Alarm went off at 4.30am for our travels; Tony had a lot of problems checking out of the hotel due to exchange rate (the Mexicans try to rip us off…again, works out they tried to convert the currency 6 times….costing slightly more each time!….gits!). We got on our bus at 6am to Chetumal (6 hour journey) but the trip wasn’t as bad as we thought. The coach was quite roomy, lots of leg room & air conditioned; stopped every 90 mins on average for a break.
We got to Chetumal and was expected to picked up by a shuttle company we booked. After 10 minutes of hunting, they located us; it turns out they can’t pick us up at the bus station as the taxi drivers there had started to give private companies hassle….serious hassle from the sound of it, the guys were obviously slightly scared. So, we had to walk to the nearest hotel and have them pick us up from there….only 5 mins walk, but its just the fact that we can’t be picked up that annoyed us…..the taxi’s wouldn’t take us into Belize anyhow!
As we got on our way, the shuttle bus driver was ever so helpful giving us tips on Belize and assisted us when we crossed the border and passport control. We’d read that we may get charged for a return entry and not to pay for it, sure enough, they tried it on at the Mexican border. Tony told them politely he didn’t want to pay for the double entry, so then the bloke said we still had to pay as we didn’t pay at the airport. Tony took a leap of faith and told them “no thanks” to this charge as well….a bit of banter happened and the border guy let us through. Mexicans….don’t trust them, especially the official looking ones!
En-route to Belize Airport we saw lots of sugar cane grown; Belize is one of the world’s largest provider of sugar, although they only have one processing plant. What we found strange was they burn the crop before harvesting the canes (we assume to dry the sugar out in the sap).
We arrived at Belize airport to pick up our rental car. We hired a jeep and found we got some poxy Daihatsu version of a 4×4 car. Tony was not impressed and complained; it turns out they have 5 cars all the same except for different age, so basically they advertise lots of different vehicles, then, based on the cost give you a new crap car or a slightly older crap car. So no jeep, instead we got a white tacky Daihatsu 4×4 which only has a km dial (everything is in miles here). However, we did get a decent refund for our trouble.
We set off to our accommodation in the Cayo Districts and by the time we got there it was 5pm (local time, 1 hour behind Mexico) and we crashed out. Had a lovely meal and a few drinks before retreating to bed.