Surprise! Guatemala

Just to set the record straight ... our own private island wasn´t all peace and bliss. We did have some complicated manipulations going on with the man who found us this island and provided services as our water taxi. But that is an entire story in itself. We´ll tell that another day.

Yesterday we were hijacked and ended up in Guatemala instead of Belize. At least Frances thinks we were hijacked. I think that this is the return route we were meant to take BUT I wanted to go to Guatemala and Frances did not.

It all started at the water taxi. When we arrived before 7AM, we were told there was no taxi to Belize City on Tuesdays and we´d have to wait a week to get there. However, a man at the site assured us we could get to Punta Gorda, Belize if we paid him $40US each and $25US each to get on a different boat. He kept pushing us, saying that we had to make up our minds quickly since the boat was leaving at 8 am.

Finally we said yes since we weren´t inclined to spend another week in Puerto Cortes, Honduras. But, after we naively hopped into Flash´s truck and headed down the road we slowly discovered that Flash intended to drive us to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. There he would drop us off at a boat scheduled to leave Guatemala for Punto Gorda, Belize. SURPRISE!

The drive was beautiful. So much so that by the time we reached Puerto Barrios we were ready to switch to the bus instead of the boat and spend a bit of time in Guatemala. In addition, our taxi ride with Flash got us through immigration quickly and easily, the best experience we´ve had so far entering a new country.

In downtown Puerto Barrios, Flash asked a bus conductor about border crossings into Belize and then, magically, we were immediately placed in the front seat of a small van heading to Rio Dulce, Guatemala. The bus driver, Manuel, was wonderful. He told us he´d lived in California for two years and his English was very good. By the way, Flash revealed to us that he had lived in Boston for 10 years so his English was good as well.

During our trip to Rio Dulce Manuel shared a tremendous amount of travel information with us and truly eased our way into another new country and culture. This was especially helpful given the fact that when we got out of bed yesterday morning we had no plan to visit Guatemala on this trip at all.

We´re on another adventure and plan to spend the next three to four days in Guatemala before entering Belize through another border crossing.