Christmas was approaching, and I was getting homesick. I’d been in honduras for a year and a half, teaching school for peanuts at a small, bilingual parochial school in Puerto Cortés. Ok, ok. I was teaching school for lempiras, not for peanuts. But the difference is so slight that it isn’t worth arguing about. In any event, I wanted to go home for the holidays, but my salary—the equivalent of 150 Yankee dollars—wouldn’t permit such an extravagance.

I was also under pressure from the local immigration authorities to leave the country. As they explained it, “Tourists eventually go home”; I had been asking them to renew my tourist visa every 30 days for far too long. If I left honduras, they said—even if just for a few days—they would feel better about my “tourist” status. It was then that I hatched the idea of going to Belize for the holidays. Yes, I would leave Spanish honduras behind and head across the gulf to British Belize. I would spend Christmas and New Year’s Day in a country where I could actually speak the language fluently.

I make some inquiries in Puerto Cortés, and I’m told to go down to a little lagoon where the local fishermen hold court. They direct me to a little shack that has a “Viajes a Belice” sign on the door, but the shack is permanently boarded up. What gives? The woman at the nearby fruit stand explains—the boat sank during a storm some time ago. Several people drowned, and the boat captain is now in prison. Hmmm. But she directs me to another shack that doubles as a pawn shop, and here I find my boat to Belize.

I am told to appear the next morning at 6:00 A.M., to bring 150 lempiras for the fare (a steep $22 U.S.), and to get an exit visa stamped in my passport at the local immigration office. I follow these instructions, and the following morning, I, along with ten other passengers, am dutifully waiting. The man we had spoken with the day before rolls up on his bicycle at about 7:00. We pay him. We also must give him our passports so that he can make a passenger list and get it approved by the local navy office. He then tells us the boat will leave at 10:00 A.M. and disappears.

I have a leisurely breakfast and struggle through the morning’s Spanish language newspaper. After picking up some last-minute snacks, I’m waiting by the bridge as I was directed. And sure enough, a little boat comes putt-putting up at 10:00 exactly. It initially appears as though there’s a problem. The tide is too high for the boat to fit under the bridge. But after the boat is filled with water, it sits low enough to pass through. Then they bail it out on the other side. Interesting.

We climb in, ready to go. The boat— known locally as a goleta—is an open rowboat, about 25 feet long and four feet at its widest point. It has a 30 horsepower Evinrude outboard motor on the back. El capitan is a guy of perhaps 25 years of age wearing a grubby baseball cap, a torn pair of pants, no shoes, and no shirt. Hey—no shoes, no shirt, no problem. An officer from the local naval base comes down to check things out. He tells us to put on lifejackets, and we’re off.

We head directly north from Puerto Cortés across the Gulf of honduras. When Columbus visited here back in 1502, his ships were nearly wrecked in the gulf. The water is tremendously deep, and this results in gigantic swells and unpredictable choppiness. After reaching more shallow and navigable waters, he reportedly exclaimed, “Thank God we are out of those depths.” The word “depths” in Spanish, by the way, is honduras. The tiny boat rocks up and down with the huge swells. We putt-putt ever forward at a speed of ten miles per hour. Four persons who forgot to take their tabletas de Dramamina are upchucking overboard. After about four hours of this we spot a bunch of little islands, or “cays.”

The trip across the gulf was a bit tense, and I think everyone, the laidback capitan included, says a silent “thank God we are out of those depths” as we reach the shallower waters surrounding the cays. We stop on one for a leg-stretch. It’s a lovely little place about half the size of a football field and is covered with palm trees. There are huge piles of conch shells left by fishermen who frequent the place.

The rest of the journey is grand. We putt-putt past hundreds of beautiful little cays. Some are deserted. Others have lovely little vacation homes on them. The water is so blue and clear that we can see down for a hundred feet or more. We cross and recross the barrier reef a dozen or more times. It’s the biggest and best reef outside of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Soon the dense, jungle-covered shore comes into view with thousands of exotic birds flying about. We experience several more hours of this until we reach Dangriga, known as Stann Creek Town when Belize was known as British honduras.

We putt-putt a hundred yards up Stann Creek and tie up at a little dock. A guy from the police station comes down on a bicycle to check out our papers. He speaks both Spanish and English but seems to have some difficulty communicating with one passenger from Brazil. Having once studied Portuguese in college, I was able to communicate freely with this guy and had conversed with him during the entire journey (except when he was throwing up overboard). The Spanish-speaking passengers suggest to the policeman that I translate. This is all rather silly as Spanish speakers can usually understand Portuguese. But the cop is a native English, not Spanish speaker, so I oblige. The problem is that the Brazilian doesn’t have a lot of money with him. I tell his story. The guy got a slot on a professional soccer team in Guadalajara, Mexico, and has spent the past month traveling overland from Brazil. When the cop learns the Brazilian is a futebolista, he just about goes nuts. We promptly walk to the police station and get our passports stamped without the slightest hassle and without paying one cent. This is so the cop can be done with us and take his Brazilian friend (with whom he now communicates with ease) home to meet his futebol-crazed children.

My first unpleasant surprise upon reaching Belize is the large number of people inquiring whether they can get a seat on our boat for its return journey. There are clearly more takers than there are seats. Will I be able to get a boat back? It might be difficult. My second unpleasant surprise is the cost of things. You get two Belizian dollars per U.S. dollar (Belizian money looks almost identical to Canadian money, complete with Queen Elizabeth). You can’t touch a cheap hotel room without a bath for less than $8 U.S. (or $16 Belizian). The same thing would cost a buck and a half in honduras. A hamburger costs $2.50 U.S. A soda costs a dollar! My third unpleasant surprise is that no one even wants to look at the wad of Honduran lempiras I have in my pocket. I cannot change the money anywhere.

I knock about town. The people in Dangriga are predominantly black, though a few folks hail from other former British colonies (Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.). The English they speak is an interesting mixture of the very proper English spoken by educated Crown Colony residents and creole-Caribbean slang. Generous doses of Cockney and Irish accents can be detected. Very understandable, but very different.

Many of Dangriga’s residents are “Garifunas” (gah-RIFF-oo-nahs), an ethnic group scattered along the Caribbean coast of Belize and honduras. The ancestors of today’s Garifunas were black slaves who escaped from plantations on the island of St. Vincent and intermarried with local Carib Indians. It took nearly a century for the British to pacify them. They were eventually relocated to the nearby island of Roatan, where some of their descendants still reside. However, large numbers of Garifunas migrated to the mainland by canoe in the mid-1800’s and established communities in Belize and honduras. Large numbers of these people are gathered this evening along the banks of Stann Creek, where they wildly dance to music made on traditional drums and conchshell horns.

The earth has an intense reddish clay color, which gives the dirt streets of Dangriga an interesting hue. Everything is built on wooden stilts, and nothing is paved. Yet the town is quite clean and most buildings are recently painted, lending a well-scrubbed charm to the otherwise dilapidated, weather-beaten appearance of the place.

I return to my hotel room and think things over. I clearly don’t have enough U.S. money to last in Belize for long. Even if I could change my Honduran money it wouldn’t go far. What to do? I decide to head south the following morning to Punta Gorda, where there is a ferry connection to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. I know from experience that I can change my Honduran money in Puerto Barrios. I also know my money will go much farther in Guatemala. So I’m up early the next morning.

The bus trip to Punta Gorda is five hours long (in a used American school bus). The cost is an astonishing $5 U.S.—a similar ride in honduras or Guatemala would cost about 50 to 80 cents. But I have to say that it is a stunning ride. The dense jungle, the hues of green, and the assortment of birds are incredible. The road is also incredible—an incredible mess. It is alternately dusty and muddy. Every inch of it is bumpy. I reach Punta Gorda and find that the hotel and restaurant situation is pretty bleak. The town itself isn’t much more than a jungle outpost—the last bit of civilization along the bumpy, dusty, muddy trail. But no problem. I’m out of here on the next afternoon’s ferry, or so I think.

The next day, I and several others wait for the ferry to come from Guatemala. And we wait. And wait. And wait some more. You begin to understand why the Spanish verb esperar means both to wait and to hope. Waiting and hoping. Waiting and hoping. Waiting and hoping. The ferry never comes. It is Friday, the 24th of December. The ferrymen have apparently taken the day off, though no one seems to know for sure. Will next Tuesday’s ferry come? “Maybe, maybe not” is the answer. Do I even have enough money to last until Tuesday? A sense of panic sinks in. I’m going to run out of money in this country!

The following day I hop aboard a Christmas Day bus to Belize City. Surely I will find someone there who will change my lempiras into Belizian dollars. And surely I will find a way out of Belize. After five hours on the road, I once again find myself in Dangriga. The bus has a short layover, so I stroll a half block to the Stann Creek dock, and lo and behold a fellow with his hair all done up in dredlocks approaches me and says, “You be looking fo’ a boat to Puerto Cortés, Mistah?” He knows a guy trying to fill a boat to leave that day. It is 2:00 in the afternoon. I get my bag off of the bus and go with him.

Yes, indeed! This guy has two boats. He and his brother are going to Cortes. And yes, they will take me along. When do we leave? “Media horn”—in 30 minutes. There’s about 25 of us. We each fork over $70 Belizian dollars, or an astonishing price of $35 U.S. It leaves me with three measly Belizian dollars (and a useless wad of Honduran lempiras) in my pocket. But what a stroke of luck! We also hand over our passports. Then the waiting begins. The time ticks by. The brothers return at about 3:00 and say “el mar es tan bravo“—the sea is too fierce. One looks at me, moves his hand up and down, and says “choppy.” They return at 4:00 and inform us that we can’t wait for the sea to calm down. We must leave now. Any objections? There are none.

We climb into two open rowboats, each about 28 feet in length. Both have two 40 horsepower Yamaha outboard engines on the back. We head down Stann Creek to the sea, and most of the guys— including me—must jump overboard to push the boats over the sand bar at the mouth of the creek. We get going, soaking wet, and the water is very rough. We are going far faster than the boat I took coming here. The waves are also far larger. The combination of the two creates a pain in my butt and lower back that is beyond my ability to describe. Back through the cays and reefs. The sea is rough as hell. We are soaked to the skin. We’re too scared even to think about getting seasick. We are actually bailing water to stay afloat. We don’t even have one lifejacket for every three people. What’s it going to be like when we reach the deep waters of the gulf? And it will be dark by then, too! Yes, it begins to dawn on us all that we’ve climbed aboard Charon’s boat on the River Styx—the boat ride to Hell.

The surf is soaking us. We can’t bail fast enough to keep the water out of the boat. We almost overturn several times. I—a native Minnesotan—am actually getting the chills in Central America. The Belizian and Honduran passengers are turning blue. After two and a half hours, we reach the very same cay we stopped at on the journey to Belize— half-way cay. We cruise up to the beach. El capitan shuts off the motor and announces, El golfo es un penal (The Gulf is a bitch!) Nos esperamos aqui. (We’ll wait here.) Que largo? (How long?) Amanana. (Until tomorrow.) Never in your life could you expect to see 25 people happier to be stranded on a desert island overnight. We drag our stuff ashore. We climb out of our wet clothes. We build a huge fire.

Out of nowhere, a funny little black man appears and asks us what is going on. We tell him. He jumps for joy. His little fishing boat is on the other side of the island out of gas. The captain cuts a deal: feed us some of the conch you have been catching all day and I will take you to Puerto Cortés in the morning. I’ll bring you and some gas back on my return to Dangriga. We stoke the fire, cook a ton of fresh conch over the coals. We lay down on the beach and try to sleep. It rains periodically. And these tiny land crabs pester me all night. But at least there are no insects.

Everyone is up before dawn. We load our stuff into the boats. By 6;00 A.M. we are off. The sea is calm. Both engines on both boats arc running at top speed. It’s smoother going than yesterday, but still a butt-killer. Within a half hour we can see the mountains behind Puerto Cortés. An hour after that we are entering the harbor.

We stop off at the naval base. We unload our stuff, and the local officer on duty starts shaking us down for “import taxes.” We all growl at him. When he demands 100 lempiras tax for an ancient ghetto blaster that is obviously the personal property of one passenger, the passenger tells him to stuff it and tosses the thing into the drink. Bravo! The naval officer quickly surmises that we aren’t in a mood to be screwed with, and he reluctantly sends us on our way to the local immigration office.

I ride the urbano, or little city bus, to the immigration office. I surely must smell like hell. I know I look like hell. I get my soaking wet passport stamped. I engage in a bit of small talk with the immigration officials. Yes, I did leave the country. I am a tourist. They kid me about my poor Spanish. You need a girlfriend to help you learn, they say. I agree and mention that she could also wash my socks. They nod approvingly.

I head home to my tiny cold-water flat that I share with cockroaches, lizards, and huge spiders. I turn on my fan—my Honduran air-conditioner—and grab a bottle of warm beer from the ice chest—my Honduran refrigerator. I lie down in my hammock, stare contentedly at the ceiling, and wonder how I could ever have felt homesick when I have all of this.