Crossing Borders

In order to get to Guatemala we first of all had to leave Mexico and cross into Belize; so we all loaded our luggage into the bus in Chetumal and drove for 30 minutes and passed through Mexican immigration – so far so good. We then all got back into the van and drove into Belize (all the signs were in English and the Belizian dollar has pictures of Her Maj on them but they don’t drive on the left – they seem to drive on the side with the least pot holes) we then unloaded all of our luggage and passed through Belize immigration and customs. All the bags reloaded we set off on the road again. The part of Belize we drove through was very flat and first of all had fields and fields of sugar-cane and papaya plantations. These gave way to low lying swampy areas where the houses were built on stilts. It was quite easy to see the different sections society with the black people (the descendents of the slaves the British took there to cut logwood and then work the plantations) Mayan people and Mestizo people but there were towns we passed through that had large Mennonite (Amish) communities in their traditional attire and horse-drawn vehicles as well as a large Chinese community. Occasionally we would pass very large and grand mansions – we assumed these were lived in by people such as the Conservative Party chairman in his tax free grandeur. The British have left behind a strange legacy including 1) school uniforms inappropriate for the climate, 2) all the houses from the smallest shack to the largest Tory Party tax evasion mansion have neatly trimmed grass and 3) on the edge of towns - fly tipping.
We eventually got to the Guatemalan border but before that we had to pass through Belizian immigration again and they charge a US$17 exit tax – the pirates of the Caribbean used to always get safe haven in Belize and it looks as though they are still there! We then had to pass through Guatemalan immigration where there is no official entry tax but unless you slip US$2 into your passport before you hand it over you won’t get it stamped! Begrudgingly we all played the game of the corrupt officials – they had big guns so we didn’t feel like putting up any resistance considering Guatemala’s violent history. On the road again – the countryside immediately became more interesting and there were far more signs of poverty and deprivation than we had seen in either Mexico or Belize.
Gregg has been (fairly) well-behaved around Ann (the church minister from Canada – do keep up) but there was a familiar Dawkins note in his voice when he was telling her how the Spanish conquerors had gone into Guatemala and forced the Maya to work the land that had previously been theirs and pay tribute to the colonialists in the form of crops. they were treated like slaves and died in their thousands of western diseases. In return they received Christian instruction...
In the late afternoon we arrived in Flores, a charming little town perched on an island in Lake Petán Itzá and reached by a narrow causeway. Some of the streets are lined with houses that have been painted in a wide array of bright colours. The town is in the middle of a fiesta so in the evening we joined in a procession of musicians and dancers that moved through the streets accompanied by fire-crackers. Most of the dancers were mummers or men dressed as women – we did wonder if we might have stumbled upon Flores Gay Pride march.