The local way to experience Belize

The most laid back of it’s Central American cousins, Belize boasts much more than just stalactite caves, clear azure beaches with the best scuba diving in the world, ancient Mayan temples, rainforests cluttered with monkeys and enough biodiversity to make any diehard naturalist drool. Belize offers one aspect that the guidebooks won’t tell you about. This experience comes wrapped in a Rasta-colored run-down American school bus, driving upon unpaved roads with boom boxes blaring thirteen different reggae beats at once, while the driver doubles as the unofficial mail delivery service, owning a Zen-like “we’ll-get-you-there-when-we-get-there” attitude. Yes, the only experience in this miniscule country that you can truly miss out on by traveling first class is a ride on a Belizean bus.
First arriving in any foreign country tends to be jarring. Especially in our dot-com culture, where we want everything in the speed of DSL and are frustrated when our fast-food takes longer than five minutes, when going on vacation is the perfect remedy to cure the fast-fast-fast in us all. So it will take a few days of allowing the caffeine to settle before we can truly allow the slowness of a country to melt the 9-5 tension in the blood.
Therefore upon first arrival in Belize City, get out as fast as you possibly can—fly or sail your tense bod over to the mellow shores of Caye Caulker or San Pedro to relax in the sun, snorkel, dive, and eat more $10 lobster than your body ever thought it could handle. These islands are the closest to Belize City and are the perfect introduction to Belizean life. Locals dancing through the night on the white sand beaches, swimming with sharks and stingrays while actually enjoying the terror of the experience, and watching the sun rise and set from your inexpensive hotel room, are just some of the ways you can spend your days and nights. And then once you have caught the drift of relaxation from the locals, you’ll be prepared to embark upon a journey not to be matched by public transportation in any other country.
The first and most important fact that any traveler huffing it through this Rhode Island sized country needs to know is that you have to leave for your destination early, or you might not arrive that day. Belize is a country that just got electricity about ten years ago, which means that things do not work up to the same standards that we might be used to here in the States. This might explain why there are 10 different bus lines operating out of four different bus stations, but only the lines only leave towards certain parts of the country and only run at specific times of day. What does this mean for the tourist besides a headache? Get to a bus station early and be prepared to walk to another bus station, because it seems that every time you know where you are going, the officer behind the desk will send you to the other bus station across town and tell you that the bus over there will take you where you want to go.
But don’t shy away from the adventure.
Once you have paid your five dollars to travel across the country, are assured a seat, and the bus begins to bounce down the road, things begin to feel as tranquil as the tour guides say it should in Belize. Sitting in your school bus seat, watching the desolation of Belize’s largest city disappear as you weave into the unknown wild, smelling the coconut air fresheners hanging from above, listening to ghetto-blasters compete for the space between the silences, and not understanding the accent of the people who are supposed to speak the same language as you, will suddenly cause the feeling of foreignness to creep into your veins.

The philosophy of Belize is to slow down, relax, and enjoy yourself. This belief carries into everything they do, which explains why no one ever has to walk to a bus stop and no one has to race to meet the bus. The most endearing fact about public transportation here is that the bus comes to you. There are no actual bus stops. If the bus can see you, and you can see the bus, then you have a ride. He’ll even take you from your hotel to the hotel next door. And never fear about the lack of refreshments or toilets on board because if you ask, the driver will stop just about anywhere for a pit stop. This is a great way to catch more of Belize than you might have expected because you might be hanging out in a small village outside of Belmopan for an hour, waiting for a fellow bus driver to get off the pot.
After you leave Belize City, things tend to get a bit more unconventional.
Besides being stuffed in a seat by a window (if you buy your ticket at the station) being serenading by young Rastafarians with boom boxes blasting reggae and gospel, your bus will soon become the mail service as well. Men and women will constantly hop on the bus to give the driver packages to drop off. If the person is not home when the bus honks outside of their house, the driver’s assistant will throw the package on the side of the road like the morning paper and drive off, leaving the coveted package to collect dust in the middle of nowhere until the person picks it up. Usually these deliveries take place in the smallest villages, which can be very entertaining, especially if you happen to get a peek of a group of Amish children, playing hide and go seek behind a grove of banana palms or a young dread-locked man walking out of the deep jungles, carrying a machete, and approaching the bus to pick up his package.
Buses in Belize are not only used for delivery and transportation—they also double as the gossip corner. Between Belize City and Belmopan (the mangy capital where everyone has to change buses and pray that there is enough room on the next bus for you and your baggage) enough locals will crowd the aisles of the bus that it might seem like there is a party you didn’t know about. Because every single laughing person on the bus route from Belmopan to Placencia knows each other. Comments fly over your head about what a woman is wearing, what guy she is dating, the way the driver is flirting with a particular young girl, and the health of an old lady in the front. Men chat to any young woman on the bus that they do not know. It seems like a high school cafeteria where the listening is more entertaining than a movie.
It is here, on this bus, when the people who live in this small country that you traveled to see, begin to share themselves with each other, and only here can you truly understand what the people of this country are made of. It is not when the nicely dressed young man serves you pina coladas at the Five Sisters Resort overlooking the beautiful canyon of waterfalls. It is not when a laughing man in rain-boots leads you on a trek through the Monkey River rainforest.
The only way that you can truly view the richness of this country is after you spend six hours to travel less than 100 miles on a bus. Passing the Mayan mountains, traveling along the Western Highway onto the Hummingbird Highway, past hurricane damaged shacks filled with laughing children, past the Cheers bar where the cast of Mosquito Coast spent their evenings. Through Dangriga’s famous Garifuna drumming village, along the bright blue coral reef coast, passing thatched-roofed resorts, rainforests, the Garifuna village of Seine Bight which dances all night long, and finally arriving, exhausted in Placencia, the owner of the world’s narrowest road, Rasta Pasta, tantalizing swimming and diving, and out of this world day-trips. Once you have completely enveloped yourself in the daily ritual of Belize, drowning in the simple activity of riding a bus from one part of the country to another, only then can you earn the bragging rights to say that you have actually seen Belize.

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