Warning! Leave the Guitarra en La Casa....

May 1st - It's a national holiday in Mexico - Labor Day! We are in Belize so there shouldn't be much significance, right?
...Wrong! It is also Belize Labour Day!
Banks and some of the shops and restaurants close. Many of the citizens don't work. And, it seems the price to exit Belize goes up when you exit on a holiday....at least when you are traveling by water taxi. The water taxi fare from Ambergris Caye to Chetumal, Mx was $40USD each. Personally, Terry and I had already thought the taxi fare for a 2 hr. trip via boat was rather steep. We had bought our tickets the day before and they had charged us $40USD for the May 1st departure. No mention of an increase in fees was mentioned at that time. But when we arrived at the dock we were Belizean dollared to death. Here is the breakdown of what it cost us to board the taxi (will talk about entering Mx. later!) -
1. Belize exit fee - $52.50 BZ for both of us (normally would have been $47.50 BZ)
2. Water Taxi Fare - $160 BZ for both of us
3. Border Processing Fee - $60 for both of us
4. P.A.C.T. Fee (whatever that is) - $15BZ for both
But, we had checked out of Ruby's and we were ready to cross back into Mexico...and had already purchased a water taxi ticket for May 1st so we hopped on the almost full water taxi about 30 minutes behind the posted departure shedule time. The travelers were a mix of Mexicans, a European tour group, a few Americans, and the wandering, backpacking, dark-skinned types I can never quite identify.

One of those dark-skinned backpacking types....oh, wait!

Immediately, "little travel boy" came on the loudspeaker and throwing his hands up close to his face and smiling only the smile he could smile put on his flight attendant hat and welcomed us aboard. He gave us the safety talk (we did have life jackets under the seats) and ended by saying he realized we had a choice in travel (really?!) and thanked us for traveling with them. Later, he prepared our refreshments of juice and cookies.

We have taken the water taxi before from San Pedro to Chetumal and we don't remember the "little travel boy" type ever coming on the loudspeaker and telling those aboard that if you have drugs aboard you need to get rid of them...."drop them overboard" before we enter Mexico. The Mexican Gov't is not tolerant of illegal drugs entering the country and they have drug dogs "smarter than I am". Evidently, all those backpacking guys with their cool Guatemalan guitar cases were sleeping through this part. Now, if you were carrying fruit out of Belize you could just leave that in the seat...."little travel boy" would take care of the fruit. You were on your own with the drugs!

Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mx

When we got to the dock we were instructed to take all of our luggage and line it up in a row along the dock. All the travelers stood in a group to one side as a young-looking German Shepherd pooch and his camo/fatigued handler came out for the sniffing. This dog really was smarter than "little travel boy". He went down that line and each guitarra case he passed he stopped, sniffed, then started clawing into it. The handler would then throw his rubber toy and the dog would "reset". The handler then moved the guitarras around to other places within the line of luggage and the dog made another pass at it. Now, anybody that knows Terry and I knows we don't do drugs and would never travel with drugs in our luggage but I have to admit when they set one of those guitarra cases directly on top of Terry's duffel bag and turned the dog loose to sniff, I got a little nervous! But, once again the dog went directly for the guitarra cases, and Terry's duffel bag was left intact.

Those of us that left the guitarras at home were instructed to get our luggage and move on to immigration. Terry and I had already discussed the $600 pesos we had shelled out as our "exit fee" in exchange for us being able to keep our tourist visas when we left Mexico on the ADO bus bound for Belize. Just to refresh, we had paid an exit fee when we purchased our airline ticket...it is included in the price of the ticket. Our tourist visas had the little airplane stamp that is supposed to be our "receipt" indicating an exit fee was paid. We paid $600 pesos at the Mx./Belize border to be able to keep our tourist visas....which is what we had done effectively last year. It seems the laws have changed....when we got in front of Immigrations and pulled out our tourist visas, the officer was not happy. His first inclination was that we had left Mexico surreptitiously because if we had left legally we would not have been able to keep those. We remained calm and explained that we had asked the officer at the border if we could keep them and he had replied "Si". Long story short we had to pay another exit fee....no, I don't mean entry fee...I mean exit fee....of $295 pesos each. We did request and get an official looking receipt to keep with our visas so we should not have a problem when we exit Mexico via plane.

As far as the guitarra guys....we don't know what the outcome of that saga was.

Next we shelled out a mere $50 pesos for the ride to the ADO bus station and arrived there at exactly 11:57am Mexico time. We shared the ride with a couple of young women from Ca. and Terry was generous enough to tell them the ride was on him. You may wonder how I remember what time it was when we arrived....well, I know because we walked up to the ticket counter and found out there was a second class bus bound for the Carribean Coast leaving Chetumal in exactly tres minutos. A quick decision to make this trip second-class meant we would gain back some of the dinero we had shelled out already this travel day, so off we went!