The Wanderings of busman7

Seeing as I am the busman it would be delinquent of me not to comment further on the bus situation. Have already commented at length on the excellent bus situation in Mexico & how it excels that in the rest of North America by leaps & bounds. Just occurred to me that Toronto is claiming to be encouraging people to use public transit & one way is by spending mega bucks putting in HOV lanes on the 400 series highways BUT the HOV lanes are for vehicles with 2 people, what a farce & waste of money! If they were serious they would make is buses only, minimum 10 passengers.

Belize buses are mostly old American Blue Bird pushers in various stages of repair but they get the job done & only saw one being towed home by a John Deere tractor. Only problem is having, owned one I can say with authority, the only fit place to ride in one is the drivers seat & the 300 pound dude driving wasn’t about to let me drive so had to ride in the back with the rest.

Leaving Belize decided to use a tourist mini coach service which wasn’t much better but a bit more comfortable even if the AC didn’t work that well it was only 2 1/2 hrs to the border with Guatemala & a further 2 1/2 to Flores.

From Flores Guatemala City was a 7 hr trip in an older coach but it did have working AC & a wash room, passengers were mainly locals with 1/2 a dozen back packers & was packed full. Then onto Antigua by shuttle van, again full, they don’t run with partial loads here but prices are cheap.

More old US school buses in Guatemala City but with lots of fancy paint & chrome, also seems to be a contest on who has the loudest air horn especially at 6 am when rush hour is starting, a different experience but one not to be missed.

Flores is a busy tourist town in the lake with good prices in low season & well worth a day or two to take in, nothing like a good breakfast of sausage, eggs, refried beans & fried plantain with cafe leche. Then lunch of tacos & cerveza in the town square at the top of the hill. Dinner of local fish blanca on the terrace of villa del chef finishes out the day. Not to forget the best banana bread I have tasted bought for a snack on the bus ride.

One thing on security is you soon get used to the heavy police & army presence with some pretty mean looking weapons, Guatemala is particullary fond of 12 gauge shotguns around shopping centres, bus stations & especially banks, the one in Antigua has two armed guards at the ATM & only allow one person at a time near the machine, has to be safe.

Will report on Antigua further when I have seen more, just decided when I priced Spanish lessons here that my 12 word vocabulary could stand to be upgrades so enrolled in a week of classes, 5 days 4 hrs/day + room & board with a local family for a grand total of $150.00 US for the week. So one more week here. Spring weather here cool at night for sleeping & around 85 F during the day, just about perfect & possible to live here at a reasonable cost, just one location to consider.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 15:53 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.