Driver opened the window and to make us feel welcome in his country shouted:
"Fucking Mexicans!" and drove away. Lovely!
Corozal is a small city just a short drive away from the border. This was the place for us to sleep. First of all we needed to get some food though. After not having anything to eat for almost two full days we felt a bit peckish.
We parked our van next to a playground for obvious reasons - there was light and it was more or less in the centre with enough people around. After I redistributed our three, by this time already warm, beers, we noticed dozen of kids that were still having fun on the playground. It was already around 10-11pm and there were some adults watching them.
Daniel went to ask where we could find something cheap to eat and that's how we met Jose and his 12 kids. A very friendly guy with a sweet wife and lots of interesting stories that I shan't write about. He invited us to sleep in his garden, provided us with water, wifi and a bit of herbs to spice up our lives a bit.
In the morning we were served delicious breakfast by Jose's wife and the man himself took us to buy car insurance and to show us the way to Belize city. He also hooked us up with a contact in Sandhill, a small settlement couple hours south of Corozal.
On our way there we picked up a hitch hiker, let's call him Asparagus. He seemed like a good fellow and it was pretty chill ride. Until he showed us his hand where was a big chunk of meat missing. Now, he did tell us how it happened and the whole story was pretty surreal, to the point I was disgusted and shocked, but unfortunately I remember only pieces of it. Anyway here you go, the super short version.
There was a guy at the bar who was threatening him.
Asparagus calmly took out his knife.
With the same calm he cut out a chunk of meat from his hand.
Asparagus told the guy to fuck off that he isn't scared.
The other guy quit his bullshit.
Asparagus swore that on the day of her 16th birthday, he will rape this guy's daughter.
There is no way he could hide her.
To punish him.
To show him who is the boss.
To ruin his life.
With 16 she will be legal, therefore it's not rape.
Fucked up, huh? Well you should have seen his creepy smile when he was telling us this story and his future rape plans with such pride. The girl's life doesn't mean shit.
Needless to say the rest of the ride with Asparagus was a bit quiet. But soon enough we got to Sandhill and were looking for the contact that Jose gave us. And that's how we met Andrew, his wife Andris and their two sons - Andrew and Andris. With those two little rascals we spent quite some time playing and messing around.
Big Andrew let us stay for two nights by his house and third night took us camping to an island. We went fishing on his boat. Unfortunately we didn't catch a lot of fish that would be good enough to sell, we did catch lots of catfish though, but people here don't like it. I wasn't happy about the dead fish being just thrown back to sea, so I took a knife and tried to learn how to cut out a fillet. After 7 fish I more or less succeeded and stopped doing it for all the blood and smell.
The night was crazy. Never have I had the pleasure of meeting so many mosquitos. People in my country say that Finland or Sweden are full of these little buzzing fuckers, but trust me when I say that's nothing if you compare it to Belizean swamps by the sea. We basically woke up (that's a lie, we didn't really sleep) half eaten.
I hope you can see all the bites. It's only like couple of hundreds of them. |
With the sun rising up we could fully appreciate the beauty of this place. Due to a hurricane that came through here not so long ago, the beaches were filled with Mayan jewelry, antique Spanish pottery and tons of human bones and skulls. Quite spectacular sight if you ask me. It's places like these archeologists get wet dreams about.
On our last day by Andrew's house, Daniel and Panchito fixed our can (again), while I was just writing these couple of pages because I'm maladroit when it comes to technical stuff.
Haha your travel diary is amazing. Keep up the good work sir!
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