Guatemala

Monday, 7 April 2003. Belize City and Santa Elena (Flores). My $1,000.00 USD wad is still intact and I seem to be getting by pretty well on ATM withdrawals. I cannot say how much I have had to withdraw since arriving here in Guatemala but it can’t be more than $50-dollars (Q500). That $500-dollar deposit should make things right in a few days.

Belize was worth one photograph: A picture of boats moored in a downtown section of river. Belize will have potential if ever I get Glen-L 7.9 built; it’s perfect for what I have in mind (this notebook was supposed to be about boat-building, remember?): A place where one can vanish with a small sailboat and live happily ever after among people who look like me. It’s a pirate’s cesspool paradise!

I got out of Belize with no spending cash left. I spent every Belize dollar and cent I exchanged. I went through Belize, from the north to Belize City to Belmopan, and came out at the Guatemalan frontier with only enough to refresh and make it here. I estimate that I will have about $650-dollars at NFCU to subsist on until I reach my final destination (which is still not known). Livingston? The Caribbean coast of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica or Panama. Some Caribbean island? I cannot say anything about an address until I get there – the place I know is right.

Tikal. I am near the Mayan Temple of Tikal and I do very much want to visit the ruins, but I don’t have the luxury of a third day here at Flores since I have a feeling that “she” is waiting for me someplace and I need to get moving south. I will have the opportunity to visit Tikal on my way back up through Guatemala. (If I can make it before the rainy season!) If Livingston pans out, I will still be here in Guatemala and close enough to visit with no problems.

Shopping and to-do list: buy film, do laundry and get more B vitamins. A third day here would get me super organized and clear-headed.

*Here’s my one story for Belize City:

“You meet all kinds of people. Fellow travelers and strange folk [who] I want to discuss in detail but can’t. Someday I might.

“Upon arriving at the bus terminal in Belize City, I met up with an extremely helpful taxi driver who refused to charge me for the ride to the ‘cheapest hotel in town’. Wouldn’t charge me but charged the hell out of the Aussie who wanted to roll along with me:

“CIA, no doubt! He had a Footprints Travel Handbook; the very one of Central America I used to have.

“We got to this place, should say ‘dump’, called the Guesthouse and I stunned this dude with my knowledge of the very place. I used to have his playbook after-all!”

To make a short story and stay shorter, I found a stash of “weed” in my room; in one of the drawers. It was planted there by someone in the hopes I would either smoke it or try to get it past customs. I flushed the bag.

Paranoid already, I didn’t think that my first chance to get into a Central American prison would come so soon! (What if it [had been] planted in one of my three bags?):

“You wanted to know what the CIA really does: They entrap and set-up Americans who are declared enemies of the United States. I am dead certain of an FBI presence here as well. You should see the way some of these civilians behave. ‘This place could be Amarillo, Texas!’

“But most people don’t give a fuck and they could care less about the FBI slash KGB’s long-arm tactics.”