January 2007

… where you are right now, only much, much better. I keep saying that to myself, but there would have to be a whole lot of “better” applied to Texas to make it compare with Belize. Or at least, the parts of Belize that are fancied up for tourists. I absolutely loved vacationing there, but in a way it makes me feel very strange and somewhat guilty. The resort that we were at was the definition of “tropical paradise,” with your every need taken care of and the surroundings groomed to perfection. But just a few miles away, in Hopkins Village or any number of similar villages in “the real Belize,” the poverty is heartbreaking. Families live in 100 square foot shacks made of rotting wood, corrugated tin, and palm thatch roofs. If you’re lucky, your house is raised up on stilts to keep it away from the water that perpetually puddles on the ground in this rain-soaked country. The minimum wage is approximately $1 (US). Much of the time, I really felt like a “rich white American” intruding in their country — out of place and guilty for lounging around at a luxury resort all week. But is it a good thing that my money is flowing into their economy? Do I actually help the Belizeans by contributing to their tourism industry?

Today was our last day in Belize, and it doesn’t really count because it’s a travel day. We didn’t do a whole lot else. After breakfast (Doc with a special-order omelette and a parting glass of grapefruit juice, me with my usual fruit and cheese), we settled our bill at the front desk, left an envelope with gratuities for the entire staff as well as extra for a few specific people, and retrieved our dive equipment from the dive shop. Luckily none of our stuff was taken in the theft a few days ago (Giovanni’s regulator was stolen, along with someone else’s BCD and I think also a wetsuit or two). We packed as best we could, resigning ourselves to the fact that we’d have two suitcases full of damp musty-smelling clothes. We had to be out of our room by 11 a.m., check-out time, but our van to the airport wasn’t leaving until 1 p.m., so we brought our luggage down to the lobby and sat with Doug, Nish, Kurt, and Megan until their van left at 12. We found out that, since we didn’t arrive until dinnertime on our first day, our lunch meal was included on our last day. So we went ahead and ordered lunch, and by the time we were done, it was time to leave. We said our goodbyes to the staff, loaded into the van with Lorenzo, and headed for Dangriga. Our puddlejumper at Dangriga was about 3o minutes late arriving, which was fine since we had plenty of time before our connecting flight. We sat in the Dangriga airport and read the local papers, which were interesting in that they contained little hard news and some soft core pornography in the guise of a “love” column. In Belize City, we visited the […]

This morning we left at 7:30 for a full-day Mayan history tour of two major temple complexes, Xunantunich and Cahal Pech. Both sites are near the Guatemalan border, over 2 hours away. Something like 30 people signed up for this tour, so we had to pile into three vans. We didn’t time it right, and all the vans were nearly full by the time we got to the loading area. Doug and Nish climbed into one of the vans, and Kat and Brett followed us to one of the others. There was room for all four of us, but they spied Tom sitting in the front seat and they turned and hauled ass towards the third van, where there was room for only two. So Doc and I lost the battle and had to take another Tom bullet for the team. Surprisingly, Tom made little comment the entire trip, although I feared we were off to a bad start when he asked Lorenzo, the driver, as soon we got on the highway, “So, what kind of engine you got in here?” The morning was very misty with lots of thick white low clouds, especially as we headed into the hills in Central Belize. We saw at least a dozen rainbows, very vivid and close to us. Some of them ended right in the roadway directly ahead of us. Lorenzo told us that in Belize, rather than finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, legend has it that you’ll find a boa constrictor. We stopped at a citrus factory along the way (and by “stopped” I mean “pulled over to the side of the road for 2 minutes so we could look out the van windows”) and a tourist trap gift shop that I guess the resort […]

I decided to go snorkeling again this morning, while Doc, Kat, and Brett went diving along with Doug and Nish. The boat ride over was annoying because I ended up sitting next to Tom, while the rest of Tom’s party sat on the other side of the boat. No sooner had he sat down then he immediately turned to me and launched into a story about some friend of his and volcanic sequences and moss and people spending thousands on hotel rooms and the geology bonehead of the year award. Seriously. What the fuck?! And he told the story as if I should know the people he was talking about! I tuned out and just made little “hmm” noises every few minutes or gave vague smiles, while trying to show as little interest as possible. Thank god I had my sunglasses on. When it seemed like his story was possibly winding down (or maybe that was me simply giving up), I gave a final smile and turned to Giovanni, the dive/snorkel master sitting on the other side of me, and began a conversation with him instead. Rude, maybe, but it seems apparent that Tom does not understand social cues such as obvious boredom and discomfort in his “victims.” The boat dropped us off on South Water Caye and we walked around to the other side of the island. Tom was quite eager to get in the water, so he walked on ahead of the rest of us. The sad part is, the rest of his family was making fun of him behind his back, rolling their eyes and making snide comments. I almost felt sorry for him. At one point he turned around and said (and I quote) “Everyone, please note the sand underneath your feet. Now, you’ll notice that […]

We didn’t sign up for any adventures today, so we slept in (which was only 7 a.m. for Doc and 8 a.m. for me). After breakfast of pineapple, cheese, and yogurt, Kathryn and I did some yoga out on the end of the boat dock. Later in the morning I took the laptop into the lobby of the main house, got hooked up to the internet, and e-mailed Mom to see what time her flight left on Sunday so we could be sure to be home in time to take her to the airport, in case we were too tired to drive back to Dallas on Saturday night. I chatted for a bit online with Brittney, who told me that Dallas is covered in ice and basically shut down today. I was doubly glad now that we had decided to drive to Houston and fly from there, because if we’d tried to reschedule our flight out of Dallas we may never have made it to Belize. After lunch (a much-too-highly seasoned cheeseburger and rather tasty french fries) I took my book and a towel down to the beach and laid in the sun for a little while. I got an hour or two of reading in, and fell asleep to boot. Luckily I’d coated myself in both sunscreen and bug spray, so I wasn’t any the worse for wear. Doc worked for a little while on the laptop and spent some time organizing his photography that he’d taken this morning and the previous day. Taz, the fluffy striped beachcat, visited me while I was sleeping and gave himself a good bath. Doc got a photo of him licking his butt. I’m not entirely sure what we did the rest of the afternoon and evening, as I did not take notes […]

We rose early again this morning, had a light breakfast of pineapple, grapefruit, papaya, and toast, and met in the main house at 8 a.m. to start our Mayflower Rainforest hike. The intensity level was advertised as “rigorous,” but they also had said that the black bean soup the night before would be spicy, and it had no heat whatsoever. Based on that, we figured that they wanted to weed out the people who couldn’t handle a little uphill walk. Wrong! They were trying to weed out everyone. This hike was one of the most difficult physical activities that I can remember doing. It was worth it in the end though. We drove in vans out to the Mayflower Rainforest national park, and began our hike up to 750 feet above sea level. The first part was easygoing enough, mostly flat with a few moderate inclines and downhills, very muddy. Golden and Lorenzo, our guides, pointed out interesting plants and animals along the way. We saw a cacao bean tree, a rubber tree, philodendrons, cohune palms (where we get hearts of palm from, and I learned that it involves cutting down the entire tree to get it, so I don’t think I’ll be eating those again), coconut palms, bastard palms (covered in needle sharp spikes that hurt like hell, and the only way to soothe the pain is to cut down the palm to get at the liquid inside), tourist trees (whose bark is reddish and peeling like a bad sunburn), leafcutter ants, soldier ants, toucans, hummingbirds, and a 6’ long black rat snake — I spotted it myself on the way back down the mountain, shrieked like a little girl and hauled ass back towards the visitor center. Nish volunteered to eat a termite from a mound in the […]

We woke up early this morning, without effort, when the sun came up. Doc visited the dive shop at 7 a.m. to get fitted for his BCD and to pick up his tanks and other equipment. The one thing that we forgot to pack was his wetsuit, so he used one of the dive shop’s shorty suits, and let me tell you, he looks pretty damn tasty in a shorty! Then he joined me for breakfast. I have a hard time eating this soon after I get up, but I managed to pick at a small bowl of granola with homemade yogurt (awesome!) and toasted coconut on top, and a glass of orange juice. We got on the dive boat with all our equipment, and took a very bumpy 30-minute ride out to an atoll on the Belize Barrier Reef. Kat and I got off the boat with Giovanni, one of the dive masters, while some other divers from Pelican Beach Resort on the atoll boarded the boat. The divers went out to their dive spot, while Kat and I went to the other side of the atoll to snorkel. We put on our fins, masks, and snorkels, and walked out into the water. The first 20 feet or so of water had a sandy bottom, and then there was a large field of sea grass. After that, the coral reef began. It was hard work getting out to the reef because the current was really strong. I felt like I was being pulled parallel to the shore the whole time. The current let up a little once we made it out to the reef. The reef itself was really incredible. It’s just like what you see in pictures or on TV. Some of the coral looked like giant yellow […]

We almost didn’t make it to Belize, as a matter of fact. Late on Friday the 12th, Kat called to tell me that our noon flight the next day had been canceled due to a possible impending winter storm in Dallas. The temperature was still well above freezing, and it wasn’t expected to drop below that point until late Saturday night, by which time we would have been in Belize already. I suspect that it was canceled, not because we’d have to fly through any icy weather to get to our destination, but instead because of OTHER flights from other northern places having to be rescheduled and the airport being one big clusterfuck of stranded travellers. I imagine that they cancelled a whole bunch of flights that weren’t full or that weren’t considered “essential.” What are the odds of only the 2nd day of frozen precipitation that we have had in Dallas this season, happening on the same day that we are supposed to fly out on vacation? Pretty good odds, apparently. American Airlines gave us the option of getting our money back, or rescheduling our flight for Sunday or Monday. Sunday and Monday’s forecast was looking to be about the same as Saturday, and we didn’t want to risk having to wait until Tuesday or later to get to Belize, especially since we’d already paid for our hotel, nonrefundable. (We found out later that the cold icy weather lasted all week long, culminating in a citywide shutdown on Wednesday.) Kat and I talked until well after midnight via IM, trying to come up with a plan. We decided to get our money back from AA and to book a flight on Continental instead… out of Houston. Our flight time was 1:40 p.m., which meant that we’d have to start […]