Subject: Post: Early in the morning we woke up, collected our stuff and took a taxi to the airport. Well, "taxi" and "airport".. The taxi was a golf cart just like almost every vehicle on the island, and the so called airport you have already seen in the pictures from yesterday. Check-in procedure could be called informal, there were no security checks or anything like that.<p>In a short while Tropicair Cessna Caravan came, slightly late of schedule, and almost immeditly took off again towards Belize International airport. We stopped there for a while and continued to Belize Municipal Airstrip, which was just that.. A short gravel road next to the sea, with two terminals the same size as the one on Caye Caulker.<p>We switched plane there and continued to Punta Gorda, shortly stopping in Placencia on the way. I guess taking a flight wasn't a bad decision, it was pretty fun and way more comfortable than the bus ride would have been.<p>In Punta Gorda we just sent some postcards to Finland and bought tickets to the ferry to Guatemala. Ferry was once again a bit of an overstatement, it was a small boat and crossing the bay to Puerto Barrios, Guatemala was a slightly wet trip as bigger waves splashed some water inside.<p> We came to Puerto Barrios to see Timo's friend Saija, who works here in some humanitarian projects and we are also staying with the same local family than she does. They have a separate apartment in the house which is pretty comfortable and cheap accomodation for us. Too bad there are some problems with running water in the city, so it's only available randomly..<p>When our boat arrived Guatemala, Saija came to meet us on the pier, we went to stamp our passports, find some food and later in the evening visited two local bars for a couple of beers, one of them built in an old cargo ship hull at the harbour. Puerto Barrios by the way is one of the biggest banana export harbours. Most bananas produced in the Central America continue their way to the customers through Puerto Barrios and there's Chiquita and Dole containers and trucks everywhere..<p>Unfortunately our movement around in Puerto Barrios is slightly limited, as the city is considered to be quite unsafe during night time and only trusted taxis can be used as transport. Even in the daytime it's better to move around in groups and as less as possible.. Guatemala in general is not one of the safest countries and Puerto Barrios is the gateway of drug and human trafficing to Honduras, ruled by criminal gangs. Not exactly a best vacation spot, but we should be moving to much better Antigua in a day or two. Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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