Writings By Date| Journey to Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
Once again, we started walking, and about 20 minutes later, we did see a mini-school bus come up from behind us! I nudged Erin for her negativity, but alas, she'd prove to be right. The bus, though empty, cruised right on past us, with me calling the driver all kinds of wickedly bad names. He stopped about 100 yards later (making me apologize for calling him all the bad names), but then he just pulled a U-turn, came back, and kept right on going. Apparently, he was just out for a little "joy ride", the teasing bastard. We resumed our walk in the heat, and about a half mile later, another truck came tearing up the road. This onen did manage to stop, so we hopped into the trailbed, and sped down the road toward the junction. The bouncing up and down on loose gravel made our butts sore, but it was made up for by the cool breeze that helped a lot in drying us off from being in the hot sun.
Now we were at the junction, no worse for wear, but we had to wait for the next passing bus, whenever that would be. The feral cat was still there, this time joined by a sibling. Erin fed them some of a protein bar, hoping it wouldn't kill them, while I just watched them walking back and forth, rubbing against each other, and my leg. These cats were so cute that it was sad to see them in this state of near-starvation. "Spaying" and "neutering" are not words in the vocabulary of most Central American nations.
While waiting for the bus, a teenage boy hopped off one coming from the other direction, and joined us, hoping to hitch a ride into Crooked Tree. He had come from a neighboring village, and was going to Crooked Tree to visit his grandmother. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough money to afford the bus that goes all the way there, who charged a scandalous $3.50 compared to the $1 the main bus to the junction charges. So he was waiting with us for a while, playing with the cats. The three of them together made a great photo.
The chicken bus came about half an hour later, and we rode it back to Belize City, leaving the boy to walk his way into the village. The ride back was peaceful, and not as crowded as before, at least not until we got into the city limits. Once back in the city, we took a taxi to the marketplace, where we found that we had an hour and a half to wait before the next (and last) water taxi to San Pedro.
This gave us plenty of time to examine Belize City, a pleasure we were perfectly happy to pass on. Belize City is definitely gross. It's very unclean, disorderly, and just full of all kinds of disease and pestilence, just itching for a ride out of town. The people all look tired and dirty, and there seems to be nothing but low class here. Street vendors reach out for passersby, offering anything from ragged-looking food to half-dying baby chicks. Homeless people fill in the gaps, and alleys look horrifying, even in broad daylight. We just sat in the water taxi waiting station, taking in all the cigarette smoke, and just dreaming of a nice, hot shower waiting for us back at the hotel.
