The adventure starts!
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2007
1
72
401
Trip End
Ongoing
Placencia,
Belize
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Until now, we always had a hotel booked before we landed somewhere. Or we had a car to drive around to shop. This comes to an end now. I guess the further south we go, the more difficult it will be to figure transport and hotels out.
Yesterday we spent more than 6 hours on internet, trying to figure out how to:
· Get out of here (fly or sail to Honduras or Guatemala)
· How to get from there to the Caribbean, preferably to Cayman Islands and then to Jamaica
There is a ferry from south of Belize to one of the islands in Honduras, which has good diving
Dr T surfs for hours
. It sails on Friday morning, 2 hours before we find the website ... . Hubby looked at 100 websites, at least. NO connection between Belize and the Caribbean, but via the States: very expensive and completely stupid! You fly OVER Jamaica, three hours north, land in Miami, have to do all the security stuff and fly back! The only decent flight, he could find was via Panama! One of the websites said (Aero Honduras?): 'we do not guarantee our flights. If we cancel our flight, for whatever reason, you not in title to ANY compensation.' Welcome to Honduras, have a nice day! So, we gave up. We are flying to the city with a decent harbor, in the south of Belize and we will see from there. We take the 9 o'clock flight (we hope), land in Punta Gorda, take a taxi to the harbor and ... hope for the best. Ferry to Honduras? Bus to Guatemala? Flight to Panama? The same day? Or 1 or 2 days after? Then we need to find a hotel. Is a challenge, with 40 degrees and 15 or 25 kg on your backs.
And if we arrive there at last, absolutely nobody will speak English and absolutely everything will be broken and no information will be trustworthy ...
Today, we got some money out of the wall (do not laugh, even THAT is a challenge here), Dr T had to send a fax (even bigger challenge) and found a pharmacy (a real one) and bought and started the malaria medicines
The beach at the hotel
. I HATE that poison in my b.dy but ... it is the wise thing to do, since we do not know where we will go next.'I'll book our flight'. With that mission I left this afternoon while hubby plays his computer game. Yes, sure, an hour and many men later (really girls, you get chatted up here like crazy, men are worse than the flies in Ambergris, I blame it on the heat), I come back, with no flight booked. One agency has the 'be back in a minute' sign on for hours already, the next one has 1 tooth (one) and I can barely understand him. It takes him 20 minutes to get through to the airline and then he 'says' something like 'they could not book because the guy is not well, stomach problem'. I walk back to the hotel with a question mark above my head, like in the cartoons. People (trying to be helpful and/or chatting me up) advise the boat and bus to Punta Gorda (it is only 6-7 hours). Yes, while the plane is 20 minutes ... .
It is 18h30 and we will try again to book our flight. We will show up at the airstrip tomorrow morning, booking or not. They do not dare to call it an airport!
Well, I do not know when I will be able to talk to you again or from where, so in the mean time, keep us posted?
