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Published: December 20th 2009
We woke up ready to leave the island and make our way into Mexico. I immediately noticed my carry on bag was not by the head of my bed, where I had left it the night before. As it contains my passport, wallet, camera, etc., I became nervous immediately. Scouring the room I found it by the door and thought it was odd it should have moved places while I slept. That’s when TJ noticed his carry on had moved during the night to a spot near the door as well. Of course, inspecting the contents immediately we noticed our cash was gone. Luckily none of the credit/debit cards or passports were missing. However, both of our cameras had been stolen (as well as all the pictures which were on them, hence no pictures on these blogs besides ones from our iPhones, items which were not taken). Oddly, a pair of cheap sunglasses from my bag was stolen, but perhaps they were such good-looking cheapies that they just couldn’t be resisted. Then we realized TJ’s earphones were gone. Now that was even more peculiar. Why steal a pair of iPhone earbuds but not the iPhone itself?!? Then I found that a
Resolving the Frustration
Finally made it to Tulum and trying to relax a bit...random power cord to a AA battery charger was stolen as well; however, the charger was not. What? Right? Am I taking crazy pills?!? Throughout the day we noticed other things missing of ever-lower importance and we were increasingly perplexed that none of the three computers in the room were touched. I would like to find the thief and slap him in the face for the illogical nature of his thefts, as well as just to hit him in his ugly face. The randomness of some of the articles stolen made me recall the scene in Airheads (the much underrated movie from the mid 90’s staring Brendan Frasier, Steve Buschemi, and Adam Sandler) where the kidnappers begin making absurd demands, including a naked picture of Bee Arthur, so that they could plead insanity after being caught by the police. Anyway, waking up to having had about $100 missing and the camera I carried with me around the world, including all the pictures from my trip to Belize, taken away from me caused a horrible start to the morning. I have no idea who would do this, but due to many of the circumstances of the incident I’m inclined to believe it was another backpacker, which I find to be incredibly upsetting. However, unfortunately, this was only the beginning to one of the worst days of traveling I’ve ever had.
We needed to get to the water taxi and make our way to Mexico, so we headed to the dock trying to leave behind the fact that someone had broken into our room in the middle of the night while we slept and stolen our valuables. This was when Pablo realized he couldn’t find his ticket for the boat. (Perhaps the thief’s get away?) Going to buy one, the agent refused to sell him a new ticket as the boat was already at capacity. So, we missed the first boat and had to wait an hour for the next.
We made it to Belize City and bought tickets on an express bus going to Tulum. The vendor mentioned we would need to switch buses after the border in Chetumal. Fine, that means a second bus should exist and leave about the time we arrive. Right? Of course not. But even before we encountered this issue, we ran into troubles at the border crossing. TJ got caught in line going through customs as the officer began answering phone calls and discussing contemporary Ukrainian ballet and its reflections of society’s problems due to the post-communist transition, or something equally benign, with his coworkers, neglecting his job and the individuals in line. I made it through with Pablo on time and got to the bus, which was oddly already rolling down the street in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The driver rushed us on board and began to pull away. I told him we still had someone in customs. He replied that was too bad, he had to keep going. I became rather upset, demanding to know if he intended to leave someone at the border and he simply said yes. Well, relying on my harmonious, nonconfrontational nature (anyone that knows me can attest to that being sarcasm) I told him in the most understanding tone I could muster what he could do with his bus, my personal views of him and his mother, and to kindly allow me off the bus so I could get TJ (i.e. I jumped off a moving bus screaming and yelling obscenities like a total lunatic).
Now, stuck at the border in a crowd of people I set about trying to find TJ. After walking back to customs and searching briefly I found him and explained we were now without transport. We started talking to cab drivers, trying to negotiate a price for the 10 kilometer drive into town and were getting absolutely absurd prices. Of course, any local that walked up got a completely different fare, and while I’m used to this racist treatment due to my lack of melatonin, I simply wasn’t in the mood at that time. Finally a local overheard our negotiations and told us of a bus going into town to the bus station. We jumped on thinking our problems were solved. Unfortunately, the bus station we ended up at would not take the voucher we had bought back in Belize City; we had to take a cab across town to the other bus station. Once we finally got there, we had the only bright spot of the day, our friend Pablo was at the station, at the front of the line. As I had the voucher, he was going to have to buy a new bus ticket but we caught him just in time and avoided having to wait in the enormous line behind him. However, that was the only bright spot of the day… As you may have guessed, the bus we had a voucher for did not exist. There was no direct bus to Tulum at that time. We could only get on a local bus leaving two hours later and not getting us into our destination until 9:00 pm (which, for perspective, was 7 hours later than we had hoped for that morning). TJ and I, sick of traveling, decided to just ditch the plans and head to Cancun where we could pass out and check in to my parent’s time-share the next morning. Unfortunately, in the few minutes it took us to discuss this option, the bus sold out and we were reduced to one option, the local bus to Tulum.
We got on the bus and noticed many people already standing in the aisles as the seats were all full. Finding our assigned seats occupied, we began the discussion with the locals that they were in our spots; they replied they weren’t and that if we had a problem with it to go talk to the conductor. So we forced our way back up to the front, the conductor said we were right and he would come back and talk with them. We forced our way back through the crowded bus to tell the occupants, who again denied it. Then two of the three went forward to talk with the conductor and one returned, telling her friend they needed to move a row back while the other man simply got off the bus he didn’t belong on in the first place. Now, this happened in at least five other locations on the bus, each requiring the conductor to settle the dispute. After 30 minutes of arguments, we finally departed. Problems over? Well, kind of… I rode for the next 4 hours with a disgruntled, seatless, toothless, pit stained guy standing over me with his crotch in my face and the smell of feces in the air. The air conditioner was immediately over head and on full blast so the three of us were so frozen we had to put our arms inside of our shirts to keep warm. Additionally, it sprayed a mist of water on me the entire journey leaving me wet on top of it all.
So that was my day. Money and camera stolen, missed boat, left at the border, people trying to rip me off, wrong buses, buses not existing and being sold out, having to fight for our seats on a crowded, stinky bus, freezing, wet, exhausted… Now, just to top it all off, cause the events of that day wouldn’t have been enough on their own, everything was endured while having horrible sunburn on my back and being covered in bug bites of unknown original all over our arms and legs. It was, without a doubt, one of the worst days I’ve ever had traveling, one of the worst days I’ve ever had period. That following such a great high I had been riding just made the emotional rollercoaster so much worse.
At the end of the day, sitting on the bus with only my left ear bud playing some relaxing music (my right ear phone was in TJ’s ear because the thief had stolen his earphones) I was able to muster a few chuckles at the ridiculousness of how horrible the entire day was. At some point I recalled the scene in The Big Lebowski with Tony the Limo Driver and was able to find some form of tranquility:
Tony the Limo Driver: "My wife's a pain in the ass. She's always busting my friggin' agates. My daughter's married to a real loser bastard. And I got a rash so bad on my ass, I can't even sit down. But you know me. I can't complain."
The Dude: “F%&in' A, man. I got a rash, man.”
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