Part II: Buses and a Fateful Lunch

We boarded the plane in Houston anticipating a quick flight to Cancun, then a short bus ride to Playa Del Carmen, where we would stay the night. Not only was the plane late to the gate, we then got to sit on the runway for a half an hour. When I looked out the window I saw rush hour traffic with wings. But the delay gave me more time to learn Spanish from the two Scotts in my iPod. I quickly learned how to order from a menu, how to ask directions, and how to pronounce the "c" sound, which is more like "th". Problem was, that's only for Spain Spanish, not Latin American Spanish. Good thing they told me that at the end of the podcast.

Fortunately, the flight was uneventful, except for the crazy orgy we had with two sexy stewardesses. Okay, they weren't sexy, but middle-aged and desperate. You think those bathrooms are small when you're in there by yourself, try cramming four in there. Clown car for sure.

We landed in Cancun an hopped on a bus to Playa. I had heard the bus system in Mexico was great, and it appeared to be. The bus was clean, didn't smell like b.o. (though I probably did after having been in small metal enclosures for the past eight hours), and the seats were comfortable. While the buses may be great, the traffic is not. It's not that it moves slow, it's that it moves crazy. This giant whale of a bus was zipping in and out of traffic as pick-up trucks with 20 people in the back darted in between buses, vans, and cars.

After we pulled into the bus station in Playa, we took note of the times the buses to Chetumal left the next day. We decided to catch the 7:30 am bus so we could get to Belize City with some daylight left - always a good thing in Belize City for a couple of pasty white American tourists. With backpacks on, we headed towards the beach where we found a information booth. The guy tried to sell us on a hotel for $75 a night. But I knew that was too expensive. "Mas economico por favor." My Spanish was obviously great. Being the helpful information guy, he gave us a map and said there were a bunch of hotels on the beach and we should just go find one. Thanks.

Find one we did. Exhausted from planes, trains, and automobiles, I knew an hour-long hunt for a good, cheap hotel was not in the cards. Also, the look on my wife's face, which I roughly translated to "if you drag me down this fucking beach for more than 5 minutes, I will rip off your testicles, marinate them in your blood, and feed them to the guy selling chorizo on a stick." So, we popped into a place on the beach. I blathered some crappy Spanish that the guy understood to mean we wanted a room with hot water and a ceiling fan. He showed us what we got for $35 a night. Palatial! Rusted ceiling fan, check. TV, check. Bed, check. Paint peeling off the walls, check. 100% chance of something nibbling on your feet at night in the dark, check. No view of the ocean because of a dilapidated wall that serves no purpose other than to block your view of the ocean, check.

But we didn't care. We threw our stuff down, didn't have a quickie, and set out for some food. We sat down at some restaurant on the main drag, ordered a few frilly drinks and relaxed. The waiter spoke Enlgish, sparing me from embarrassing myself. The food went down easy and was pretty good. After walking around window shopping and saying "no" to dozens of people selling cigars, movies, pinatas, and lap dances, we headed to the most popular night club, the Blue Parrot. Being the party animals that we are, it was 9pm, no one was there and we were too damn tired to hang out until midnight when people apparently begin to party. Knowing the luxury that awaited us back at the hotel, we called it a night to rest our bodies on quilts of silk and down.

Morning came quick. We zombie-walked into the bathroom to take care of the various S'es. The shower part, though, quickly became a nightmare. We turned the nozzle to hot, waited, waited, waited, and then realized there was no hot water. We needed a shower, though, so we toughed it out. Fortunately, it wasn't Norway, so the "cold" water was really kinda luke warm. Shortly after soaking myself, I realized I lacked a towel. I guess it was presumptuous of me to think towels were part of the price. I pulled on my bathing suit and, half-naked (the upper half fortunately for everyone) I went to the front desk. After complaining about no hot water and being told there was no such thing in that hotel, I was told that there were towels in my room. The conversation then went something like this: "No there aren't." "Si, tollas." "No, tollas." "Si." "No." Persuaded by my brilliant argument, I was taken to a 25x25 foot closet filled with towels. Now I knew why he didn't want me to have any towels, they might run low during a nuclear disaster. Towels secured, I returned to the room, finished my cold shower, dried off, packed my crap and walked to the bus station. And waited.

Being a paranoid traveler, I'm never late for transportation. Which inevitably means I'm always waiting for transportation. But, I had the Scotts willing to teach me more Spanish as I waited for my 5 hour bus ride to begin.

After learning how to ask where the church is, we boarded the bus. Again, nice bus, comfy, and clean. We headed for Chetumal. When we planned this part of the trip we thought the bus part would be kind of nice since we'd make our way sort of along the coast. We figured the views of the country and people would be nice. They weren't. There wasn't anything to look at. I soon fell asleep to a soothing Scottish-Spanish accent.

Chetumal, as far as we knew, consisted of only a bus station. We had an hour and a half until our bus to Belize City would leave. So, we perused the sundries available in the station, then ventured outside to see what we could see. We saw a couple of stores and a couple of places to grab some food. Comforted by the sight of another pale couple at one of the "restaurants", we stopped in for some chicken sandwiches. Along with the sandwiches came a side of green chili. Being the more adventurous eater, I slathered a bit on my sandwich, noted its heat, and ate happily. Good green chili is hot - makes you sweat - but has lots of actual flavor. This qualified.

Satiated, we went back to the station. I headed up to the bathroom, but not before paying the bathroom gate keeper 30 cents. I looked around to do my business and noticed no toilet paper. Dejected, I began to leave, then noticed a single dispenser in the front of the bathroom that had instructions that I understood to mean, "This is where you get toilet paper. You better take enough." I took enough on my first try.

Now both empty and full, I waited for the bus. When it came, we noticed that the bus to Belize was not nearly as nice as the bus we took to get to Chetumal. Nor would the ride be as nice.