 55 gallon drum full of water and a bucket to cool the engines of overheating cars!
By this time the kids in the car had warmed up to us and were practicing their English on us. Out of nowhere I hear “rojo es red.” I responded “si.” After that they were showing off all of their English words. I even taught them a few words like horse, cow, and cat. It was really cute! They would laugh when we would mispronounce words.
When we reached the border the price of out trip skyrocketed to quarenta quetzales (100 Guatemalan dollars or $17 US) per person. We tried to argue but at this point we were pretty worn out, over heated, dripping with sweat and only 500 feet from Belize. I explained to him we must of misunderstood his prices, paid him him 200 quetzales and headed to the border. We also gave the kids 2 packs of cookies that were left over from our lunch.
Then there were the money changers. We were approached by some guy who offered us half the price (4:1) of what we paid for the quetzales to begin with(7:1). We passed and then another guy approached and offered us 6:1 and we said okay. He whipped out a calculator, punched in a bunch of numbers and showed us what he would give us. Chris immediately realized his fancy calculations still equalled 4:1.Chris told him that’s still 4:1 he smiled and laughed at us. Chris told him he’s rather give them to our niece as a souvenir than trade with him.
After than we went through customs and headed to belize to catch a bus back to Lower Dover and a much needed shower. It was smooth sailing the rest of the way. We ate an amazing dinner at Rosa’s Restaurant, grabbed some beers, and headed to bed!
It was a real adventure!