Day 1 – Traveling to El Remate and the Sun
Breeze Hotel in Guatemala
I’ve always wanted to travel the other Central
American countries since I moved to Belize.
So far I´ve been to Guatemala and Costa Rica but there is so much more
to see. Living on the Kismet Inn property I’ve met
literally hundreds of people who regale me with tales of Mayan ruins, Spanish
colonial cities, and spectacular land and seascapes which only fueled the
fire. But there was always more fishing
to do and hammock naps to take. Basically
I was just too lazy.to get my butt in gear.
I did have one journey this past December with my cousin Kevin Drews to
Costa Rica for 2 weeks, He was going
down to look for retirement property and I went along for the ride. We had a great time traveling from the
southern Caribbean coast, up to the north, then cutting across to the Pacific
side. We also spent a night in Managua
Nicaragua so Kevin could meet the Compassionate Child that he’s been
sponsoring. You’ll find that story
further down in the post listings. That
trip added fuel to my traveling fire. I
also visited Livingston and Frontera on the Rio Dulce and Antigua in Guatemala
for a week.
Lately I’d been feeling a need for a holiday
and, since I now have that I have a monthly income the wanderlust has really
taken hold. In the past couple of
months I’d spent a couple of days on Tobacco Caye with friends Matt, Angie, and
Bev, a week on Caye Caulker with Elizabeth,
and 2 weeks on Playa Del Carmen MX, with Liz for a few days, until her
Cancun flight back to the states, and the rest by myself. But those are familiar places to me and do
nothing to slake the need to see new and exciting places. One of my drawbacks though is that I don’t
speak Spanish and here I am, planning to visit multiple Spanish speaking
countries, without speaking the language.
I can ask for a beer and the bathroom and a few other useful things but
I’m not worried. I know I’ll get by and
it will all be part of the adventure.
I’m sure by the end of this trip I’ll have 3 or 4 more Spanish words in
my vocabulary. I sort of kick myself for not joining my
friends who took Spanish in high school.
I took German and can sort of get along with the German speaking guests
but that’s not much help here in C.A.
So anyway back to my story. I got serious and initially planned a trip to
the barrier islands of Honduras, Roatan and Utila being the most
well-known. I planned to take the ferry
from Belize City to Puerto Cortez and then out to the islands and spend 3 to 4
weeks fishing, snorkeling, and seeing the sights on a few Islands. Then Liz said she wanted to get away so I
added a week in Caye Caulker to wait for her to arrive in Belize City. Due to responsibilities at home she couldn’t
make it so I cancelled the Caulker trip and decided to revise my entire
itinerary. Tikal Maya ruins in
Guatemala, one of the most excavated and researched ruin in all of Central
America (so the guide books say) has always been on my list. So I changed my direction of travel from a
southern sea trip in the Caribbean to a western chicken bus trip. I still wanted to go to the islands so I
researched how to get there from the Tikal area. I found that there is a daily bus from just
across the Belize border in Santa Elana that goes direct to San Pedro Sula
Honduras in 9 hours for US$42.
Perfect! So I added El Remate
Guatemala as my 1st stop. I
planned to stay at least 4 days because the town sits right on on a lake. I was bringing my fishing gear anyway! So anyway we’ll see where I ultimately end
up going and for how long I stay on the road.
Being retired I really don’t have anything driving where I have to be
and when so this will be my 1st foreign unplanned (destination wise)
and unscheduled (time wise) trip of my life.
Now, thinking about the way back home from
Honduras I could always take the ferry but as I thunk about it I thunk that I
might want to see Antigua and the Rio Dulce area in Guatemala again. I’d been there in April of last year on a
sailboat voyage with our friend Gaston, who uses an anchorage along the river
when he travels back to Holland. Trish
and I went along with him and then took a bus trip to Antigua which we really
enjoyed. But that trip was cut short
when we heard that Elvis has stolen and demolished the car I’d bought not 3
weeks before. So that is stuck in the
back of my head as a possibility. It
will all depend on how long I stay in Honduras and the hurricane season.
I started my sojourn on Saturday June 16th
with 3 chicken bus rides to the western border of Belize and Guatemala. I hopped on the 7am out of the village and at
the Southern Hwy/Hummingbird Hwy (on the way to Dangriga) the bus sat for 3
minutes and along came the express bus to Belize City. Everyone heading west transferred to it and I
was the unlucky person with no seat. The
conductor dug out a 5 gallon bucket and put it in the aisle right next to all
the luggage and other cargo and that was my seat for the hour and a half race
through the mountains to Belmopan where I was to change buses for the
border. Now I know many of you have sat
on 5 gallon buckets and a few of you maybe in the back of a pickup truck for a
short ride. Well you’ve never
experienced life until you do it at 60 miles per hour on a winding and not very
smooth road through the mountains!
Needless to say I was happy to give up that seat!
I waited 20 minutes in Belmopan for the bus to Benque Viejo at the border and again got the very last
seat.. This time it was a real seat
though and my butt was happy for it. At Benque
I took a US$2.50 cab ride to the border and cleared immigrations and customs in
both in about 20 minutes, walking across the border while being “mosh pitted”
(the only words I can think of to describe it) by money changers. After clearing Guatemala Immigration I took
the short walk up into the town and bought my ticket on a collectivo, a 15
passenger van that is a popular way to travel in Mexico and Guatemala instead
of a chicken bus. They don’t run on any
kind of schedule and only depart when the van is over full. So we waited in 2 spots for about 30 minutes
until there were 20 passengers, one being a lady with a shopping bag…and a live
chicken riding in it. So now do we call
collectivos “chicken collectivos”? My
US$7 fare took me on a 2 hour drive through country that looked much the same
as Belize only with lots more Mayan villages. Their homes are usually made up
of 2 palmetto thatched buildings, one the kitchen and gathering area and the
other strictly for sleeping. The
kitchen building has no walls, only the roof, and the sleeping area is normally
one big enclosed room. There were some
really nice homes along the route as well and those were most likely Mennonite
or foreigners based on signage and other identifiers. Anyway I was dropped off for a 2nd
collectivo into the town of El Ramate.
I’d already decided to stay at a small place called “Hotel Sun Breeze”
which charges US$10 a night for a room with private bath and a stand fan (nope
no a/c. That’s for Gringos!). I immediately liked the look of it and am
glad that I chose it. Renaldo, the owner
is a really pleasant guy and got me settled in quickly. I booked the room for 4
nights. One disappointing feature of my
room is that the electric outlets only take 2 prongs and my laptop is 3. He looked for an adapter but all he could
come up with was a European one for their style of plugs. Thankfully the common area has a 3 prong
outlet so I can see I’ll be spending timeout there when I need to and until I
can buy and adapter. I’ve never had that
problem before so never thought about getting one. So by 2pm, after a pretty uneventful trip, I
was in Guatemala and into my 1st hotel getting ready to take a short
combat nap. Twenty minutes later I was
up on the porch with Renaldo asking about tours, fishing, good places to eat,
and having my 1st Guatemalan beer of the trip. The one misfortune I had was when I went to
pay for my hotel I gave him 2 bills that I thought were Guatemala quetzales but
turned out to be Costa Rican colones that were in the same pack, and not worth
very much. I thought I had US$275 in GTQ but failed to take a closer look at
the bills I was adding up. So far on my
trip I’d had enough Q’s to pay my way.
Now I was stuck on a Saturday without any GT cash and no ATM in the
town. Renaldo was able to give me US$100
in Q’s later that night. That should be
enough for the rest of my stay here.
With check-in and my nap complete I headed to a food stand for my 1st
meal of the day, a quesoburqeusa and papas fritos. The fries were great but the hamburger was
typical for anywhere in Central America.
Next was a lay in a hammock with my new read “World Without End” by Ken
Follett, all 1014 pages of it. I read
his “Pillars Of The Earth” last month and really enjoyed it and even downloaded
an 8 part mini-series starring Donald Southerland, which I have yet to watch. This book picks up in the town of
Knightsbridge England 200 years later in 1337.
But I digress a bit. While
reading and swinging and smoking a cigar one of the guests walked up and
introduced himself to me and that was the end of my reading for a while. Tom is mid-30’s and from Cork City Ireland
and a new college student (Archeology) and a Publican (Pub bartender). He’s been on the road for weeks and plans on going home when the new
school year starts in September. Of
course being Irish the 1st purchase he made was a case of beer,
which he gladly shared. Beer #2. I’m on holiday so I’m allowed another. We talked for a couple of hours about this
and that. He’s getting a free college
education courtesy of the Irish government because he was laid off and because of
his age. Too cool! I wish the U.S. did that. I
invited him to diner around 7 but he had dinner in the common fridge so I
headed out for what turned out to be a pretty disappointing meal right up the
street of steak and veggies. I did have
a pretty darn good cup of coffee though.
Back to the hotel and back to sitting with Tom and a woman who’s name I
forget who was leaving in the morning.
Turns out she is an on staff doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York
City. As always we asked why she was
leaving and she said she couldn’t trust leaving her resident doctors for too long. They’d pick up bad habits said she laughing. Ten thirty was all the longer I could stay up
after my 2 hours of sleep the night before and travel weariness put me right to
sleep and 8am seemed to roll around pretty darn quickly. So now the plans for my 2nd day will be to
wander the town to see what there is to see.
Being Sunday I thought that most of it may be closed. So now it’s time
to get in gear and try not to cause too much trouble here my 1st
full day.
Day 2 – Visiting the town of El Remate (or so I
thought)
Up at 8am and out by 10am after spending some
time starting my travel blog. I like to
get right at it because, while I’ve taken notes of the day's travel I don’t want to lose
what I was thinking, feeling, or sensing when everything was going on. And being old I tend to forget quickly. A few minutes of writing, followed by moving
stuff around in my bags, and I was out on the street. First stop was the small store that Renaldo
thought might have the electrical adapter.
Success! I bought 2 for about
US$1.50. Next was breakfast at a small
stand. I ordered 3 chicken tacos for
US$2.75 and 2 12oz bags of water for 18 cents.
It turned out to be 3 stacked tacos with veggies and potatoes and veggie
rice. Really good and I was
stuffed. I spent some time there
watching the foot and vehicle traffic and looking at the lake wondering what
the best time to fish is. But then storm
clouds started drifting across the sky so I headed back to the hotel. I set up my computer I the common area to
take advantage of the nice breeze but within 15 minutes I was back in the
room. The wind kicked up and was
rattling the tin roof over the common room and then the thunder and gully wash
rain started Thankfully my room was but
steps away. My windows were open and I
was glad to see that it wasn’t being flooded.
The 1st storm lasted a good hour so I decided to head to the
internet café next door to the hotel and then back to the common area hammocks
with a cigar and my book to wait out the rain that´s falling now.
My expenses so far have been:
Travel to GT: US$4
Collectivos in GT: US$7.50
4 nites hotel:
US$40
1 beer: US$2.00
2 meals: US$13.00
5 12oz bags of water: 40 cents US
Taco lunch US$2.75
2 EL adapters:
US$1.50
Internet café:
US$2.00
Total: US$71.75
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