I’ve been trying to string a little narrative together in my head, but it’s all just little blips and flashes, seizure-like thinking brought on by five straight hours on several jouncy, rattle-trap buses–I was actually bounced a few inches out of my unpadded seat as we hit a speed bump too fast. My pants smell like old plush bus seat–I know you know what I’m talking about.

But to bring us back to that cliffhanger point at which I realized I had failed to appreciate the seriousness of my expired driver’s license…a haiku:

Mi chofer Pedro
Arriving in a black car
Who said shrimp tacos?

Yeah, whatta hero. Flew down here on a moment’s notice. To be honest, my ‘License expired. Please drive me around.’ email was as much a cry for help as a giving of an excuse–I knew Peter had been on the fence in the first place, so this was all it took. That and “Meet me at the shrimp taco place in Playa.” It was a stupid plan with no good backup if it failed, but I couldn’t resist the poetry of directing someone (especially Peter, who would appreciate it) straight from the airport to the roadside taco stand for some good mayo-lathered deep-fried skrimpy goodness. And it worked–even though I did give Peter slightly wrong directions, then had to stand by the road and wave him down.

Anyway, Peter was a skilled driver, and it was great to have someone to crack jokes with about the Hotel Ucum in Chetumal. Elsewhere, we encountered many haggard old gringos, all ranting about land speculation. One man, Gary, earned himself a beer (OK, they were a dollar each) by telling his story of the building of Puerto Aventuras, a hideously banal marina/resort area that’s missing only an adjacent amusement park, some 28 years ago. He was in charge of feeding all of the workers on the project, and often found himself breaking up fights between carpenters and electricians, all wielding their respective tools. After driving one too many drunk belligerents to the hospital with their fingers or limbs on a cold case of beer, he went to Cuba (as you do) and brought back some strippers, whom he hired to defuse the tension brought on by working in the jungle for months with hundreds of other men. He made the guys check their tools at the door, and peace reigned in the valley. Now Gary sells real estate, while railing against development, just like everyone else.

We also heard more tales of cocaine washing ashore–a common enough occurrence on the southern beaches that the kilo bricks have earned the nickname “pez cuadro” (square fish). Meanwhile, the state government is dumping money into developing the area as a playground for cruise-shippers… One can only imagine what hijinks ensue when they happen across these fish. (My trademarked screenplay idea, for the record. “Weekend at Bernie’s” meets “Blow” meets “Love Boat”?) Also for the record, Mahahual was not nearly so grim as the last time I visited, but Xcalak is still pretty damn sad, even though it finally got full-time electricity after 49 years. (Notwithstanding the cheery Jimmy Buffett vibe of one hotel there–if it weren’t for that place, I’d just drive my car into the sea after the fourth block of demolished concrete with rusted rebar sticking out.) I didn’t get the super whim-whams like I did the last time I visited “The Coast of Broken Dreams,” but then I just didn’t get out of my car and talk to as many people, and I steered especially clear of the dude who told me that nickname in the first place, while he was waving divorce papers at me and ranting about his bitch of an ex-wife, a Belizean drug lord’s daughter. There were some astoundingly upbeat Europeans up by Mahahual, by contrast–including a really nice Dutch woman who’d brought her bike from Holland with her.

Food throughout all these adventures generally sucked. I for some reason took the rational road and did not encourage Peter to eat a deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog, so I had to do that for him once he left. It was freakin’ great–they put caramelized onions on top, along with mayo (of course) and ketchup (irrelevant). Also after Peter left and I went back to Chetumal, I discovered the seaside taco place of our dreams, which serves five different kinds of salsa with your 40 or so different taco options. Including ostrich–farmed nearby, I learned.

And without my chauffeur, I’ve been demoted to bus-hopping, which has turned out well–until today, anyway, when I rode all the way to the end of the line (two and a half hours) only to find I already had a prime seat on the last bus to leave town that night. I didn’t even get to set foot in La Union, allegedly an ecotourism paradise on the Rio Hondo, along the Belize border. Luckily some queeny guy on the bus showed me pics (those giant grasshoppers the kid had been playing with on Holbox are called ‘langostas’–lobsters).

I also did my time at the ruins, and I have a feeling I’m going to have creepy dreams tonight. There are only so many gaping monster mouths, rolling eyes and curling tongues you can see rendered in stone and stucco before you start going a little round the bend. And it didn’t help that it was down in the jungle where everything was prehistoric-scale: 40-foot-tall palm trees, enormous spiders with big glittering dense webs, those grasshoppers (which can fly about thirty feet), whole rivers of ants… One minute I was standing watching the ants rush by, and the next I was accidentally wading right into them as I was trying to sneak up on some huge hawks. If a woman jumps and squeals and smacks her feet in the forest, and there’s no one to see her, does she still look incredibly stupid?

Earlier I’d seen big green parrots–and had that same feeling I’d had when I saw the dolphins and flying fish off of Mosquito Island: I guess those _are_ real. It’s so odd to see something in the wild like that.

So the bus (really, series of buses) was the best antidote to all that damn nature. And having a little basic human interaction: I sat on a pile of rocks by the side of an empty road for a while, and finally a colectivo pulled up. When I hopped on, the boggled driver shouted “Inglés!” at me, pulled his big moustache, and cranked up his campy mambo music. If only I’d had the spirit to dance in the aisles and be the wackjob he thought I was.

Now I’m back in Chetumal, where the streets are lined with what should be 99-cent stores, and I know I’ve spent too much time here because I’m actually starting to admire the polka-dot shopping bags, cheap spandex tops, and ‘Mi Amor’-emblazoned underwear. Which reminds me: thong underwear is not the total travel solution I once thought. I’m still recovering from an adult version of diaper rash, brought on by wearing a thong and a nylon skirt on a very hot and sweaty day (making me wonder what those back-in-the-day breakdancers in their parachute pants endured).

And on that note–beware synthetic fabrics, dear readers–I’m off to bed. Tomorrow, only one bus. And it will be air-conditioned and showing a badly dubbed film.