Belize: Belize City

We officially take back everything bad we said about Cuba at this point. Belize has suddenly and by far become our most unpopular country of all. What a shithole. I apologize for this harsh language, but at least I am not the president of a world power and therefore free to express such things.

When you go to Belize, you have to be aware of two things: 1. Expect to pay a lot, very much for simply everything. 2. Don't expect any service, quality or efficiency in return.
The people here are all too stoned to do anything. Well, grass seems to be the central, ubiquitous and most important raw material of the country, which is offered to you EVERYWHERE and CONSTANTLY.
Almost every supermarket, every restaurant, and every establishment that works and runs reasonably reliably here is run by Asians or Europeans. It is actually noticeable how many Chinese live here. We were told that Belize has temporarily simplified residence permits for Asians. Obviously. Almost every supermarket is called "Lee Dong's Supermercado" or something like that. Even in the most deserted village, there is at least one Chinese restaurant where travelers can get something halfway decent to eat. Apart from this fact, the food culture in the country is not particularly noteworthy. The official national dish is rice with beans and chicken. Basically the same thing that you can get to eat absolutely everywhere on the continent without any problems.
In addition, Belize levies massive taxes on imported goods, up to 80%. Cigarettes are a good example: Either you smoke cigarettes from Belize, which unfortunately are absolutely inedible, or you smoke those from England, which actually cost almost the same as in Switzerland.
At the border upon entry, you will receive a nice information brochure. It states that there are about 311,000 nice people in Belize. Actually, there are about 400,000 people living here. It is unclear whether the brochure is already so old or whether this information already includes the massive crime rate (especially violent crimes). Most of the travelers we met in the country came from England, the USA or Canada. And they all unanimously said that they liked the nice and friendly people in Belize the best. That is one of the main reasons to come to Belize, the nice people. I don't want to offend anyone, but in my opinion, this may also be due to the fact that Belize is the only English-speaking state in Central America.

Well, we also really had a bad start in this country, admittedly. We came directly from Tulum in Mexico with an ADO bus. For all travelers to Mexico who leave by land: There is an exit tax. Fortunately, we knew that. Other fellow travelers on the bus unfortunately did not. And the border to Belize is a damn no man's land, there is no money changer, no ATM, absolutely NOTHING. And without paying the tax, you just sit there. Oh yes, there are also no taxis that could take you back to a place with an ATM. But travelers help each other out in the end. Especially in this place, where no one would be surprised if one of those dried-up, spherical plants from the old western movies would blow past.

Arriving in Belize City, we thought it would be no problem to walk the 800m to our hostel in broad daylight. We were promptly stopped by a security guard who pointed out to us that we should probably use the street next door, it is not safe here for people like us. Thanks for the tip, amigo.

After we dropped off our luggage, we wanted to explore the city a bit. Fact No. 1: It was pouring rain (and it would continue to do so for a while). Fact No. 2: There was no cruise ship anchoring in Belize City today, and the city was therefore completely deserted. So what to do? And so we did the dumbest thing you can possibly do, the ultimate beginner's mistake. We met Carol and Linda on the street. We talked for a while and they were really nice. They usually braid the hair of tourists, but today they were very underemployed because, as I said, there were no tourists around. After a long conversation and since we were also underemployed, we decided to have our braids, which we had braided in Cancun, renewed by them. Since it was raining, and they were really kind, we went with them to their family's house. And here we are, at the beginner's mistake. It really wasn't our best idea. Carol has 10 children, Linda has 9. And as it turned out, most of them are apparently adult male specimens. We were taken to their "living room" where some other women were helping with the hair. One of the guys always stayed in the room with us, I think they were probably afraid of Jörg, that he would just overwhelm the women after work and run away without paying. That was fine with us and as I said, we had a nice afternoon, it was fun and we had a nice conversation, they even went to the store to buy drinks for us. Since they wouldn't have had any work without us, we negotiated a really low price for braiding at the beginning. They quickly made it clear that they expected a good tip in return. They always spoke Creole with each other (fairly, we spoke Swiss German with each other). But Creole also includes a lot of English, so we roughly understood what it was about. In any case, we noticed that the men in the society were of the opinion that they would just rob us if the tip wasn't right (the word "to rob" is actually quite understandable). The women resisted and said that it was their work and the guys shouldn't interfere. It became very clear here too: the women work, the men hang around and do nothing. We didn't find it as funny as at the beginning. It should be mentioned that we didn't have much money with us anyway. Also, I thought to myself, if they wanted to kill us, they probably wouldn't have bothered braiding our hair for hours first. Anyway, when the hair was finally done, the other giant guy came back to us in the living room. That was a more than clear sign that it was time for the tip now. When that was done, we were kindly sent off and escorted back to the street where our hotel was located.
As I said, it was certainly not the best of our ideas to go home with these people, but it was also an interesting experience to see how they live. It was really just a wooden barrack with a corrugated iron roof, a dirty floor, and some assembled furniture. I even had the "privilege" of using the toilet, and that is the moment when you really long for the clean, functioning toilet with a water flush at home again.