Saturday 2/19/2011 РBy our trip inland Saturday, I was in bad shape. Poor Ed had to put up with my hacking and blowing of which he was admirably patient. Shortly after we left the airport in Belize City in our rented Suzuki X7 4-wheel drive with not enough power, the rain started. It poured our entire drive inland. We darted into a gallery and caf̩ for a cup of tea in need of a break.
 |
| Table at the restaurant where we had lunch. |
The place, called "Orange Gallery and Gift Shop", turned out to have lots of art out front and a quaint little restaurant behind.
 |
Children play in outside kitchen at
"The Orange Gallery and Gift Shop" |
We watched a group children of mixed ages and race play together near the kitchen. They batted each other with balloons, jumped on hopscotch squares and danced under a limbo stick which moved as required. Then, they sat down with the restaurant owner, and presumably the father of some of them, for a quiet, well-mannered lunch. Behind us in the restaurant area was a banquet of noisy Japanese.
We continued on along the "Western Highway" to San Ignacio, the last city in Belize before Guatemala. We had reservations at Martha’s Guest House which was supposed to be easy to find, "right on the square". We turned several nerve wracking circles around the wet, narrow streets, up a hill then back down to the river careful to navigate the congestion of people, vehicles and bicyclists. Finally, we stopped at aTexaco (where else) station on the corner across from the ornate San Ignacio Administration building for directions.
 |
| Streets of San Ignacio |
It was about 2 pm when we found our hotel and the room wasn’t yet ready so we wandered the streets for a half hour, bought some bottled water and throat lozenges which I was glad to find. Our Belize guide book suggested several tourist attractions near San Ignacio so we asked the hotel receptionists about them. After much hand waving and map pointing, we thought we understood how to get to Xunantunich, a Maya ruins the name of which rolls lyrically off the tongue of the countries people and is pronounced shew-nan-two-niche. We dumped our stuff in the room and headed out.
Our directions, as we understood them were to: Go up the hill on the street outside the hotel and follow the two way street. In about 10 miles we’d come to a village. Go over three speed bumps (in Central America, like Mexico, the speed bumps are tall and wide) where we would see a ferry crossing. We were to take the ferry across the river to get to the ruins. There would be people selling trinkets and souvenirs at the ferry, after the three bumps. The three bumps, one, two, three, were important.
It was only supposed to be 10 miles. We were to drive slowly down to the ferry according to the hotel people who indicated with their hands a dip to the river. We followed their directions, drove up the road and continued on a two way road a few miles. It soon turned to gravel and presented a Y. One route went across a bridge, the other into a village. After trying both directions, we settled on the bridge crossing because somewhere in the conversations we heard that we would follow a river to get to the ferry. Seemed logical. On we drove, out a gravel road past groups of people neatly dressed waiting for the bus to take them into town on Saturday night and people on bicycles and mopeds. The sun began to drop low in the horizon over the fields of crops we didn’t recognize
In each little town we faithfully counted the bumps and looked for a ferry crossing or people selling trinkets. In one small town (after the third bump) we passed a group of teenage boys with bikes hanging out on a corner and looked expectantly at them to see if they were selling anything. Finally at about mile 9.5 we decided this couldn’t be right made a U-turn on the dusty, gravel road.
We again came upon the group of boys hanging out on the corner and stopped to ask them how to get to Xunantunich. They were friendly and helpful. Drive to San Ignacio they said, then take a right turn on the road with two-way traffic. The hotel clerk had neglected to say we needed to TURN on the road with cars going both ways, or the turn part was lost in translation because the road we followed out to the farmland definitely had traffic going both ways.
I asked the boys the name of the street we should take “toward the border” which is also toward Xunantunich. We also needed to find this road tomorrow to Guatemala. They told us “Joseph Andrews Boulevard”. Back we went to San Ignacio, filled up with gas, and turned right on a street with cars going both ways, and a scraggly grass medium for several blocks. The description about cars going both must have been a way of expressing “boulevard”.
Now on the right road it was a short 10 miles on paved road, albeit still congested with pedestrians, bicyclers and buses, to the three bumps, souvenirs and ferry. We pulled up to the ferry with the intention of going across, but a enthusiastic salesman/guide told us the ferry closes at 4 but we should come back tomorrow and he would give us all the information we needed for not only understanding Xunantunich, but the ruins in Guatemala.
Back to San Ignacio we went with a plan for the next day. Confident now that we knew the way, we’d get going early, take the ferry to Xunantunich and hire the tour guide to show us around, then drive on over to Guatemala where we’d spend the night in the Tacal National Park, hopefully take a guided tour of the park and head back to Belize.
Dinner at Martha’s Guest House was enjoyable both in its taste and ethnic flavor. It was really the first taste we found different than home. We ordered several dishes and shared. First was tamale cooked in banana leaf including chava, a local green that reminded me a bit of seaweed. Then we had a “Mayan pizza” which was steak, tomatoes, onions, and jalapeno peppers on a large flour tortilla. Both were unusual and delicious.
 |
| Balcony at Martha's Guest House. |
By the way, if you plan on staying in San Ignacio on Friday or Saturday night, don't stay downtown. There was a VERY LOUD dance band playing all night at a bar right next door to Martha's. The base guitar rattled the building. We couldn't sleep until we finally remembered the ear plugs Ed had packed. If I hadn't been sick we probably would have gone out to check out the activity. Traffic was loud all night also, mostly it seemed to be people coming and going from the bar, but some truck traffic too.
