Our last day on San Pedro

The next morning the lock on Kim and Brian's front door broke, locking them out of their room. One of the hotel staff had to bring out a ladder and break in through the balcony window. They sat on the bed while he worked on the lock. Brian offered him some scotch (they were trying to get rid of the bottle) and he offered them some weed.

Ricky cooked breakfast and we all gathered in his room where they'd propped the door open with one of his sandals to let the cool ocean breeze blow through. A gust of wind blew the door shut with the sandal still in the frame and the pressure jammed the lock. We were stuck for 15 minutes while I struggled to get it open.

The American news was full of breathless coverage about a student in Texas who went on a stabbing rampage.

Amanda and I said our goodbyes. The others were going on to see the Mayan ruins and jungles of Guatemala but we had to return early. We walked down the narrow streets to the airport with our luggage past uniformed children going to school.

The small airport had an aquarium in the lobby and we were given large reusable plastic tickets at the desk. When the time came we lined up on the tarmac and climbed into the small single prop plane.

The 30kt wind blew across the runway. We sat in the front, directly behind the pilot. As he picked up speed he pumped the foot pedals and jerked the control stick back and forth like a madman. I'm sure he made take-offs like that all the time but it still made me nervous and I really wish I'd gotten it on video.

There were three seats across the cabin and a sun bleached woman took the single seat beside us. Instead of going straight to Belize city, we landed on the runway at Cay Caulker where another man boarded. Because the plane was already full, the pilot turned and asked the woman to move up into the copilots seat. I heard Amanda mutter, "Jesus Christ!".

She jammed her handbag into the space between her feet and I hoped she wouldn't try to grab anything if the ride got bumpy. Fortunately the runway on Cay Caulker was pointing into the wind so the second takeoff wasn't nearly as exciting.

After landing at the international airport as we crawled out of the small plane, a man put the checked luggage onto a cart and towed it to the carousel twenty feet away.

There is a $40 fee to leave Belize. We added the price to our ticket. Before you can leave the country you have to talk to a customs agent. She asked for my zip code but I couldn't understand her accent and I had to ask her to repeat herself several times as she sighed and rolled her eyes in frustration.

The flight back to the US was quiet and uneventful.

We arrived in Los Angeles a little early and I saw they were loading the 6:50 flight to Monterey. We ran around the entire airport to catch it. The flight attendant was surprised we had no checked luggage and she changed our flights right there. We just had to walk in and sit down. We were originally scheduled to take the 9:00 flight out of LA and it was nice to avoid the two and a half hour wait.