The Belize experience

24 hours or just over was about how long I spent in Belize. There were a few things I wanted to do in the country but unfortunately they were all working out way too expensive. Belize is one of the most expensive countries for a tourist in Latin America despite the vast majority of it's population having very little disposable income. I still don't quite understand that, I guess it has something to do with me not being a economist.

So I spent the night in Belize City which is a strange place. It's the biggest city in the country by a long way and has a bit of a dodgy reputation which from what I saw is not completely undeserved. The city is very dilapidated and with clapboard houses everywhere it has a very Caribbean Island feel to it. Gangs and drugs certainly run the place and there presence is pretty obvious. I woke up the next morning still undecided on what I wanted to do. I was helped by the fact that the country had closed down for 4 days. I arrived in on Thursday and Friday was the 1st of May which is Labour day and in Belize that means everything closes down for 4 days so nothing was due to open until the following Tuesday. And when I say everything I mean everything, the banks were all closed, as where all the shops and even the hospital. How the main hospital in the biggest city can close for 4 days I don't know but it was most definitely closed! With Guatemala so close and the knowledge that I could get to Flores within a day I decided to head straight out of Belize.

My Belize experience went from mediocre to pretty terrible when on the bus from Belompan the capital to the Guatemalan border by bag was broken into. I stupidly put it at the back of the bus and then sat about five seats in front meaning that I couldn't keep an eye on it. It was an amateur mistake and I blame the buses in Mexico, they were just too damn safe. I lost a pair of shoes, some jeans and a shirt. I think it was a two man job as this guy sat down next to me and talked for the whole way until he got off which was about 20 minutes before we hit the border. He distracted me just enough so that his friend at the back of the bus could put his hand in and grab what he could. I might be wrong and he could have just been a nice guy who likes to talk for hours on end about the inane details of his life, but something tells me he had a part to play.

Luckily they didn't get anything too valuable and you hear some real horror stories when your on the road so in the context of things, I think I got off pretty lightly.