Belize or Bust

Although travel Blogs are the modern boring equivalent of the former slide show, where the guests are struggling to stay awake after 3 drinks and dinner, I feel compelled to relate this experience. If not for my vicarious family and friends, then for my own cathartic release and those idealistic fools, like us, who think the world is possible, and with guts all things can be done. Which thoughts we still hold dear. My apologies to all
else.

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The emerald sea purrs it’s relentless surf against the blue sand beach. A lighthouse on a knoll beside, sweeps the horizon. A delicious costal wind blows steady over us. Clouds of butterflies, yellow, iridescent blue, fill the air. Huge willowy pines play their tops in the breeze. The temperature is perfect. No mosquitoes. Little crabs shyly poke their heads from holes in the sand to see if we are still too close.

A paradise. A rest from the insanity, the road, the sweat and the cramped truck cab. Myself as driver, Kim mashed beside me, a cat carrier with the matron grumpy cat, the dog squashed into the passenger floor well, and the little insane kitty (Rubes) wandering free range. Only the AC keeps us from total melt down, but the discomfort level is still close to maximum. Here, for a night on the beach, tent pitched on the soft sand, no other campers … 10 US bucks a night. Yeah .. I could live here. The locals up by the road play their loud Caribbean music late into the night as is their custom, but it is tempered by the surf. Only the deeper conga coming through. We sleep the sombulesance of babies. Paradise.

But the price has been dear to get here. Robbery and torture are tame descriptors. For now, these indignities escape my mind as the beautiful wind dries my sweat, our bedding, cleanses our souls.

Kim is happy. A funky Banyo shower from a pipe washes away her grimy misery. The dog runs a hundred miles per hour up and down the beach, the cats sprawl free a yard long in the tent. Delicate dreams for us in the heavenly air at last, aqui en la Costa Esmerelda.

Why this place exists in the center of a thousand miles of Barrio and corruption in either direction is not comprehendible. Sad that it is impossible to reach or leave from, as we know that more horror lies ahead, as it has behind. Too soon we must leave, return to the prison of the road, the terrifying unknown ahead. No other tourist are here along this 40 mile stretch of hotels, though all are paradigimic icons of the American myth of paradise. Pools and hammocks, camping or luxury if your want it. Food of all kinds and flavors. A crystal ocean to swim in, sunrises and sets in Max Parish colors. But impossible to reach.

In the days behind and ahead, the events were thick. This is the story.

I am accidentally living the story of Mosquito Coast. Accidentally because of my disenfranchisement in the corporate capitalist paradigm. We tried to be good Amerikians, Kim and I, her harder than I, working as wage slaves, giving every dime to the mortages and the money mongering banks. But they denied us life in this process. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe the first in that we still eat and crap, but not the other two. So now, like Harrison Ford, I despise every aspect of this American “culture”. We invent our way out of the maze and head for the rivers and lost temples of the mosquito coast. Like Harrison, we leave the dishes unwashed in the sink, the TV on the floor in the back room, dog crap on the rug, and walk out into a new beginning. We close the door unlocked at my shack in the desert, books full on the shelves, canned food and peanut butter in the pantry, the bed unmade, an offering to the mice who will caretaker the place, flip the main power breaker, and drive away.

A thousand details for escape: from buying gold to thrashing vet vaccinations. Finally our lives reside in the bed of a truck. The vehicle is crammed with every imaginable device to begin a new life in a new world, from a gas powered refrigerator, to an invented wind power machine. Finally the hour of departure arrives after multiple midnights of packing .. down into the bowels of Utah we roll. Here the northern ice caps the mountains white, freezing us to the bone at night. The first kiss of winter in this northern world.

Travel troubles come in threes in this calm world, and we think at the time that they are large, though now paling in comparative magnitude. Running out of gas in the Zion rock cathedrals, the trailer breaking apart in Arizona, and a presumed cat escape in a desert KOA. The first is foiled by parsimonious gas fumes, the second rectified by hooking the truck and hover battery together and welding the trailer frame with a coat hanger and a handful of bolts, and the cat, the beginning of the stress hormone hurricane. While walking in the morning sun, we hear a huge cat fight eruption back in the direction of our tent where the two felines are confined. Then a dashing fur ball bolts by, through the fence, into the scrub land beyond. For hours we search for the cat, wandering amid saguaros, the Yucca, and stink weed, calling, calling, ever calling. The heat rises to it’s usual hundred. Still going up. No cat to be found. We know the animal will fry out there today, if not tomorrow. Kim’s heart is broken. Her spirit animal of unruly impish behavior has vanished, apparently clawed it’s way out of the tent in the fray with “ratty”, the older less interesting bitch. Kim steels her heart. We must go on , she says. I tell her of the cat “doughnut” who ran away at Niagara falls in an infant family exodus, but it is not story time. Reluctantly, I begin to disassemble the tent. Under the folds of the bedding hides the cat. Joy is returned. We push on.

The west is pretty huge, taking us forever to reach El Paso. Though the previous days have had drug lord gunfights in the streets, all is the usual quiet of USA Inc., everyone shops, drives pell mell for somewhere. Then Texas, as big as it boasts. 700 miles of near nothingness. We cross the Pecos. Now east of the Pecos. We are no longer in the west. Still 500 miles to the Mexican border.



Arriving in Brownsville in the late afternoon on Friday, we find the Los Indios border crossing down an improbable road. Kim has called ahead from our previous world and discussed “transmigrantiaes” with a customs broker at place called C.A.T.S. Driving into the one lane road leading to the kiosks, we reconsider and turn around at the last second, back to a gas station. I ask in the mini mart if there is any custom brokers near by, but they know nothing of it, nor can understand me. I crap the dog in a field while Kim looks up phone numbers. She calls a place called Peters and Sons and receives directions. Back onto the freeway to Brownsville and out into an industrial area. Can’t find it. Call again. More instructions. More wandering in the fenced warehouse land. Call again, then finally located, their sign overgrown with bushes. It is a staging area of huge trucks. Wandering the loading docks, we find an office with many Mexicans who ignore us. Finally a fellow talks to us, that they do not do this, we need this, we must wait 72 hours, and other bad news. He gives us directions to the transmigrantes street, apparently lined with those who provide this service. It is about impossible to back the trailer out, it jackknifed and the hover crushes one of the tail lights. Out of there, we dig out the paperwork printed from the computer for C.A.T.S. Rainstorms have welded the stack into one brick of paper. The top page is peeled off and the runny ink phone number deciphered. I call. “Transmigrantis’, a woman says. Can I speak to Onhell? Gibberish, gibberish. Sound of speaking to someone else. Some rustling and bumping, then a dial tone. Call again, no answer. We resolve to follow the directions to the place.

Weaving through Brownsville, we find the road paralleling the border. The 20 foot steel barred fence stands off to our left, not looking so very hard to climb over. We are hot and irritated, confused, crammed. The caged cat is yowuling, the dog thrashing, the little cat leaping between surfaces. On and on the country border road goes. Finally we see a transmigranties sign, half fallen down, overgrown, in front of a mostly fallen shack. Think not. A little further, another. Down the road we see C.A.T.S. We pull in there, it is a huge dirt yard with junk yard cars all around the perimeter. A trailer has an open sign in the window, But the door is locked, no one is around. Back to the other place. A couple of shady swarthies in the shade hovering over a fancy car. Into that trailer/office. A few very rude mexicians who don’t speak English and just want to get rid of us. We are to understand that Tuseday would be the soonest they will talk to us. Monday being labor day.

Dejected and rejected back into the parking lot, a dapper swarthy comes over. Habla ingles? Si, he says, and goes on to tell us how he’s been there for days, has to wait till Tuesday, and then a 72 hour computer search will commence to clear the title of his car. Es nice carro, eh? He says, obviously smuggling the stolen black 2010 BMW over to a drug lord. It must take less time to make the new title and cook the paperwork, but 72 hours is the official hoop to jump through. He is insistent that we will have to do this also.

Back out onto the road. In a ¼ mile we come to the gas station just before the Los Indio border crossing. How they cannot know about the custom brokers down the street is unfathomable. Knowing that the distance to the first Mexican town is too far away to reach before night fall, we try it anyway. A toll to get out, across the Rio grand, and into a nest of ridged machine gun sentries. An Officer inspects us suspiciously. After a half hour of broken communication, No passer, no documtaros. (no passing, no documents). Back across the Rio to USA. Pay a toll to the bankers. We glean that there is no reason to keep us out of Mexico, except that we need all these various fucking permits. The main Matamoras crossing is open 24-7 for documents. Resolved to attack again in the morning, it’s an expensive motel 6 night, animals, catbox, and crap smuggled into the room.

At dawn, we are at the other crossing. No toll booth here, just seething homeland security. They fall on us like bears on a wrecked honey truck.. After frisking and fiddling, they decide I’m running guns to the drug lords. We are led (truck, hover, and all) to a huge concrete building where us flesh and bones are told to wait off to the side, both cats in carriers, the dog confused on a leash, the humans chain smoking. They X-ray the whole truck and hover with a massive machine. Eventually we are retuned to the yank crossing post. Now they decide I’m delivering cash back to the drug lords. How much do we have? Where is it? Let us see it? We have the stuff stashed in a dozen places throughout the load. We don’t know how much we have. I tell them 15 grand. 10 is the limit, unless paperwork is filled out to inform the bankers that some one is taking their money. We have to dig it all out. In the carb of the hover, under the battery, in cooking books, in physics text books, some in the door, on and on. Finally there is a huge pile of cash in their Kiosk. With relish they count and re-count it, jabbering in Spanish the whole time. Other uniforms rifle through all our crap, pulling apart one thing after another. I have two gold bars under the soles of my feet which I’ve failed to mention, along with another 7 ounces stashed through out the load. At one point they talk of shoes among them selves, this pair cost this, that … that, American talk. I sweat, but put on the face of an interview with Stalin. They are distracted by finding two social Security cards of Kims. Is she going to sell one to the drug lords in Mexico? No, No No, She’s been married 4 times and this is just residual. 5 times a charm !! They offer cheerily. Yeah, hell yeah. But hummm .. Senor there is a major discrepancy. You said 15 thou and we only count 10,237 dollars. Where is the rest? Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe that’s all I had. They apply their 3rd grade education and consider that we couldn’t have spent more than 1000 getting down here from Idaho. Where is the rest? The Easter egg hunt through the truck resumes with vigor. After a spell, they are defeated. Nothing more shows up. I am lectured long about the dangers of Mexico. How I will be murdered and robbed, or maybe robbed and murdered. No night driving. This and that, wash behind my ears. After 4 hours we are released. All that just to get out of this land of liberty. Back across the Rio Grand into Mexico where it really get’s weird.

Oh yeah, pull over here. Officials everywhere, but now, all in Mexican gibberish. Qui carga this, nessito documetaro, permito, ect. Ect. A cat makes a flying lung for the open window, but is snatched out of mid air by my left hand. El Gato Loco? Whatever. What now? We take our passports in and get human permits and stampa. Now the vehicular confusion. A greasy pissed off juvenile bureaucrat abstractedly is the gate keeper. An insurance rat is hanging out and speaks some broken inglas. I am led to his office the size of a bed where he make copies for me for some enormous price of 20 bucks. Back to the punk. Eventually, he enters everything into his computer, behind the bullet proof glass, between stunning moves on his Black Ops action game. I am shoved over some blue paperwork. Into the pile. Back at the truck, I announce I am willing to pay the taxes. Though I had determined that taxes were to be paid at the concrete bunker a hundred feet in front of me, now it is no. No paymento. Ok where. A lot of jabbering between two of them. No aqui! Quatro Puente. Calle Santa domingo. TLC! What the hell are they talking about? After a one on one Spanish to English and reverse gestating language lesson, I say Los Indios? Si .. TLC. Quatro Puente. Ok.. I get it. Forth bridge crossing at los Indios. Transmigrantes TLC. I ask , donde esta TLC? No intelligible reply. The transmigrantes is repeated over and over. Puente Los Indios. Hmmmm. Been there. Then comes the kicker, permissimo dos animilotos. Soooorree. What? Only two animals allowed to cross? We have three. Zoological Sophie’s Choice! Kim is now yelling at the proud official, thankfully in English which the zipper head can’t understand. I’m rolling the truck after the guide car to turn me around. Kim is in a horror. Back across the Rio to the motel 6. Fourth crossing now. What to do with the Sophie’s Choice. Whack the cranky old one is the thought. I let her say it. She is depressed. We are exhausted from all day in the pig world. I suggest we check out the transmigrantes services anyway, what the hell. If they smooth the trail by one bump, it’s worth the price. We get to the main one, CATS just before 3 PM when they close. In luck, we find Onhell, the fellow Kim previously talked to on the phone. He is leaving. It is quitting time. Come back tomorrow at 8:30 and all will be taken care of. No problemo about the herd of animals. Just sent a lady over with five dogs yesterday. All paperwork will be fixed. HOT DAMN. We happy now. All is saved. At the motel we order $20 delivered pizza. Tomorrow we get into Mexico. The motel TV is all excited. A huge hurricane is approaching and will slam the coast exactly where we plan to stay the first night in La Pesca. 90 MPH Winds. This is going to get interesting.

We arrive at CATS at 8:30AM and are directed to a slot at what appears thankfully to be the front of the line. Onhell soon appears from somewhere and gives us a variety of instructions. We produce a list of all our crap that is looked at with awe, or maybe disgust. Item by item we go through it, showing him this and then that. He records everything in Spanish on some forms, then disappears with our passports and titles. Wait, he says. In an hour, a runner comes back with the passports and titles. Wait, he says. I converse brokenly with another transmigrante who is heading to Guatemala. There are dozens of us travelers here, all apparently going to Guatemala. Some are big shabby trucks loaded to the limit with unknown cargo, tied redundantly under a tarp in 30 different ways. Most are small pickups with another in tow behind. Chevy luv being the peferred truck. I see that all the hitches are of personal manufacture. These also are heaped fore and aft with the unknown, a few bicycles sticking out in places, some with used washing machines. I ask if we can join their convoy, but no, no, and a subject change. He points out a small truck stuffed with washers, dryiers and the like. He says that the fellow who owns that was coming to meet it on a bus, but the bus was attacked by drug lord bandits. After gun point robbery of the passengers, the federallies showed up and a major fuseilage began. The bandits using the bus as cover returned excessive automatic fire, resulting in a high caliber response from the uniforms. The passengers had to lay on the floor as the windows and walls were blasted to shreds, some taking a few winging rounds, as was the case of the laundry cargo owner. Eventually the bandits made a break for it in their SUV, the machine gun chase rattling off into the night roads of Mexico. He says this happened at one in the morning just across the Rio, a major reason not to travel at night. Somehow, I am convinced.

Around 11, Onhell returns and says he has to have a contact number of a friend in Belize to complete the paperwork. What the hell, On ell. But this is nessiticto. I know Chet, the hostel owner, not all that well, but have no idea how to get a hold of him. Luckily, they have WiFi in the office, so I take my computer in there and search for him in the web. Videos of him, interviews, lots of tourist info, but can’t find his number. Finally, getting desperate, I find a blog reviewing his place, some loving it, others calling it dirty. An afterthought in there gives the street location and the phone number of the hostel. Back out to the truck. A few tries with international dialing and country codes and I reach him on the phone. WoW. He remembers me kindly and is glad to be my point of contact. He says to call him if there is any trouble in Mexico. Yeah, right. Then launches into a long winded story as he loves to do at a buck a minute. Eventually he concludes to my polite urgings, and I give the number to Onhell. Ok, wait.

About 12:30 Onhell comes out with the papers, a huge stack some 3 inches thick. There is 4 copies of the main document, listing a thousand things in Spanish. I pay the $230 fee, not feeling particularly compensated for the money. Ok.. you go now, he says. Ummm, any better directions than that? Get some addition vauge comments with irritation. Off we go, into … what?

We veer off to the right of the toll shack, getting into a massive double line of transmigrantes. Wait. Eventually a scary looking police something comes down the line looking at our papers disparagingly, grunting and sending us on our way. The line ahead has vanished somewhere. The road splits. We take the right which leads to a fence, wench I have to get the trailer turned around by driving on a questionable lawn. Take the other. We are directed in a loop de loop and into the tool booth. They take money and tell us that the next booth is the inspectors. If we get a green light we can proceed. If we get a red light we have to pull over and have the truck load torn apart. We approach the booth in high anxiety. Most are getting the red light. Our turn. A woman yaking and flirting with another booth member. Takes our papers. A snickering consultation with the other flirtee. A sigh and with indifference, she hits a button. Green light. Oh thank Dog who art in haven. Fifty transmigranties are pulled over waiting to be pulled apart. Through confusing corridors of road cones we come to another booth. I confess we have 2 bikes and a TV we need to pay tax on. The official, about 4 feet higher than my window scribbles something on a yellow sticky which he slaps on our papers. Where is the tax office? I ask. A vague arm waving in the only direction available to us. On we go. In a hundred feet we come to a few farmer looking types with their hands out. Fumagation. We give them money. They give us a sticker. Another 50 feet and stopped again where some crippled looking fellas spray the side of the truck with some light green fluid. One sprays, the other apparently supervises. Only one side is done and we’re waved on.

Waved into a large parking lot where a sucatto speaking kid, dressed rather shabby, assaults us. He blasts at us loud and fast, but friendly, with ample arm waving. We only catch a few words, like immigration, casa, and permitento. Kim engages him with many smiling “si’s”. We get out of the truck, locking the panting animals in tightly and head to the second building. The first in front of us is an imposing concrete cube with a redoubt on top with a very bored mean military guy, sunken down in his sand bags behind a gun the size of a canoe. I have the feeling he really wants to use it. I ask Kim what she thought the parking guy was saying, as she answered him with such conviction. She says she had no idea. We must skirt around a lower machine nest with another scowling soldier, his gun only as large as a small Christmas tree. Into the second building where there are 2 or 4 lines, as it is indistinct. Slowly we inch with other transmigrantes toward the cageas (service windows?). When it comes our turn, both Kim and I advance, which is breaking the rules. On inspection, we are already stamped and permitted, so waved vaguely on to the other line. Waiting there for 15 minutes, I finally reach a cagea. Showing all the papers it is again determined that I already have everything. Now to pay the tax. There is a tiny office on the corner the size of a Volkswagen bus with 2 irritated officials and some computers. When my time comes I present the pile of paperwork, of which they are only interested in the sticky note. Paymeinto blah blah casa, ..gestating randomly towards the other building. Go pay there, I gather. They hold my passport and drivers license. Over to the other building. Kim returns to the truck to start the AC so the animalitos can breath. The machine gun nest must be passed close, feeling the beady eyes upon me. In the building it is completely bare, a vas dimly lit void with a 25 foot ceiling. A cagea is on one side behind thick bullet proof glass. Presenting him with the scrawls of the tax people, I pay 15 bucks with a hundred, getting the rest in peso change. Back to the tax box. Have to wait in line again. Hand in my receipt and get my license and passport back, skirt the gun nest, back in the parking lot with Kim. I see a van disgorging white people, about a half dozen. They are very fat and pasty, some professor looking types, dazed and scared. Immigration is that building over there, I offer. Where are you going? They say they are driving to Costa Rica, but little else. I know I am a mark for these Mexican land sharks, but they are as good as in the belly. A wave of pity for these sheltered people washes over me, but what can be done? Their fate is sealed. We must move on. The rapido talker is still rambling wildly at Kim, who nods and encourages him as you would a clever dog doing tricks. I give him a 10 peso bill, to his delight, and ask the way out (with hand gestures), though I can see it clearly. He becomes still more exuberant, blocking traffic for us and dancing and waving our way forward. Out of the parking lot, which turns into a shabby two lane highway. No mention of vet papers or any other animal documentaros ever came up. We could have brought in elephants. We are elated. In the first mile are a hundred crappy one story adobe, block and rusty tin buildings, all proclaiming money exchange. I stop and change out 300 to pesos, a rate of 12.3 to one buck. I have a huge wad of cash, of which I’m very self conscience and hold concealed. The practice is to watch these transactions from afar, then mug you down the road. Buy some fluids for Kim and I, climb out of the mud ruts and onto the broken highway. We did it! We are into Mexico at last. On our way to paradise.

We are all traumatized at one point or more in our lives, of which consequence shapes our future reactions in a paranoid spasm of terror. For myself, I decline to mention. For Kim, it was being the helpless trapped passenger hurtling towards doom. Her drunken father used to load the family into the car for a “drive”, which careened around Alaskan mountain roads, scooping the margins next to precipitous thousand foot drop offs. She used to yell furiously at me on the tame and controlled Boise freeways if some laconic potato head cut in front of us, more from their inattentive stupidity than from intention. Now she is thrust into a Mad Max Mexican stock car race.

The road is two lane with an 8 foot paved shoulders. On this shoulder dives the slower transmigrintes, towing as they are, while the wilder unencumbered cars and trucks race around, partly in the oncoming lane. This is also occurring in the other direction, making the road into a 4 lane freeway. But the middle lanes are 12 feet wide, so it is also possible for some maniac to pass the passers by gunning it up the middle. Hence a five lane road out of two. Efficient as this may seem, Kim somehow failed to see the scientific purity of the situation and clawed the dashboard apart while screaming CHARLIEE!, as if to influence my conviction to do as others do in this foreign country. The situation is exeracerbated by ample chuck holes, arrived upon at the last moment of knowledge, and swerved around at the last instant. Thus the view from the front window was one of 60 MPH cars, trucks and junk heaps weaving wildly all over the road, passing on the left and right, and even on the left of incoming traffic. Yes, it is a bit un-nerving at first, but I plod along at 50, taking my pot holes with aplomb, letting the others do as they must in their frenetic velocity.

Between desperate gasps for breath, we must consider our route. The crappy general map shows the turn off to La Pesca at some indistinct place called dos pueblos. Can we even find that? All the signs of course are in Spanish and not particularly plentiful. I am still recalculating kilometers per hour into MPH so I don’t break the speed limit, as if this was a matter of concern with the rest mashing their foot to the floor. But we are anglos, with the US plates, sure bait for any official who could see. Though we see no looming black horizons of the hurricane, we decide to stay to the inland, getting to [the city of] Victoria before dark. This is the preferred drug lord luxury residence city, much as Sedona is for Arizona. Here is the heart of the cartels. Hmmm .. weighing that against driving in the dark out here with chuck holes and maniacs, with an assured hurricane camping spot which we can’t reach before dark, against a few cocaine crazed drug lords. No contest. We’ll camp in the narcotics capital. Kim reads in the junior woodchuck guide book under Victoria camping, that there is a nice walled RV stop in the center of the city. Anna, she says the proprietor is, but later changes her story to Maria. Maria is a super welcoming warm person, speaking English and inviting all in to play poker. This sounds good. By the time we have figured all that out, including confusing directions, we are long past the other turn off anyway, although there was no trace of it. Kim shuffles through two dictionaries, trying to decipher the few signs that there are. This keeps her eyes mostly off the road, leaving me to do the majority of white knuckling. I find the driving and translating quite stimulating for the mind.

In 30 miles we come to a very scary federallie check point. Herded through a tight blockade, we are stopped and all the papers checked by a humorless Police dressed all in black with blacker machine guns, grenades, pistols, everything. In five breathless minutes we are through. Calls for a ceremonial cigarette. Another Military check point awaits us another 30 kilometers down the road. They surround us and climb into the back of the truck, looking for guns or criminals. Through that also without incident. Flashing the transmigrante paperwork at them seems to help. Another ceremonial cigarette. The sky reddening, we reach the outskirts of Victoria and roll slowly into town. The woodchuck guide give remarkably accurate directions to this, cross the bypass, Right at the main boulevard, backtrack at the fourth returno, (a U-turn spot in the boulevard), right through the walled gate of Annie’s. The traffic is thick in this evening time and a carnival of some sort further jams thing up. But we do so, and pull into the inner city sanctuary of Annie/Maria’s.