Mission Impossible: San Ignacio

We finally got to get out of the office for an adventure a couple days ago. It was Mission Impossible day, and my group of three was directed to hop on a bus for the town of San Ignacio, not far from the Guatemalan border. Some taxi drivers tried to dissuade us from taking the bus, but I'm kind of enjoying the mishmash cultural experience of standing in the aisle of an extraordinarily crowded American schoolbus. One of them even had a civics poster from a West Virginia school on the wall. And if you stop to listen, you can hear people speaking Spanish and Kriol and any number of combinations of languages.

I get the sense that San Ignacio is one of the larger towns in Belize, but in a country of just under 300,000, that’s kinda relative. It's a charming hilly town, with a number of pizza parlor, ice cream shops, and internet cafes. We passed the same taxi driver about ten times, who greeted us heartily each time, gave us tips on where to eat lunch (Hanna's, where I indulged in quesadillas - with capers! - and fresh squeezed limeade), and told us where the best ice cream was to be found. Of course the shop is only open Thursday-Sunday starting at 5pm, so that was really just a tease.

A couple miles out of town is the Mayan site of Cahal Pech. We didn't have time to go for the guided tour, so we wandered around by ourselves. It was shady and peaceful and highly mysterious, and I wish I'd had more time. But there are many more sites to be found, and I do have two years, right?

Rachel has become our resident hairdresser. A bunch of us crowded into Liz and Kathy's room last night to escape the pouring rain and to watch her work her magic on Liz and Ashli. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can manage to get one to load on our pokey freaking internet connection...