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Finally managed to tear myself away from Roatan and make my way to Guatemala. I only had a week left and wanted to pack in as much as I could - enough lazing around on beautiful Caribbean beaches and waving at the fishies, it was time to up the pace and experience some Guatemalan kulture, innit!
I was fortunate to acquire another travel buddy for my last leg of the journey: Calvin from Roatan who was on a visa run, which means having to leave Honduras for a week or so to renew it.
We set off on the 6am ferry to the mainland at La Ceiba where we got into a taxi to the bus station. The taxi started to cough and splutter - it had run out of petrol and finally conked out only meters from the petrol pump. It was a Central American adventure already... At the station we decided to treat ourselves to a 'luxury' bus as we knew we were going to be roughing it on chicken buses for the rest of the 12-hour journey to the border and beyond. And luxury it was - we were able to lay the seats all the
way back and sleep in the cool aircon while they showed a rather good Colin Firth film. 3 hours later we were in San Pedro Sula, the not-so-lovely city I'd passed through weeks before on my way to Copan. From there we caught a shuttle bus packed with people. Incidentally, the Central Americans sure know how to pack a bus: locals always manage to find a spot hanging off the sides and even up on the roof with the luggage. They stand for hours and nobody seems to offer their seats to the elderly or those carrying children, but old people in Central America seem to be made of rock - I watched a woman who must have been in her 80s, hacking at bushes with her machete.
An hour later we were in Puerto Cortes on the Honduran coast, inching ever closer to the Guatemalan border where we found our next mode of transport: a Chicken bus! Chicken buses are old yellow American school buses beautifully painted in vibrant colours, but every Gringo's nightmare as they're very uncomfortable, hot, sweaty, and often packed to the brim with people, luggage (and chickens?)! Despite the heat and the crowds it
wasn't all that bad - at least we had seats. It took us close to 3 hours to reach the border where we changed our Honduran Lempiras into Guatemalan Quetzales and received our exit stamp. We boarded a shuttle bus and set off on our way - about 5 minutes later we realised we hadn't had our passports stamped by Guatemalan customs! Shit! But where was customs? We didn't see anything and no one had stopped us. There were no other Gringos on our whole journey to follow their examples. We started to sweat a bit...but after 10 minutes the bus finally stopped at the Guatemalan customs office where we jumped out and joyfully received our beloved stamps! About 90 minutes later we were in the Guatemalan coastal city of Puerto Barrios. It was 6:30pm and dark - we had already been travelling for over 12 hours and wanted badly to be in Livingstone for the night, a Caribbean 'Garifuna' town on the coast only accessible by boat either from the sea or the Rio Dulce river. There were no other passengers wanting to leave for Livingstone that evening, so we were going to have to either spend the night
in boring, characterless Puerto Barrios or fork out the cash for the boat ride across the bay to Livingstone. As the power had gone out in the local cheap hotel, we opted for the latter. It ended up being an exhilirating ride - the motorised boat sped through the dark choppy waters and the lights from the towns lit up the coast along the way - I'd never been on a speed boat at night and it was fun, if a tad scary at times!
Finally we made it to Livingstone and were met by a crazy Rasta man who called himself 'Alexander the Great' and curiously always carried a pile of branches with him. We were too tired to shake him so we let him take us to a hotel. It was Saturday night, so we decided to check out the club scene after catching word of a party and reading all about Livingstone's vibrant nightlife, but alas the streets were dead and everything was closed apart from a lively party for geriatrics who were dancing their asses off to loud booming music. Bizarre! So instead it was bed time for us youngsters.
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