Journey to Caye Caulker

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24th February 2008

Today we had a chance to experience the Chicken Buses. We had the chance in Guatemala but we were told by chimi and other people it was far too risky & the fact that one person did not show for the trip, the group had enough budget for private transport.

Chicken buses if you don't already know are old American School buses shipped out after their service to these counrties for the public bus transport. The reason they are named chicken buses as far as I know.... is because the locals use them to transport themselves and anything including there chickens so the buses are called Chicken buses.

Anyway we left our Hotel by taxi in the morning and were dropped off at downtown San Ignacio at the bus stop. After spending 30 minutes or so waiting for the bus & fighting off the stray dogs caging for food and attention our transport arrived on time.
We all piled on, and put our backpacks on the back row & Chimi said we should sit near the back to keep an eye on our luggage.
Chimi managed to get the nearest seat from the bags and the rest of us found any seat we could get. Bex and I had to stand for the first hour or so.
Now the way these buses operate in Central America is a bit dodgy. A few years ago the buses were privatised. So the routes were divided between a number of different operations. Which meant and led to cut throat competition. I was told that the drivers are paid based on how many passengers they get & that if they dont get enough fares in a day they will be sacked. Well this leads to pretty much pandamonoim on the roads in that the drivers push these old heavy buses packed full of people (and god knows what else) to the maximum on windy unsealed roads.
Having said all that the 4 hour journey to Belize City was actually qiuet pleasant. The only dodgy moment was when the driver paid off the local Police at a security checkpoint because the bus was overcrowded. Basically Belizian law does not allow standing passengers on these buses at all. Now this bus was like the Northernline at 8:30 on a Monday morning and the driver casually pulled up at this armed checkpoint and paid the Police Officer a few US dollers and he waved us through.
Apart from the highly illegal police bribe we safefly got to Belize City. Belize City is the old Capital of Belize and from what I saw was a pretty dodgy place and glad we only spent an hour tops here.
We had to get a Water Taxi from Belize City to the island of Caye Caulker.
Caye Caulker is one of many Caribbean islands in the Belizian Cayes. During the Water Taxi Journey we passed countless islands many deserted. The Belizian Cayes is where the second largest Coral Reef in the world starts, this reef ends somewhere near Cancun in Mexico.
We arrived at Caye Caulker in the afternoon sun. We got off the taxi and walked to our Hotel. Caye Caulker is really small, when we got off the boat on the East coast we had only walked 5 minutes & we were then on the west coast. The roads are just sand and the only form of transport apart from walking are golf carts and they wierdly have number plates.

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Photos

On the way to our hotel
Sandy streets