DON'T TAKE THE ADO BUS!

Anyone who travels to central America knows that Cancun has the best airfares by far, & if there is one negative to the trip to Belize it is the cost of air fare. After doing extensive research, in a effort to save money, I decided we should fly to Cancun & take the overnight bus to Belize. It sounded good & many reviews on trip Advisor were positive. Let me tell you our experience was a nightmare! First he prices quoted everywhere were wrong & it cost us about $30 more than we had planned. Next we had to spend the day at the bus terminal in Cancun. It is not in a nice neighborhood & is not air conditioned, also you get to keep your luggage with you unless you want to pay a ridiculous amount of money to have them store it for you, & there isn't much to eat at the terminal. We had 8 hours to kill, so we stored the luggage for 4 hours which cost almost $50. We went for a SHORT walk & found a McDonald's. this was probably the best part of the day as the people that worked there were very nice, it was air conditioned, & they let us just sit with a drink for a couple of hours. the other thing is the exchange rate on money which I had checked before we left. Most places do not give the actual published rate of 13 pesos to a US$1. They choose their own rate, so we had to find a place to exchange some money so we could buy water & snacks for our bus ride. Luckily there was a place right across from the terminal. After dark which came at 5pm there was no way we were leaving the terminal. So we sat there with our luggage for almost 6 hours waiting for our bus. Right before the bus came we prepared for the ride. We had been warned that the buses had the air blasting, so we brought long pants, jackets, socks & a small blanket. Of course after we layered our clothes the bus was late & there we sat in the boiling heat waiting for the bus. When it finally came, it was everything that was promised. It was a Mercedes Benz, with lots of leg room & only about half full. I promptly fell right to sleep as it had been a long day & anyone who knows me knows I sleep well in the car (or bus). Ron, on the other hand, slept fitfully. About 4am we arrived at the border with Belize & the fun really began. First we had to get off the bus & walk into this building where we were forced to pay an exit fee of $25 each. We had been warned about this in our research, however, the amount went up. this money is pocketed by these border guards & since it is 4am there is no one there to complain to. Several people on the bus tried arguing to no avail. Now we get back on the bus & ride for 20 min. to the Belize border, where we have to get off the bus again, but this time we have to take all of our luggage with us. At least here everyone is nice. Once we are loaded back onto the bus, it is supposed to be about a 90 minute ride to Belize City. I'm not sure what happened, but that 90 minutes turned into almost 4 hours. We finally got into Belize City about 9:30am with the renal car company & our hosts for our first night worried sick about us. At this point we have been travelling for 27 hours. I don't care how much money this saves, we will fly directly into Belize in the future. the money we saved was NOT WORTH IT!