FERRY IN THE MONTAINS

After two nights in Sarteneja, decided to head down south, so took the 5:30 am chicken bus to Belize City, after saying adieu to my hosts, Natalie & Ed.

I recall that yesterday Natalie told me that if the bus has to leave Sartejena at 5:30, he will go around the village in circles several times starting about 30 minutes before and will wait for the passengers and neighbours.

Bus was full up with Belizeans, Mexicans, me and maybe a couple of others travelers. 30 minutes into our journey the bus breaks down so the driver goes out with his tool box and returns 15min after, all sweaty but pleased: We could move on. Anyways, after a few more stops it breaks down again but this time we had to board the next available bus because the damage was irreparable. Jaime, my Belizean couchsurfer host rang asking me my whereabouts. I let him know my predicament and he was cool enough to say that he will wait for me. Nice one dude!

After boarding another bus I arrived at Belize City at 10am. As promised, Jaime picked me up on his white jeep. On the car there was Jaime, his friend Mark and another American CS called Ryan that had just arrived the night before. Jaime took us to a car rental where Ryan rented a vehicle for a couple days.

Jaime went to work so left us to explore the paved highways, dirt roads and jungle of Belize, in our rented and trusted motor. Mark with his Belizean accent taught us a few local expressions like:

• Reverse backway
• How to go?
• They thieved my chickens.

We headed up to the Spanish Lookout area were we’ve heard housed a huge Mennonite community, so we expected to see farmers with checked shirts, cowboy hats, long beards, dungarees riding carriages with horses.

After a long drive, we did see the huge farm lands but instead of carriages, the farmers or Mennonites had huge trucks and vans so I guess that the typical no-technology-tradition died long time ago.

Asked a few people about “things to do” & “places to see” in the area, but we got a lot of blank looks. Finally a kid did tell us that we could visit the caves in Georgeville.

When we got to a crossroad we asked this Mennonite lady on her huge truck “How to go?” She explained that we had to over the hill, turn left then get the ferry across. Mark was like: “Ferry?” “Of course – I shouted putting my hands out – FERRY IN THE MONTAINS!”. The Mennonite lady put her hands to her face and tilting her head back let out a high pitch and contagious laugh.

We couldn’t stop laughing for the next half hour, even after seeing the ferry in the mountains being pulled across the river. After getting lost a few times, this British guy enlightened us that the caves would be closed by now so we would have to come back some other day.

Decide to head back into Belize City. Being faithful to my raw diet, did a stop at the local green market, then back to Jaime’s house to prepared a delicious salad with 3 types of mangoes, carrots, celery sticks, onions, green peppers, cucumber seasoned with fresh lime juice, ground pepper and salt. I wanted to add coriander/cilantro to the mix so Jaime went out for 1 hour but found none in the whole city.

As well as the mangoes salad I fried some green plantain bananas using Juliana’s trusted recipe. After tasting one, Ryan’s face lit up with amazement like a wee kid with his very first candy. Had a few beers with dinner and decided that tomorrow we would visit Placencia, a beach village in the south.

Ciao 4 now

~ Paulo ~