Day 1 Arriving in Belize.
Amanda's friend dropped us off at the Monterey airport at 6:30pm. The security lines weren't open so we sat in the lobby and read for two hours before boarding. We got to Los Angeles at 9:40 and left for Houston at midnight. Heading East, we lost a few hours and arrived in Houston at 5:00 in the morning. We found seats near Ricky and Bojana's gate and met them when they stumbled off the plane at 5:50.
We were scheduled to leave for Belize at 11:40am but Bojana got us on a standby list for an earlier flight. I was a little concerned this would split our party but the flight attendant called all our names and we left at 11.
We were given aisle seats so I only caught the occasional glimpse of white clouds and low jungle over the people beside me. The trees grew thick but looked brown and unhealthy and seemed to consist mainly of palm trees rising above the ground cover. When we banked and I could see out over the horizon, I saw lines of smoke rising into the sky from several burn piles.
We made a rough landing on the worn runway and after the plane came to a stop, the pilot turned us around and taxied back along the same path. There were no other taxi lanes.
We walked down the stairs onto the tarmac and into the bright sun. It was 90 degrees (32C) with 90% humidity. They herded us all into the line for customs where we waited in the chaotic mass until an official told us to move up into the line normally reserved for people travelling from Caracas.
Signs on the wall indicated it was illegal to take pictures in the customs area so I have no record of the place. A girl in front of us found a small gecko trapped on the ground near the wall and Amanda caught it and helped peel the partially shed skin obscuring it's eyes. As soon as it could see it tried to bite her. She took it outside and asked a security guard if it was ok to leave it in one of the potted plants.
At the far end of the building near the luggage carousel, a calypso band played for tips. We heard their music while we waited in line but only realized they were a live band after we'd been waiting for a half hour.
Amanda and I had packed light. I carried a tiny backpack with a single change of clothing, my binoculars, and a bag of snacks; chocolate and nuts. In my pocket I carried my passport with my cash and credit cards rubberbanded inside. I had to take the cash out every time I handed over the passport so it wouldn't look like a bribe. Even with so little luggage, customs made me nervous. Are we allowed to bring in fruit and nuts if it's in a packaged snack mix? I understand they don't want invasive plants but I'm pretty sure our salt roasted cashews weren't going to escape and destroy the ecosystem. I also didn't want to ask because they are obligated to overreact. The man asked if I had anything to declare, I said no, and he didn't bother checking.
Ricky and Bojana each carried two huge and bulging backpacks. I don't know how they got past the inspectors.
When we stepped outside we were approached by a taxi driver and agreed to the $25 fee to take us to the water taxi.
He drove through Belize at 70mph, passing trucks, cars, and pedestrians on the right and left. On the tarmac at the edge of the airport we passed another united jet. The engine was black and disassembled beside it. The driver told us it had caught on fire as they were taking off the day before.
Google maps doesn't have a street view for Belize city but you can see the satellite images showing the road we took from the airport.
We took the Northern Highway along the Belize river into the city. I have no pictures or video of this journey. We were driving too fast and there was too much to see from the windows of our speeding cab. I wish I had a photograph of our driver and his name. It would be useful for other travellers.
The city was poor and most of the buildings were made with concrete. There were lots of dirt lots, bare ground between buildings, and everything was covered in concrete dust. We drove past a movie theater with a poster advertising 'powerman' - an off color knockoff of iron man and we drove around a huge decorative concrete pillar set in the middle of the road with a large advertisement for car insurance pasted to the side. I wondered if they insured people who ran into the pillar. Our driver waved at another cab and nodded at a strange hand signal given by a man standing on the side of the road. I began to wonder if he was going to rob us.
At the water taxi several men introduced themselves and insisted on taking Ricky and Bojana's bags out of the trunk and carrying them to a cart to be loaded onto the boat. Amanda and I managed to hang on to our small bags.
The driver came around asking for $35, ten more than we agreed on at the airport. We argued and he went into the cab and pulled out a piece of paper showing his prices. I said this was pointless since he hadn't shown us this before but we paid him 35 US dollars. It soured my view of the country. As I thumbed through the bills in my wallet to cover the difference, one of the luggage handlers sidled up behind me and peered over my shoulder. I felt like a mark.
The ticket booth for the water taxi was on the dock at the end of a food and souvenir court. The luggage handler who had peered into my wallet followed me into the dark building where a quiet girl sat selling tickets in a small booth. She had to tell each person the price of a ticket because it wasn't written down on any signs. She gave me a $20 Belize note in change. A huge crowd stood waiting for the boat on the dock.
Ricky expressed his concern for the bottles of duty free alcohol in his backpack. He was worried they would break if the handlers threw them onto the boat. We went back to try to get them from the cart but they were tied down and buried under other luggage. And as we searched one of the handlers started pushing the cart away. They loaded the bags as the crowd formed a disorderly queue. People showed their ticket to the agent and were helped down the steps into the boat. We were still standing on the dock when the boat filled up and left for San Pedro with out luggage.
The dock was uncovered and I sweated in my long pants and sweatshirt. As soon as the first boat pulled away another pulled up and we left for San Pedro.
The water taxi to San Pedro took one and a half hours. From my position on a bench at the back of the boat I couldn't see anything and only felt the occasional breeze. Sometimes water would splash in through the open window. We could only see some distant low islands and a tug towing barges through the dirty plastic windows. A woman held a drooling baby on the seat opposite and farther down the boat the stereotypical American family sweated in the heat, taking twice as many seats as the same number of locals.
San Pedro is a narrow island surrounded by tropical blue water. It's known informally as Ambergris Cay because the first settlers found the beach littered with the stuff. Stepping off the boat it was a zoo.
Everyone got out onto the dock at the same time and we spent fifteen minutes trapped there while the people ahead waited for their luggage to come off the first boat. The dock was only 6 feet wide and there was no room to squeeze by. Eventually a path opened up along the edge where we could squeeze past the crowd and I slipped by worried that someone would take a step back and push me into the clear Caribbean waters with my passport, cash, and phone in my pocket.
I waited on the dock for Amanda and the others. Ricky and Bojana stayed in the crowd, waiting for their bags. When the first one came out dripping, Bojana stomped down to the office on the other dock to complain about the baggers who had broken their expensive bottles. She asked to speak to the manager and was told he was visiting another island.
She was asked, "Why did you give your bags to the luggage handlers if they were so fragile?"
"I didn't give them to them, they were taken from me!"
When Ricky joined us with the second bag we gathered together and inspected the damage. The bottles were intact and it was dripping seawater, not alcohol. Apparently it was stowed in the open where and was soaked with sea spray.
The beach was chaos. Loud dance music blared from huge speakers and hundreds of people milled about celebrating spring break and Easter Saturday. Everyone carried a bottle of beer, whether they were walking down the beach, watching the dj try to convince women to dance, or driving the ubiquitous golf carts. Women milled about in swimsuits looking uncomfortable while young men leered. Several people tried to sell us stuff while we tried to gather our bearings. The sand was white and the waters were turquoise but they were littered with trash, sea wrack, and the pounding music made my head ache.
Stray dogs ran through the crowds. Another dj was trying to convince some women to participate in a bikini contest. A few barefoot beggars in tattered clothing and with skin burned to leather in the sun watched the crowd with hungry eyes. Amanda grabbed my arm and pointed out the frigate birds soaring overhead.
We walked inland a few streets to get away from the loud music. Bojana had booked our hotel from one of the few that still had vacancies on this Easter week but we didn't know where it was. All we knew was a few cross streets and that it was on the beach.
We wandered down the street, past a line of golf carts available for rent. There were few cars in San Pedro. The taxi drivers drove vans, and I saw a couple beat up trucks driven by the police and firemen but golf carts were everywhere. The narrow streets were packed with people, animals, and bicycles, and the carts weaved between them. They were driven at top speed, with one hand on the wheel and the other holding a beer.
We found a map of the beach at the end of the block and decided we were walking the wrong way. The hotel was about 5 blocks in the other direction and we decided to walk along the crowded beach. Kids ran and jumped off the docks and jet skis and speed boats roared by just outside the swimmers. Someone setup a trampoline in the shallow water and kids were climbing, jumping, and screaming. Every 20 feet we entered the influence of another tower of loudspeakers and the party assumed a different flavor.
Amanda pointed out the birds as we walked. We saw ospreys, grackles, pelicans, turnstones, herons, egrets, and cormorants. She also spotted the guy with a leashed coati. He asked us for money when we stopped to look at it. Merchants setup stalls along the beach selling cheap coconut carvings, beads, polished walking sticks, and conch shells. Coconuts, fresh ones, rolled in the small surf and looking down into the water from a shore break we saw small tropical fish.
People played beach volleyball and a man sung Bob Marley tunes at an outdoor bar-b-que. A golf cart passed filled with overweight tourists and a laughing fat woman hanging on to the back used her free hand to hold onto her boobs as they bounced over potholes. We passed painted murals advertising cliff diving, eco tours, dive trips, cave tubing, and boat tours of the Mayan ruins.
Our hotel, when we reached it, was stereotypically tropical. It had thatched roofs and bamboo covered walls. The gazebo out front was festooned with hammocks and the white sand had been carefully raked and smoothed. It was a pleasant place set back a bit from the crowd but the dance music still thumped in the distance. We checked in with the young manager and asked him to wait until Kim and Brian arrived before telling us more about the city.
Kim and Brian showed up an hour later. They flew in on a small plane from Belize city and took a cab from the airport.
The manager was a young native wearing cargo shorts and flip flops. We gathered in his small office where the walls were covered in posters and the shelves were filled with shells, carvings, and sea wrack including a turtle skull. A bookshelf on one wall was filled with dogeared popular fiction.
He had us gather around a map of the island and pointed out the places it was safe to go. He said if we planned on going further south than the airport we should hire a cab to take us past a few blocks. He used the word 'dark' to describe these forbidden blocks and we never figured out if that meant dangerous or without street lights. He told us the exchange rate was $1US = $2BZ and to always ask whether the price of an item was in Belizian or US dollars before paying. It was common for vendors to tell naive tourists a price and then ask for US dollars in payment.
He told us that if someone asked us for money for medicine to bring them back to the hotel so he could check them out. We were told where to find the best restaurants. Everyone on the island drank Belikin beer, a light lager you could buy for $1 in most stores. A bottle of 1-barrel rum was $10 and the higher quality 5-barrel rum could be had for $20. The water in our rooms was drinkable but very chlorinated.
After dropping off our stuff we wandered inland looking for a restaurant selling papusas and beer.
It was easy to imagine the crowded city as a pirate haven. The streets are narrow and the buildings were either dirty shacks or garishly painted structures covered in advertisements. There were no sidewalks and golf carts zoomed by, often only inches away from the people walking down the road. Merchants shouted from open doorways as we went by, imploring us to come in and spend money.
The police station was painted canary yellow with green trim and a heavily dented pickup truck was parked outside. The truck looked like it had been used to knock down the side of a building. We asked a street vendor selling blended fruit smoothies where we could buy bread in the morning. She pointed out a few shops but said we'd have a hard time finding places open on Easter Sunday.
We headed back to the hotel and then out to the grocery store to buy food.
A few blocks south and a couple streets inland from the hotel there are two grocery stores set around a cobblestone roundabout. In the center of this roundabout was a painted statue of a bearded man dressed in furs. I never figured out who he was supposed to be. Maybe it was San Pedro the man?
Richies supermarket was set right on the street and the inside was small but packed. It was two stories but the upper level was dark and unreachable and crammed with weird things like bicycles and appliances. All the merchandise was jumbled together. We saw cans of butter beside bags of mothballs and a huge foil wrapped cheeseball the size of a cannonball. The refrigerated display cases had hand wrapped meats and a bag of diced chicken had split open and spilled over the floor of the case. There was a separate freezer by the front door filled with candy bars. The eggs were unrefrigerated and we bought unrefrigerated milk in cardboard boxes. Most products had the price written on them with a magic marker.
I waited outside while the others shopped and a man rode up on his single speed bike, dropped it on the street and went inside. A girl drove into the roundabout so fast I could hear the tires skipping on the cobblestones and when she turned down the street she over corrected, bounced up against the sidewalk, and skidded to a stop almost hitting a parked cart. We carried our groceries back to the hotel in the blinding sunshine.
Ricky Bojana, Kim, and Brian shared the large hut and Amanda and I got our own room in the back. I cranked up the air conditioner.
That night while the others sorted through our provisions, I went out to the end of the dock to look at the water and the rising moon. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me but it looked like there were flashes of light in the water. I spent several minutes trying to decide if I was seeing things before I went back to fetch Amanda. She brought her flashlight but we couldn't determine the cause.
The building and our room was cast from concrete and the walls of the bathroom didn't extend to the ceiling. This meant the light spilled out into the bedroom, and we could hear each other poop. Our first day in Belize was overwhelming and I scribbled these notes in bed under the full blast of the air conditioner while Amanda huddled under the thin sheet for warmth.
I was told the next morning that the dance music played until 10:30.
Pictures
