I got Scammed!!

OK, it isn't quite as bad as the title makes it sound, but last Friday I was about as frustrated as I have been in quite some time. That doesn't necessarily mean a ton from a guy whose high school baseball coach told him, "Joe, you gotta get mad every once in a while. Throw a bat, kick a glove, yell at somebody. Just do something to show me that you care when we lose!!" But still, I was upset.

We (The Lucia family and I) arrived in Puerto Cortes on Thursday afternoon in time for me to call Emilio (A Honduran I had met my last trip to Cortes) to make sure everything was on schedule for the boat to Belize the following day. He assured me everything was good and that he would pick us up at the hotel a little bit after 7. I thought, "Great, we will leave at 8 and be in Belize by lunch."

For background information, Honduras has a boat company that leaves Honduras on Mondays and returns from Belize on Fridays. However, we wanted to leave Honduras on a Friday, so Emilio supposedly set up a boat for us on Friday. This is where things went wrong...

Emilio picks us up at the aiport on Friday around 7:45. A little late, but no big deal since we are only 3 minutes away from the boat dock. We hop in the car for the short car ride and start driving in the opposite direction. "Hmmmmm," I thought, "there must be another dock in Cortes that I am not familiar with. But after 20 minutes of driving I ask Emilio, "Are we going to Guatemala?" I asked him this because I am familiar with the other methods of renewing a visa by going to Belize, one of which is taking a boat from Guatemala (The very reason I called Emilio in the first place is so that we DIDN'T have to go to Guatemala).

"Yes," Emilio replied, "we are only 45 minutes from the border."

To spare you of all the details, I will just summarize what followed in the next several hours:

-I had to pay an extra $50 US to get to Belize because Emilio lied to me repeatedly.

-I had to painfully endure one of the hottest and most uncomfortable taxi rides of my life.

-We almost didn't make it out of Guatemala because I had no Guatemalan currency to pay the departure tax.

-I expressed my anger quite loudly to Emilio in the middle of the port, which attracted some attention by people passing by. I am quite certain it isn't every day that they get to witness a Gringo angrily accusing (in Spanish) a Honduran of being dishonest and disrespectful.

It is sad that I am becoming less and less trusting of the very people that I am striving to serve. The more I give of my time, abilities, and finances, the more I am lied to, stolen from, and cheated. At the point of my greatest frustration with Emilio, I was reminded of Christ's love for us. That while we were still sinners, He died for us and provided something that only He could provide...forgiveness of sin.

So after apologizing to Emilio and calmly explaining (once again) why I was so frustrated and what he could have done differently, we boarded our boat and were off to Belize. After a 1.5 hour boat ride, a 2 hour bus ride, and another 15 minute boat ride, we arrived in Placencia, Belize. We had to walk about 20 minutes in what felt like the Sahara desert with humidity, but we finally made it to our hotel.

We have enjoyed the last 5 days in Belize, although 10-15 degrees cooler for us Northwesterners would be greatly appreciated. We leave on Friday to head back to campus and start up classes after the girls vacation.