Acatenango and Tikal were among Central America’s foremost highlights for me, but my experience on Guatemalan vehicles was so injurious that I couldn’t hack another day in what was otherwise a tremendously beautiful nation. After finishing my morning exploration of Tikal, I headed straight outta the country: I’d arranged for the Tikal tour bus to dump me at a roadside junction in El Cruce, where I managed to flag down a passing colectivo towards Belize in no time at all. I can’t recall the exact fare but it was very affordable (I want to say 20 quetzales?) and it took about an hour to arrive in the border town of Melchor de Mencos. A short walk over a bridge gets you to an immigration facility where staff are super friendly and helpful. I exited smoothly and with smiles, before walking across to the equivalent Belizean facility. The officials there were considerably less pleasant than the Guatemalan ones – haughty airs abound, which was honestly rather amusing – but fortunately it doesn’t take much time to get processed. Once stamped, you’re reliant on waiting taxis outside the immigration hall to continue your journey. I found a local couple who were willing to let me jump in their ride and it took $2 and less than 30 minutes to arrive in San Ignacio, my stop for the night. The whole trip – from exiting the Tikal bus to arriving in San Ignacio – was only two hours, including the passport stamping. A rare travel #win in Central America!
Belize had never been a definite part of my itinerary. It’s not that I didn’t have any interest in the country (as you should all know by now, I’m interested in everywhere), but my goal was to get into Mexico ASAP. I’d considered entering Mexico via another border crossing that would have eventually led me to the popular highland town of San Cristóbal de las Casas, and I’d even toyed with the idea of taking a flight from Flores. In the end, transiting in Belize for a night made the most logistical and economic sense given how I was rapidly running out of time and had decided to prioritise Chichén Itzá above all else. San Ignacio is a considerably more appealing stopover than Belize City (the country’s largest urban centre), which is notorious for its crime rates. Moreover, I’d been up since before 4am in order to hit up Tikal nice and early, so reducing travel time and maximising rest were major factors when settling on San Ignacio.
Getting into Belize
I got dropped off at Yellow Belly Backpacker’s – the coolest hostel in town – at around 3pm. Staff here were super obliging in helping me determine my next move. After a couple of calls, we established that I’d need another early morning (3:45am!) start in order to reach the Mexican border via public bus, so my activities in San Ignacio were to be very much limited. Honestly, I was still recovering from the sheer lunacy of the prior few days in Guatemala, not to mention a neverending series of pre-dawn wake-up alarms. All this to say: I was perfectly happy to do fuck all here.
My natural curiosity soon saw me wandering anyway, as the hostel was a little outside of the centre and I wanted to get some sort of feel for the new surroundings. But the place was absolutely deserted – to the point where I sometimes felt like I was roaming around in an actual ghost town! To be fair, this was late afternoon on a Sunday, and even on the brief journey over from the border, I’d born witness to how very Christian a country Belize is (church marquees everywhere). I imagine the absence of humanity had something to do with that. Regardless, the emptiness made for some cool photos and I found the town fascinating. Everything felt a little more developed than the other Central American nations (paved roads, nicer buildings), Panama and Costa Rica excepted. But there was also visible hardship, especially as I approached the downtown core which had a little more life than the outskirts. San Ignacio is trying to market itself as a tourist hub in proximity to ancient ruins, spectacular nature, as well as a vast array of outdoor/extreme sports. I imagine that it’ll reach the ‘regional adventure capital’ status that it so clearly craves in due course, but for now it feels like it’s still in the nascent stages of that road; still finding its identity and fine-tuning its service industry accordingly.
snapshots of San Ignacio
After doing several loops of the town centre, I ate at Ko-Ox Han-Nah, a place so poppin’ that an outdoor queue begins forming as early as 6pm. On a Sunday! They had great veggie options and good beer, but it felt wrong to stay for too long as a solo diner when so many others were desperate for seats (I was surprised by the number of tourists descending upon this place, bearing in mind how the rest of the town had been such a void!). I made my way back to my hostel, had a couple more beers and convos with other guests, and crawled into bed not longer after to catch an early night.
My experience here left me only with even greater curiosity for this small, less-travelled nation which honestly feels more Caribbean in its temperament than Latin American (note: in terms of the approach to time and punctuality, I’m not sure if there’s too great a difference between the two!). As a Brit who’s in many ways a descendant of the Empire, any experience with a former colony is one that’s invariably compelling, and I found Belize intriguing in so many regards. The official language is nominally English, but the reality is that this can often be thickly-accented Creole, most people are at least bilingual if not multilingual, and there’s a smattering of Spanish speakers thrown in to make for an even more interesting soundscape. Relatively-functional infrastructure sits comfortably alongside rickety old housing; dive bars with just a hint of sleaze carve space in a nation zealously devoted to Jesus. It’s an absorbing mish-mash of cultures and ideologies, and these impressions would be further confirmed during the next morning’s 4am bus ride into Mexico. But we’ll save that for the next post!
Click here for the full Belize gallery with some additional trip details.
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