Paget's Belize Journal - 2001
Spring in Belize-
A princess arrives |
Transportation lessonsJust a short lesson today on the Belize transportation system. Busses go all around among the major towns and villages, at least eight or 10 times a day and are the primary means of transportation for everyone on the mainland -- workers, students, shoppers, the lower and middle classes of tourists, etc. Cars are very expensive here, about double what they are in the states, and gasoline is BZ $6.50/gallon (US $3.25), so even people who own cars often take the bus. And those 8-seater commuter planes are pretty much for business people, the well-to-do and upscale tourists. Busses are very cheap. For example, my trip to Corozal last week cost a grand total of US $6.25 one way, a distance of about 175 miles which took 6 hours on a series of local busses. This trip would have cost about US $100 by plane. There are two classes of bus -- local and express. The express busses don't stop along the road as the locals do and are often air-conditioned. Sometimes there are snacks and occasionally a movie on a longer run. An express bus will cost a dollar or so more for any given leg of a trip. Local busses stop almost anywhere and as far as I can tell, you can ride for free in town (except in Belize City where it costs BZ $1.00). The local busses are almost always old Blue Bird school busses from the states and the express busses are old Greyhounds. They're often crowded (but animals are rare on the busses) and there's very little politeness. On my last trip I saw a middle-aged man give his seat to a young woman and a baby, but I myself have stood for 2 hours while strapping young men lounge about taking up plenty of room, often drinking beer. To be fair, this happened on a Friday night, when lots of people are on the move. Since then, I have learned not to travel on Friday. I also have learned how to flag down a bus. This is not as straightforward as you might think, although they will make allowances for non-natives. But the proper way is this. Stand on the roadside where there is enough room for the bus to pull over. Extend your right arm straight down and out from your body WITHOUT bending the elbow and move it up and down as far us as waist level, but no farther. It's also acceptable to sort of flap your hand at the end of this arm, but that looks silly. If you bend the elbow or raise the arm up in the air, the driver will assume you are just waving at someone you know on the bus and will not stop. When he does stop, sometimes quite a ways down the road, you better look like you're hurrying to get there, or he'll take off again. All busses have a conductor to calculate and collect fares, hand babies in and out, stow packages and try to make sure no one's hogging seats. Often these are very young teens, almost always male, but once on an express bus, I had a woman conductor. This was a trip where snacks were served, so maybe that's why. Even when you leave from a bus station after purchasing your ticket ahead of time, you rarely sit in your assigned seat, because probably someone is already in it. And often the ticket agent will tell you to just buy your ticket on the bus. There must be a pattern to this, but I haven't figured it out yet. On very crowded busses, some of the students are dreadful. One of them pushes in and then all the rest hand in their backpacks through a window and they get distributed around on the seats. So when the rest of us get on, the seats are all reserved. The conductor never interferes in seating arrangements at this time; you're on your own. Fortunately there's always another bus along in an hour or so and on many runs, every half hour. So, just go have an orange juice, read your book and wait. In all the major towns, vendors come on board to sell snacks and drinks when the bus stops. Some are 80 years old; some are 6. They crowd on the bus, trying to be the first with their particular goodies or hand things up through the windows. There's always hamburgers and chicken burgers that sell quite well, although I wouldn't eat something like that has been toted around in a basket in the hot tropical sun for who knows how long. There also are chicken dinners (with rice and beans and cole slaw), tamales, corn-on-the-cob, all manner of packaged cookies and chips, soda, orange juice, coconut water, iced slurpies, fried plantain chips and sometimes bread pudding or cassava pudding. I usually get orange juice and plantain chips. Not very adventurous, but I've only had Montezuma's revenge twice this visit, so I'm sticking with it. If they had cashews I would buy them, but they're hard to find and quite expensive -- even the "fresh" ones, which are not the beautiful perfect cashews you buy in a store. These are likely to be wrinkled up and hard here and there and sometimes singed. A cashew is said to be the only fruit that has its seed on the outside and that is the cashew nut. It grows at the end of a fruit about the size of a grapefruit, but with flesh like a peach or a plum (which is used to make horrible, sweet, strong home-fermented wine). I have never seen this done, but I understand you take the nut off the fruit, then throw it in a fire to split the hull and get the nut out. A half pound costs BZ $7.00 from the farmer, or BZ $10 from a vendor who has sorted out the culls and maybe added a little salt. Even the worst of them are pretty good though. Hmm, started on transportation and ended on food. I must be
hungry, time for breakfast. |
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