You wouldn't Belize it...

Our first visa run of the year! And it was anything but as smooth as it was supposed to be. I am now back in Candelaria and have had time to process what has actually happened during the last week and how our weekend away in San Pedro Sula to renew our visas turned into us fleeing the country to Belize for 72 hours…

During the year, the 10 of us who are located in the Lempira District need to carry out 4 visa runs in order to be able to stay in the country. The visas we are on allow us to be in Honduras for 90 days, after which we need to request a 30 day extension and then leave the C-4 region (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua). After this, we can re-enter Honduras on a new 90-day visa.The reason for this is because Honduras has yet to grant Project Trust volunteers permission to have work visas. The fact that we are doing voluntary work rather is a bit of a grey area and so we have to be careful because we can’t claim full work permits, but, we also shouldn’t have tourist visas and then be found to be doing voluntary work. This all sounds a little confusing. The lines are blurred, but, we had a relatively solid story to stick to. It seemed pretty straight forward, and meant, in theory, we should have only been out of our projects for a couple of days maximum. However, as you can tell, it didn’t quite go to plan.

As it was our first visa run to the big, bad city of San Pedro Sula, we were quite excited, albeit a tad nervous. We decided to start off our mini trip with a night in Mapulaca with Esther and Libby (because you know, safety in numbers…). In the evening we ordered pizza and snuck into the school grounds to have a picnic under the stars (which failed as the sky was full of clouds and we were found out by the cleaning staff, whoops!). The next day we caught the 4am bus to Santa Rosa de Copan which, although it sounds horrendously early, meant the sky had cleared up and we were finally able to see the stars and witness the spectacular sunrise from the mountain tops.

Santa Rosa is the departmental capital of Copan and is actually really lovely. I think it was the fact that it was the first city I had been to in a while which made me a little cautious at first. I soon grew to like it; cobbled streets, multi-coloured stores, endless thrift shops, and an adorable central square made it hard not to love. Hotel Karolina became home for the next day, and we spent our time waiting for the rest of the girls to arrive sprawled out over the sofas on the rooftop terrace. Once they arrived, we headed out to hunt down baleadas, which were easy to find as they are sold on every street corner in Honduras. We spent the night chilling, watching movies and making the most of the peace and quiet which is hard to come by back home where noise is constant as comes hand in hand with living in a house of 11 people). We spent the next day bouncing between every single thrift shop in the hotel’s vicinity, discovering some amazing (yet extremely unnecessary) purchases and having lunch in a super sweet cafe. They served the best paninis I have ever had, which was lucky as it just about made them worth the 2 hour wait. Santa Rosa was a lovely little break from reality. After our time here, we felt ready for our journey to San Pedro the next morning.

San Pedro Sula is just like any other big city with it’s busy 3 way lanes, numerous shopping malls and fast food chains. However, it has much darker side which has been blasted all over international news during the last couple of decades. Up until early 2016, it was known as ‘the murder capital of the world’. It still has an extremely prevalent gang presence - to the extent where even Hondurans have warned us against visiting it unless we really have to. Sunday morning came and we hopped on a coach headed to the big city where Blanca and her son Luis met us at the bus station. Blanca owns a guesthouse, Dos Molinos in San Pedro and has been working with Project trust by housing volunteers during their visa runs for several years. I was so thankful to have her there ready to pick us up because as soon as we stepped off the bus, it was the first time I had truly felt uneasy and slightly unsafe in Honduras. We loaded our bags in the back of her van and drove to her guesthouse. The lack of blacked out windows in the van meant we were immediately made to feel like zoo animals with the number of times cars slowed down or rolled down windows to take a closer look at this group of white girls passing them in the back of a minivan. The guesthouse itself is a cosy little building positioned behind a huge sliding metal security gate, which put our minds at ease straight away.

Chilling in the back of the van, exhausted and sweltering, living the big city life :)))))

After dumping our bags and taking a breather, Luis and Blanca directed us to the nearby shopping mall where, unknowingly at the time, we would be spending the majority of the next few days. Something we noticed as soon as we stepped out into the streets, in the formation of a small herd of panicked Brits, was how empty and quiet the local area was. There was quite literally nobody to be seen but us, giving the already dodgy area an eerily apocalyptic feel. As a result, we rushed to the shopping mall as fast as we could, ignoring the whistles and shouts from the petrol station and boy, never have I been more glad to enter a shopping centre. A funny, but welcome, surprise was that almost as soon as we opened the doors, we bumped into Allana and Jennifer - the two lovely volunteers from the Tela project - who were visiting on a school trip. It was great to catch up briefly before they pointed us in the direction of the most important thing the mall had to offer - the frozen yogurt stand.

Our whole shopping mall experience was possibly the most overwhelming aspect of this mini trip. It was mostly the fact that we had gone from living in sleepy, rural Honduran villages to suddenly being surrounded by lots of men in business suits and women in stilettos and stark, industrial lighting of the huge American-style food court and endless brands of Pull&Bear and Zara. It was all just a little too much to take in at once. When we got food, we spent a lot of time looking around in awe and trying to process how we had ended up here, yet once we were accustomed, we went on our way and started the shopping rampage, and let me tell you... while mindless retail therapy worked wonders, it also meant that we did way too much damage by buying things we couldn’t technically afford (hank you Esther for holding me back and telling me I really didn’t need that second pair of black denim jeans while living in 35 degree heat in Candelaria). The result of this weird reverse culture shock left us exhausted and while losing ourselves in bottomless cups of yogurt and clothing rails, we failed to notice it had gotten dark outside. Thankfully, Luis came to pick us up in the minivan and took us back where we crashed from our sugar highs.

Monday morning came and we were up, our passports, flight details and visa story ready to go. After breakfast, Blanca and Luis drove us to the immigration office; it was a small beige building on the other side of the city. We walked in, calm and confident, blissfully unaware of what was to come. After handing in our documents, everything going as smoothly as we could’ve asked for, Blanca walked up to the desk to see what was happening. I know it was said with good intentions, but she announced that she had ten ‘volunteers’ with her which upended our whole story and resulted in the woman behind the desk suddenly changed and shuffled away to talk to her supervisor in hushed tones. This was when it started to go downhill. A few of the girls were taken away to talk to the big wig immigration official in private in the hopes of being able to explain our situation. Meanwhile, the rest of us sat in the waiting room nervously chatting and twiddling our thumbs with lovely Luis, who poorly attempted to calm our nerves with small talk about English football teams). Eventually, they returned and we were informed that more documents and verification from Project Trust was required as well as a personal visit from Vegas, our country representative who resides on Roatan. Until all of that happened, there was nothing more we could do, so, we promptly left in the van. We decided that we would spend another night in the city and return to immigration the next day to try again.

It may as well have been Groundhog day as we spent the rest of the day in the shopping mall once again, although, this time we decided to mix it up a little and pay the cinema a visit. Luis had informed us that on Mondays tickets were only 45 Lempira (about £1.50) so how could we say no to a bargain like that?! We went with Maleficent 2 in English, as our exhausted brains couldn’t be bothered to translate a 2 hour long film after the morning we had had. It ended up being a very good way to unwind. The movie theme didn’t stop there as some of the girls and I spent the rest of the evening watching Scary Movie 2 (terrible movie, I do not recommend) with the occasional cockroach interruption followed by an assault of Birkenstock’s by Erin as she was the only one brave enough to get up and sort out the problems for the rest of us wimps.

On Tuesday morning we returned to the immigration office with high hopes as we had done everything that they had required us to do. Izzy and I headed in to talk to the man in charge, but, after repeatedly failing to sign into his computer, he then decided to read us the section of the Honduran constitution which we had apparently violated and told us that we had no choice but to leave the country ASAP. He recommended that we head to Belize for 72 hours as it is the easiest country to access outside the C-4. After telling the girls what had been decided, and a short burst of excitement about having to go to Belize (hard life, I know), we headed back to the guesthouse to inform our parents and Project Trust about our rejected visas and pending illegal status in Honduras. We began to plan when and how we were going to get to out of the country. Despite how stressful this sounds, it was actually pretty exciting because who wouldn’t be happy with an impromptu 3 day holiday to the Belizean beach?

Our plan of action was to spend another night in San Pedro and then get the 5am bus on Wednesday morning to Guatemala in time to catch the 2pm ferry to Belize. The trip wasn’t going to be easy so we spent the rest of the after in, you guessed it, the shopping mall, which was a wonderful excuse to buy more clothes as we had only packed to be away for a couple of days, not a week. Halfway through our third afternoon of wandering around the mall, we were alerted to a ‘state of siege’ which had just begun in Guatemala and could potentially impact us directly as it was restricting free movement. After a few more panicked phone calls and research into what ‘state of seige’ actually meant, Vegas assured us that we would most likely be fine and it really only meant increased police checks at random points along the road we would be travelling. Even so, Project Trust told us to wait it out a little longer until the team in Coll had assessed all the risks, so, once again, we were left in limbo and the only sane thing to do in situations like this was go to the cinema! So, we headed off to watch Hustlers (this time without Luis although I’m sure he would’ve appreciated the film, JLo is incredible after all) and ended the night with a chai latte which made me feel christmassy for the first time, making me very happy.

Exhausted the next morning, we woke to messages from Project Trust giving us the green light to head to Guatemala as soon as we were ready. After breakfast, Blanca and Luis dropped us off at the bus station, and after an extremely rushed goodbye, off we went. Let me tell you, this was one of the most eventful bus rides I have ever had. Esther and I were squished right at the back of the mini bus, between a sweet old man and a teetering tower of precariously placed fruit boxes, placing bets on how long it would take before it toppled and melons crushed Erin. After being preached at by an extremely passionate pastor who claimed that Trump and Kim Jon Un were the reasons for the upcoming apocalypse and how billions will die unless Jesus himself returns and saves the human race, we were gifted with the presence of a man who serenaded us with quite the rendition of DALE VIEJA DALE (give it a listen, you won’t regret it) which really made us laugh, especially his little hip wiggles right in Molly and Emilys’ faces. What followed really was the cherry on top; without processing what we were seeing, we calmly munched on sour gummy worms as we watched a tyre fly off the road without even batting an eyelid. It was only when the bus then began to slow down and came to a stop that we realised that the flying tyre was in fact one of ours. The busboy and driver temporarily fixed the tyre and carefully drove us to a little shack by the side of the road where a boy of about 8 years old fixed a new tyre to the bus.

Once all the problems seemed to have been sorted, we were able to relax and I was able to actually look out the window and truly see San Pedro for the first time, and acknowledge the stark contrast between the outskirts and the centre of the city. The further out you go, the road is lined by more and more lopsided wooden shacks and shanty houses, with gaps between the wooden slats providing a tiny window into the heart of the home. More often than not you can spot open fires and hunched elderly women huddled around the pots and pans of boiling water. Thick arms of smoke snaked around and encircled the houses and the surrounding piles of rubbish while kids weaved in between on broken bicycles and young men huddled in groups, standing idly by the roadside in tank tops and leather jackets. It was a very different type of poverty to that which I have become accustomed to seeing in Candelaria. I suppose that in the small village everyone is more or less on the same level, whereas in the city, the contrast between the rich and the poor is so blatantly obvious that it feels like a slap across the face when you see it.

After about 2 hours, we changed buses in Puerta Cortes (to one that had a bit more space), and headed off to Corinto. Soon we arrived but there was no formal border crossing (which we later came to learn was the norm for around here) so we hopped off, crossed a bridge and eventually encountered some police men. After some initial confusion regarding our passports - they didn’t seem too familiar with a British passport surprisingly - they pointed us towards the immigration offices where we got our stamps (whoo), changed our currencies and found a guy who said he had space in his van for the ten of us and could take us straight to the port. That sounded pretty good (not dodgy at all nooo why would you say that…). At one point, poor Ionas bag fell off the roof rack, but we got it back don’t worry, and during the rest of the journey we were stopped and checked by Guatemalan police about 4 times. Only once did they actually want to check our rucksacks, but the bus driver explained that we were ‘solo son mujeres’ and the police men waved us on, because the fact that we are just a group of women means we are not even worth questioning…

We finally reached the port early afternoon and it was far from anything any of us had been expecting; it was quiet, very chilled and informal with only a small office and a couple of river boats. One of the main reasons we had agreed to take this specific bus was because the driver had promised us that he could get us to the port in time to catch the 3pm boat, however, as soon as we arrived, the ferry-men claimed that there wasn’t a ferry at 3pm and the last one had already gone buuuut, for us, they could arrange a nice one hour long private boat for the not very nice price of 3000Q (about £300) so £30 each. No thank you, dude, don’t even try. After a very heated conversation during which we were all very vocal about how there was no way we were going to pay that much - thank God to our ever improving Spanish skills - we realised we were getting nowhere and it was getting late, so we had no choice but to say yes.

After loading up on snacks and ice cream to help calm us down, we hopped in the boat. Though let's be clear, this boat is not a big, proper ferry boat like the one I had been expecting, no; it is one of those that you can find sailing down the narrow parts of the Amazon river, with small benches and mini sunroof and a severe lack of safety regulations, demonstrated by the surprised look on the driver’s face when we asked for life jackets. Eventually, with our bags secured at the front and our jackets on as tight as possible, we went on our merry way. Although, in reality, it was possibly the least merry boat ride I have ever had. Esther, Erin and I were seated on the bench right at the front which was the worst mistake we could've made as it meant that we were hit with the brunt of every single wave. Boy, were we in pain by the end - even the gorgeous sunset couldn’t distract from the ever increasing pain our backsides were in. Little did we know that we would be suffering and struggling to sit down without wincing for the next 5 days… Esther's determination to eat ice cream along the way provided some much needed entertainment, especially when it ended up all over the floor and Erin's bag rather than her mouth. Also, the image of 10 white girls in huge puffy orange life jackets who were quite literally fleeing the country must have been quite a sight to witness.

A wave of relief swept over me when the port of Punta Gorda Belize came into view as we were finally able to escape the horrors of the boat. Immigration was a piece of cake. We’d passed and were in the waiting room on the other side within 10 minutes. Despite being Guatemala’s next-door neighbour, Belize couldn’t be more different. The people speak English, although it might as well be another language as the Caribbean accent is so strong I couldn’t make out half of what the security guards were saying. It didn't matter as they were all so friendly that straight away I was put at ease. With palm trees swaying gently in the warm, salty breeze and light reggae music escaping from the windows of the local police station, the stresses of our morning in San Pedro couldn’t have felt further away.

While waiting for a taxi to come, we chatted to the security guard for a while who was more than happy to tell us a little bit about his home (apparently I can’t leave without trying coconut fish which honestly sounds fantastic). He spoke to us about the Garifuna people of Belize who are the descendants of Carib Indians and Black Africans, and explained how their culture combines fishing and farming with both African and South American music and spirituality. As he was excitedly describing the upcoming events of Garifuna Settlement Day and all the fantastic celebrations and ongoings which would occur during that week, we were sad to learn that it fell outside of our time in Belize as it would begin on the 17th of November. That will be something to come back and experience another time! We soon said goodbye and hopped in a taxi, desperately praying for a smooth last leg of our very long journey, but of course with our luck, that was not to be the case. The taxi driver turned out to be a con man who overcharged us by more than i’m willing to admit to, and although we all knew something was off, exhaustion and frustration took over so we paid him he wanted and sent him on his way.

The hostel we had booked was called ‘A Piece of Ground’ and although it was a little out of town, we couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised. Firstly, we had the hostel to ourselves apart from one young guy from London of all places. The second best thing was the sleeping arrangement; there were bunk beds situated in the wall like sleeping pods and they had the cutest little windows in between each bed which meant I could talk to my pod neighbours Esther and Erin and irritate them whenever I wanted. Not only was the food fantastic - dinner was vegetable fried rice and probably the best I have ever tasted - but to round it off, the showers were HOT.

During our 72 hours in Punta Gorda, we made sure to treat our time there like a proper holiday. We chilled, caught up with family and friends, visited local restaurants, wandered the oddly deserted streets and watched way too many films. Our first day was Halloween but I woke up not so much in the mood to celebrate, but instead to immense back and neck pain as a result of our boat trip from Hell. After the most amazing banana pancakes (honestly this hostel made the best breakfasts, and the fact that they were free made them even better), Erin, Esther and I walked Emily to the local hospital as she really wasn’t feeling well. Everything in Punta Gorda was brightly coloured; all of the buildings were either fuschia pinks or fluorescent yellows, and the hospital was no different; our lovely hostel owner pointed it out to us by describing it as ‘the very brightly coloured green building past the cemetery’ and she wasn’t wrong. It was very very green. After snooping along the empty corridors, past the multitude of AIDS and Zika virus posters hanging sadly off the peeling walls, we found the nurse triad who sorted us out.

Apparently the meds Emily had been given in Honduras were more than twice the dosage they should’ve been and had started to dissolve her stomach lining, resulting in extremely painful intense heartburn. Great. Love the Honduran health system. The doctor was able to explain this to us in English which made the process so much easier, and before we knew it we were sent on our way with Emily’s new and improved meds, yay.

The hospital was a very weird environment to be in, mostly because the building was so open and free for anyone to walk through, and therefore completely contradicted the point of a hospital being a secure and sanitised place. We then went for a wander, passing the very purple and yellow university on the way, and after picking up snacks and encountering some adorable trick-o-treaters, we decided to have a movie night. I was all for this until it was decided that we were to watch the Purge and although I proudly managed the beginning, I just couldn't stomach it near the end so I headed to bed. It didn’t do much as I could still hear all the gruesome noises through my curtain… at least the film didn’t feature any clowns otherwise it would have been a very different story.

Over the next few days we visited the supermarket a few too many times (just couldn’t get enough of it) to marvel at the ginormous Cadbury’s chocolate bar we found at the back of a freezer. I can’t explain how much we have missed good chocolate, and to see it sitting there, waiting for us, just felt like fate, however, the $20 price tag convinced us otherwise. For lunch, we discovered Asha’s kitchen, a seafront Caribbean restaurant with a long pier extending out the back. After a rather spicy lunch and a cute conversation with some adorable local kids selling sea glass, some of the girls went for a swim which is when Izzy sadly said adios to her phone as it slipped into the sea - RIP. Some lovely little boys jumped to our rescue and fished it out for her, and much to our amusement, after expressing our concern about jellyfish, one of them popped his head up and looked straight at us through his snorkeling goggles, declaring that ‘jellyfish ain’t gonna do nothin’.

On the way home, we nipped to the supermarket - again, I know - to marvel at what they had on offer, during which I had a lovely chat with an elderly American man who kindly pointed me in the direction of the cheese. This was a priority of mine as in Honduras we only have two kinds of cheese and neither of them do cheese justice, so, I was in desperate need of some proper cheddar sandwich, don’t judge. We finally managed to pull ourselves away from the food aisles and walked home at dusk, meanwhile being yelled at by over friendly locals, one of whom leaned out of the window of a wooden shack to yell ‘TAKE ME PRINCESS, TAKE THIS DARK CHOCOLATE’ which had us laughing all the way home.

More banana smoothies and lunches at Asha’s made up the following days, as did netflixing, lots of hot showers, late movie nights and spontaneous supermarket trips, until it was time to leave on Sunday morning.

The journey home was much more smooth than the first time round, partly because I had learnt my lesson and so sat at the back of the boat (even managed to fall asleep) as well as due to the clever idea of hiring a private bus to take us from Puerto Barrios all the way to Hotel Karolina in Santa Rosa de Copan. We were so exhausted by the journey that on Monday we decided to split the journey home with a night at Guancascos in Gracias, basically our second home at this point, to decompress and process everything that had happened.

One thing which we did not expect that night was to find the hotel restaurant jam packed with American missionaries. I knew that they often visited Gracias as it was the base for lots of their projects as well as some of their schools such as Viva Abundante. Later that evening we were joined by a lovely American woman called Jamie who was visiting Honduras on a medical mission with Dentists and Doctors from the States. Although I have mixed feelings about missionary work, it was hard not to recognise the good this specific project was doing in the region; they were carrying out dental checks and surgeries over 3 months and were practicing on up to 100 people a day which was absolutely amazing to hear. Awareness about the importance of dental care is something that seems to be lacking around here, and is not helped by the kids’ unlimited access to dirt cheap sweets and chocolates. The damage is not only done to their milk teeth, which we are witness to everyday at school, but also long term; when I smile at passersby, I am often greeted with a completely gold smile in return.

All in all, after our unforseen trip to Belize and our week on the run, I am glad to be back home in my little village of Candelaria, far away from all the stress of immigration offices and dodgy visa documents. Despite the hassle, I really enjoyed our week in Belize - I really can’t complain, there are worse things than being sent to a Belizean beach for a week. Our time in Punta Gorda was full of new experiences; barbecue chicken, Belizean hospital wards, real supermarket aisles, super friendly local kids and clear blue waters. Belize, we loved you and in truth, we’ll be back before you know it - we will quite literally be seeing you in two weeks when our Christmas holidays begin!

Until then, tek it eezzeee :)) x