It was a bright and sunny morning at the Belizean Customs and Immigration in the town of Punta Gorda. I had already purchased my round-trip ticket from Punta Gorda to Puerto Barrios from the nice young men with the blue baseball cap who was squatting on the floor in front of the immigration booth. Promptly at five after eight am the immigration official arrived, strolled over with little emotion, opened the door and walked in.

I along with six other backpackers, that had gathered quickly, followed. Around 8:20 the man motioned for me since I was first in line to come over to his booth. I presented my passport to him, he scribbled some information gather from it, asked for BZ$7,50, a conservation exit tax, stamped my passport, and I was on my way.

I bought a snack at the little booth and then watched the school kids arrive at the next door Methodist school in their brown uniforms. The boys were rehearsing their drums under the big old tree in the front yard for the upcoming independence day celebrations. The I walked slowly down the pier where a relatively large crowd of passengers had already gathered. The immigration official arrived soon with his list. He called each passengers name who then could get on the boat.

The ride over to Guatemala took somewhat over an hour and was just wonderful. The view of the mountains in the distance to the right, the open blue waters to the left, a hot breeze on my face. The sound of the motor was so loud, it swallowed any other noise which left a feeling of peace and silence.

Slowly Puerto Barrios arrived. Hawkers and taxi drivers awaited the boat. I chartered a cab, put my bags in it and rode off to the Guatemalan Immigration to check into the country. Then my taxi chauffeured me on to the bus station where I got me a ticket for the next deluxe bus ‘directo’ to Guatemala.

I had made the mistake one time before to catch the earlier, ‘via Morelos’ bus which was somewhat cheaper and had no A/C The result was, I was burning up, and the ‘via Morelos’ turned out to be a 1 hour plus detour that put me into Guatemala City 30 minutes after the later, deluxe bus. “Never again”, I had told myself.

Today, I used the time to walk around Puerto Barrios' busy market area. After spending quite some time in Belize it was almost strange to see so many things for sale on such small space. The people, the language, the smells and the music blaring out of the loud speakers in every other shop - this was truly Central America!