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As we walked across the border from Guatemala to Belize, the change was instant. We were no longer in Central America – we were in the Caribbean.
I knew that English was the official language of Belize. But it wasn’t just the perfect English spoken to us by the Belizean Immigrations official that threw me off. As we walked the 500 meters or so over the border, the change was literally everywhere. Gone were the square houses built from concrete bricks and topped with corrugated tin roofs; they were replaced by houses on stilts made of brightly colored wooden siding. The people covered a spectrum of white, black and latino, which was enormously diverse compared to what we’d seen over the last few months. People spoke English not slanted with the Spanish lilt, but with the rasta tone of the caribbean. We traded the latin tunes of our Guatemalan bus for Caribbean and rasta beats in the taxi to the Belize bus station. Even the Chicken Buses had changed – the psychadelic paint jobs and Jesus trinkets vanished. Instead, the buses looked like, well, regular busses (and they even gave you a receipt when you paid your fare!)
I realize it sounds crazy to be culture shocked – we were entering another country, after all. But we had previously driven across the borders of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala with little to no cultural differences. I hadn’t expected Belize to be so diverse from it’s neighbors, and I hadn’t expected that change to take place within feet of the border. I tell you what, though, Belize felt more like Barbados than Guatemala. How unexpected.
Other than the Caribbean culture change, our time in Belize was largely uneventful. We arrived in San Ignacio too late in the afternoon to do much, and had to take a bus to Belize City the following day. That didn’t leave much time to explore. I would have loved to stay in one of the farms just outside of town where the countryside is beautiful, but alas, you can’t do everything. We spent our time there eating some delicious food, drinking the local beers, using the internet, and getting John a haircut (he kinda looks like an army recruit, but it will grow in nicely.) The next night in Belize City looked similar, as we reminded ourselves that we did not have time to visit the beautiful beaches of Caye Caulker and catch our flight to San Francisco (and thus our flight the next day to Auckland) without issues.
I have virtually no photos of Belize, hence the sub par image with this post. Oh well. As I said, you can’t do it all. And on that note, we departed Belize City for a 24 hour visit to the US.
