Oh, the luck....

Wednesday morning, I ran around getting some things ready for a package I was mailing... it was a challenge finding a box that wasn´t the size of a TV! Post office doesn´t sell them, nor the stationery store they sent me to... eventually, after asking at several corner shops, I found one with a box full of empty boxes. Hooray! So, I was sitting at the post office with my box, with my goods, with the brown paper required to cover the box, and a big roll of tape. And the post office guys seemed so helpful at first! ¨Here, let me help you cut the box down in size so it can be sent for cheaper... and let me help you cover it with paper.... so, what´s your name?¨ Me: ¨Why?¨ Him: ¨Because you´re very pretty, white girl.¨ Me: ¨Thank you, but I´m at the post office to mail a package, and I don´t need this right now. And I can cover it myself.¨ Note that he is a good 20-30 years older than me. Sheesh... He sat back down and didn´t bother me any more.

That afternoon, I headed to the bus station at about 3:15pm, just in time for my 3:30 bus. The bus didn´t actually arrive until 4pm, so I shouldn´t have hurried. At about 4:15, we pulled away from the bus station. Usually, I´m very ok with the Mexican Time, but this time, I had a connection to make in Chetumal. My bus was originally scheduled to arrive at about 3:30am in Chetumal, and the bus to Playa Mahahual left at 5am. So, 45 minutes behind, I was a little worried about the connection, but what can you do about it?

My seat partner, a Mexican woman of about 50, didn´t really talk much, but once it turned dark, she did have a tendency to start to veer towards my seat as she fell asleep, so I had to gently nudge her back to her side. I slept a little bit here and there (thanks to the motion sickness pill I took strictly because it makes you drowsy), and right in the middle of one of those times that I did fall asleep, I wake up to find a military man with a gun in the aisle of the bus. Checking for firearms and explosives, which means that everyone needs to get off the bus to watch them while they go through your bags looking for those things. That´s been going on for about 6 months now (as far as I know), and it´s annoying enough at about 1pm, but when it´s at 1am and interrupting your beauty sleep, it´s extremely annoying. Anyway, they didn´t find my guns and M-80s, so we were allowed to move on.

At about 4:45am, I woke up with a start and realized that the bus had stopped... and it was Chetumal! I ran off the bus to find they were waiting for me to claim my bag, and then I went inside to check on bus times. There was also a bus at 6am to Mahahual, so I decided to wait an hour and freshen up a bit. Bus arrived at about 6:30, and I hopped on board headed for Mahahual. Along the way, I saw many mangled houses and billboards, which were part of the destruction of a hurricane that passed through several months ago. When I arrived to Mahahual, there was construction everywhere. Everyone was rebuilding their hotels, homes, restaurants, etc. I asked a man in a shop if he could look after my big bag while I searched for a hotel, and he agreed to it. I set off, and needless to say, every place I found was 3-4 times more expensive than I wanted to pay. All of the cheap accommodation had been blown away. It was beautiful, but since I´m going to travel so much, I don´t want to spend 4 night´s worth of accom money in 1 night. So I decided to head back to Chetumal. The next bus was at 1pm, so I plopped myself down at a beach restaurant and had a juice, and at noon, I ordered a beer and dove into my book.

At about 4pm, I rolled back into Chetumal not knowing what I was going to do - my options were to a) find a hotel for the night in Chetumal, b) see if there was a bus heading to Belize that evening, although it´d be kinda sketchy arriving into Belize City at night or c) sleep in the bus station and take the 5am bus to Belize City. I walked up to the ticket counter, and my problems were solved when I heard, ¨Leah, que haces aqui?!¨ I turned around, and it was another tour leader from GAP. He was on his time off and travelling with a friend, and they were also heading to Belize but had heard there was Carneval in Chetumal and were considering staying for the evening. They said it was ok if I tagged along, so that´s what I did. We flipped a coin, and we ended up staying in Chetumal.

Carneval wasn´t all that much - it was a parade of kids in costumes, then there was some music in a park and lots of street vendors selling food. And beer. And not many foreigners at all. We downed a few beers, grabbed some street food, downed some more beer, then (against our better judgment) decided to tackle one of the carneval rides. This one spins you around and around in an up and down motion so your stomach drops ever couple of turns. And it goes backwards most of the time. A full 10 minutes later, we got off on wobbly legs and decided to head home. We got a full 8 hours of sleep and are now at the bus station waiting for the bus.

Tonight I´ll be on an island (Caye Caulker), though, and all will be well. I´m really glad I ran into Martin and his friend - another example of the good coincidences that happen on the road!