Detained at the border

The actual boat ride from Puerto Cortes, Honduras to Mango Creek/Independence, Belize is a pleasant ride. In the two-hour journey, you pass through clear Caribbean water. There is fresh drinking water available and the breeze from the water feels good against your face.

The problem with the trip is that in addition to the 2 hours on the boat, you have to spend four hours going through border formalities. The length of the bureaucratic dealings owes in part to the fact that the week before my trip a passenger on the boat had transported drugs from Honduras to Belize. So, before you leave Honduras, the border police open up and search every bag on board and do a thorough inspection of the ship. Additionally, there is no immigration at the dock, so you have to drive 30 minutes to the immigration office in downtown Puerto Cortes.

The delays are longer and more significant on the Belize side of the border. The Puerto Cortes/Independence boat only make the trip to Belize once a week. There is no immigration office in Independence. Instead, an immigration officer drives down two hours from Dangriga to meet the boat. While waiting for the immigration officer to arrive, port officials examine the boat and the bags on it, for drugs and other problem imports. One of the officers proved particularly chatty with a fellow passenger, a middle-aged Honduran woman who spent the whole boat ride sharing about the great job she had in Belize. The officer asked her about her job, her family, and finally her sign. At that point, she said, "wow, it is hot in here," turned and started talking to an elederly Honduran man, whom I'm pretty sure was deaf. When she turned to him the rest of us started chuckling.

The immigration officer finally arrived and boarded the boat. He brought with him a stamp pad and two stamps - a round stamp for Belizean residents and a triangular stamp for foreigners. He stamped everyone's passport, granted all non-residents entry for 30 days, and signed his name. I put my passport in my bag without looking at the stamp.

The problem with the entry stamp did not become evident until I attempted to leave Belize on Saturday October 11 at the border town of Benque Viejo. Before passing through immigration, it is necessary to pay the departure tax of about $19. I handed my passport to the cashier and prepared to pay the tax. She asked me when I had entered Belize. I told her that I entered on Monday October 6 at Independence. She said there was no stamp for my entry into the country. Instead there was only a departure stamp, which was dated November 5, 2008 (a date that would not pass until approximately a month later). She took my passport and said that I would need to go see the head immigration officer.

I was escorted to a back office at the border. If I had been at JFK airport and asked to follow an immigration official to a back office, I probably would have made a run for it - I certainly don't want to end up sent to Egypt or Saudi Arabia. However, here I felt okay - the door was not locked, there were no guards, and I could easily get out if necessary. I explained to the guard how I entered the country. He asked if I had another passport and tried to figure out what happended. What happened was that the immigration officer used departure stamps in the 55 passports of the passengers on the ship. The official had a cold and I sympathized with him over the cold. We chatted it up a bit, and in the end he made photocopies of the relevant pages of my passport and let me leave.

When I went to the desk to get my departure stamp, the immigration officer correctly stamped my passport with the departure stamp. He also made a note above the Independence stamp, noting that "subject entered via Independence on November 5, 2008." This notation I didn't read until after I had passed through the Guatemalan side of the border and at that point there wasn't much I wanted to do to correct the notation. Compared with the Belizean side, the Guatemalan side was easy and hassle-free. That is, as hassle-free as any shady border crossing town can be.