The end end

So. It is our last morning here, and of course the sky is blue and the sun is shining and there is a light breeze. This would have been perfect weather for the past 3 days!! Not all is in vain, however, because we are flying to Belize City on a two -seater CESNA. I am TERRIFIED and clasp my mom's hand in a clammy death-grip for most of the way. I am never doing that again if I can help it.

On the other end, things get a bit farcical. We are the only two passengers on the plane (for there are only two seats), and at Placencia, they had given me three neon yellow baggage tickets for our luggage, which they carried to the plane in front of us. We have not shown a single document or proof of ID. Here in Belize City, they opened the plane doors and walked us and our luggage to the airport terminal entrance. We turned around and thanked them, leaning down to pick up our bags. The attendants refused, asking us to fully walk into the building. We did, and then we watched as they dumped our bags onto the empty carousel three feet away from where we stood. They turned on the carousel and our bags inched forwards two feet where we were then allowed to pick it up. My mother exclaimed, “Oh, there's our bag! And the second one! Oh look, this one is ours, too!” But the arduous process was not over yet. The attendant rushed over and ASKED US FOR OUR BAGGAGE CLAIM TICKET.

Check-in for our international flights was simple, but changing over my money to American dollars required my passport, my home address, and my signature.

The airport is as exciting as the one in Flores. Several souvenir shops, a single food shop which is out of several ingredients, and lots of people. Jody almost loses her boarding pass when she sets it on a wooden bench and it falls through the slats. I eat an entire canister of Pringles and then it's time to return to America.

Thank god.

more Placencia and the end, aka Thank God We're Done with Belize

What else do we do with our time in Placencia? Well, the second day I eat fry jacks again, eager to begin my day of vacation on a good note. Then, the rain gets harder and harder and harder, and the power goes out. Guess what? On this island, the water system is operated by electronic pump, so now that the electricity is out, so is the water! Awesome. It's pouring rain (no water activities), no power (no movies), and no water (no showering). Why can't we catch a break?!?!?!

The rain calms down and so we decide to kayak to the nearest cay since there is not much else we can do. Jody can't find her swimsuit and takes everything out of her suitcase several times, muttering to herself before I find it in a shopping bag on top of my own clothing piles. The kayaking is great for about 5 minutes, but then it gets windy and drizzly and there is not much to look at and I remember that I hate rowing.

We do more reading, eat some fajitas, and the power comes back on!!! Rejoice!!! We have an evening of shower, reading, Comedy Central, and internet. I specially request spaghetti with parmesan cheese and ketchup and they make it for me! Yum. In our room, Jody acts like she has never watched TV before. Every commercial startles her, and every plot point must be slowly repeated. What are these moving pictures? How come that woman just walked over there? Is this part of the show? Why is the sound doing that?

The next day, we wake up to sunshine with a “cold front” moving in with light clouds and wind, but no rain. I have some more fry jacks and a pina colada for breakfast. We decided to take a bike ride while the weather is still cooperating, but to tell you the truth, there is not much to see, and we're done after an hour. We stop at the largest of the Chinese-run markets and buy candy and edible presents. Jody has an epiphany that if she kept her suitcase organized, she would be able to find her things. I pass out from Obviousness.

Here are some things we have done to pass the time on our final day here, since the sun is still not shining:

1. We read books.
2. Jody cleaned out 140 emails from her work account.
3. I mastered three varieties of solitaire on my computer.
4. Jody investigated every single Chinese grocery store in Placencia (5 in all).
5. We showered frequently.
6. Jody neatly folded her dirty laundry and hermetically sealed it in ziplock bags.
7. I went to a more distant bathroom instead of a nearby one in order to kill time.
8. I checked my facebook every 10 minutes.
9. Jody biked to three restaurants to check out their dinner menu.

At least we're not in Dangriga.

Placencia, finally

January 1st!!! And it looks like rain. Dangriga is just as shitty in the daylight. The bus station attendant is “not sure” if there will be a bus down to Placencia, so we pay for a taxi. As my mother is fond of saying, “You can always throw money at your problems.” Jon, our Indian (dots) taxi driver, is a fantastic narrator and tells us in no uncertain terms that there is nothing to see in Dangriga. He also compares Mexican/Spanish work ethic (great) to Garifuna laziness.

We arrive in Placencia and think: FINALLY! VACATION! PRETTINESS! LUXURY! Our bathroom is tiled! The sink is secured into a cabinet! We have a jute rug! There is a television in the room! There is a bathmat on the floor of the bathroom! The ocean is right outside our door, the water is bright turquoise, the sun is shining, and our hotel aims to please.

I unpack ALL of my things into neat little piles. My mother keeps hers all scattered in several places in the room. I eat fry-jacks for lunch, which are fried squares of dough and DELICIOUS. I also find an idiot chic lit book in the lounge which will be my next read. I take a soooooooper deep nap, you know, WITHOUT AN ALARM CLOCK, and end up sleeping 2 ½ hours before my mom wakes me up and drags me outside. And then it starts pouring rain. We have an unmemorable dinner and walk home with more pouring rain.

As I write this in bed, the rain is pouring down outside, and we are cozy up in our little room, with clean sheets and an area rug and tiled bathroom. We are inside! We are in a pretty area! We can sleep in!

What a lovely way to begin 2012.

New Years Eve

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached Dangriga. To our utter dismay, it was a tiny, poor, ramshackle town. We had booked a room at Val's Backpackers, which was a sketchy concrete building on an isolated corner at the edge of town next to the ocean. Luckily, the interiors were clean and simple, the internet was fast, the shower ran hot water, and we were given an entire 4-bed dormitory in lieu of a private room. However, shortly after I stepped into the shower, the power went out. Being naked and wet in a huge, dark, foreign bathroom is SCARY.

The lights came back on after a minute or too, but not the hot water, and I had a minor meltdown. I am four days passed needing the vacation part of the vacation to begin, and it seems like every place we come to is crappier than the one before it. Everyone lets on like Belize is this sparkling diamond in Central America, but it seems every poorer and rougher than Guatemala. The roads are shit, the bus system is unreliable, the “cities” are merely towns, and everywhere is dirty. It does make me feel so incredibly lucky to be a middle-class American, but it makes me second guess why we decided to come here in the first place.

(Look at the picture at the top and notice that the beachside swing-set is the saddest swing-set you've ever seen because there are no swings.)

Shortly before midnight, we ventured out to hear some Garafuna drumming and see the fireworks. I was expecting a ton of fireworks based on what I saw last year in Panama and how much we saw and heard last week for Christmas in Guatemala. The display here is lacking (like everything else!) and lasts a minute or two. There are people in the streets, but they don't seem particularly excited and when we pass, my mom is always the first to offer a Happy New Year salutation. We are again weirded out that Dangriga kind of sucks.

Bar time. We enter one of the small, wooden clapboard buildings in the center of town, but this one is hopping with people coming in and out and a quartet of black men playing traditional drums on one side. The community here is Garifuna, black Caribbean people descended from shipwrecked African slaves from the island of St. Vincent. The drumming is very energetic and people start dancing one at a time in the middle. One woman does a very slight butt wiggle. She is barely moving and we are not impressed. The men do a better job, wiggling their hips and also moving their feet to the drums. But I have to say, I have seen WAY better dancing in the shanty towns of South Africa and my 3rd grade students from South LA.

Something else interesting about the Garifuna – all the men are these tall, skinny, lanky things wearing big, baggy t-shirts and shorts. All the women are fat and wear short, tight dresses that leave nothing to the imagination.

We eventually leave the bar and chat with a cute Garifuna guy on the side of the road who does not shed any light on the weight discrepancy in the town. Then we go to sleep in our clean but ugly dorm room. Happy 2012!

Caracol

Our tour to Caracol travels on a bumpy, windy road and continues on a bumpy, windy road for almost two hours. A highlight was the military escort that followed us to the park. Then we saw more RUINS.

Another half hour on a bumpy, windy road and we came to a large CAVE with a sand beach inside.

Another half hour on the bumpy, windy road and we got to jump in some WATERFALLS and the water felt clean and refreshing.

And then an hour of bumpy, windy road back to San Ignacio.

And then Mr. Williams the driver took us on the slowest cross-country drive the roads have ever seen. I kept peeking over his shoulder to view the speedometer and saw that the needle was at least below 30km/h, but then I realized that the needle was actually broken off. Anyways, he rambled on for the entire journey about rain and flooding and how this and that bridge was washed out and this family all got drowned and here is where they are buried and I just sat in horror, silently willing him to change topics or accelerate. He did neither.