… 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 duty-free shops, and I’m still not certain exactly how they work or what they’re for — something to do with evading taxes, I think. All I know is you could buy three things: alcohol, cigarettes, or perfume. And actually, it turns out that the alcohol they were selling was about 1/2 to 1/3 of the price you would pay here in the States. Doc and I got a liter of pomegranate liqueur and a liter of Bailey’s Irish Cream, just for grins. The weird thing about the duty free shops here (and maybe this is standard operating procedure everywhere, I don’t know) is that they couldn’t actually hand over the alcohol that we bought. They said that they had to bring it to us on the plane, which actually meant that once we walked out the gate door onto the tarmac, they had our purchases on a little card table and we just matched up receipts with the liquor guards.

Apparently a big bag of alcohol does not count against your 2-carryon limit.

We landed in Houston after an uneventful flight, stood in long uneventful lines for immigration and customs, and picked up our luggage, which were some of the first bags out onto the carousel (this NEVER happens!) I don’t recall what the international arrivals areas of other airports look like (I don’t think I’ve been in one in 10 years), but the Houston airport’s arrival area was enormous and covered in lots of interesting art. The baggage claim area itself had maybe 12 huge carousels, each of which was topped with large white plastic suitcases that lit up from within. I think that the presence of all the art was meant to create a good first impression of America on foreign travellers.

We said our goodbyes and caught shuttles out to the parking lots where we’d left our cars, paid our giant parking bills, and headed for home. It was pouring down rain in Houston, and, as it turns out, about halfway north to Dallas too. Doc and I decided to try to drive straight on through to home, even though we didn’t get out of the airport until almost 10 p.m. I was tired but knew that this drive was going to suck, and did not want to prolong the pain by putting it off until tomorrow. Doc played iPod DJ on the car radio and I did my best to stay awake, drinking root beer, stopping to pee and stretch every 30-45 minutes, and singing along to the extremely upbeat songs he selected for me. It stopped raining halfway to Dallas, but then the thick fog kicked in – and it was thicker than any fog I’ve ever driven in. I would say that visibility was probably less than 100 feet, which is kind of scary when you’re going 60 miles per hour down a dark highway. The adrenaline kept me awake, and we made it safely home shortly before 2 a.m. We said hi to Mom, brought our suitcases inside, and crashed.

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 has some sort of affiliation with. It almost felt expected that we buy something. They did have some interesting things, so I bought myself a necklace – a simple iridescent green cylinder on a leather cord – and a few small gifts for people. The prices were fair, though overpriced compared to other places, I discovered later.

To get to Xunantunich, we crossed the Mopan River via hand-cranked ferry, which prominently featured guards sporting automatic rifles. This, apparently, is because the site is very close to the Guatemalan border, and the two countries historically have been embroiled in a nasty border dispute. Guatemala feels that large chunks of Belize is actually their land, dating back to when Belize was a British colony known as British Honduras. I wonder how the Belizean military men feel about protecting stupid white tourists like us.

Xunantunich, which means “Stone Maiden” in Mayan, is a complex of 6 plazas and more than 20 buildings and temples. We climbed to the top of El Castillo, the second tallest structure in Belize. From the top we could see Guatemala. The carved friezes around the sides of El Castillo are actually made of fiberglass; the original friezes are buried about a meter behind them, and not exposed to prevent erosion and defacement. While we were at the top, it began to rain pretty hard, and the slippery stone steps seemed much narrower on the way down than on the way up. We were very worried about falling to a painful head-bashing death. We also visited one of the ball courts, where the ancient Mayans played a game with an 8 pound rubber ball. The losing team was killed, while the winning team was sacrificed (there is a difference). It was an honor to be chosen for the game, which was watched by the elite and royalty.

The second site, Cahal Pech or “City of Ticks”, was so named because the archaeological site was a cow pasture when it was originally discovered in the 1950s. Parts of this site were much older than Xunantunich, by about 1200 years. The temples were not as high and did not have as grand a view, but were still very interesting.

The drive back to Hamanasi seemed much longer than the drive to the temples this morning. I guess that’s always how it goes, though. Once we got back, we rested in our room for a little while, then went to the bar and hung out with our friends before dinner. Tonight, each of the three couples ate dinner at our own little two-top tables. The menu tonight was “manatee bread” (which we had a lot of fun joking about — does it contain real manatee?!), cream of garlic soup, cheese-stuffed chicken with sweet guava glaze, and key lime pie with coffee. The manatee bread was delicious: a soft wheat bread stuffed with cheese and bacon (but wait, was it manatee bacon?! Or manatee jerky?!), and named (so the waitress said) because the large unsliced loaf was shaped like a manatee.

After dinner, we went to Nish and Doug’s room for a while to chat and have drinks. Kat and Brett said they’d join us a little later, but Kathryn later said that they fell asleep almost immediately after dinner and woke up in the morning wearing the same clothes they’d had on the night before. We had a nice time on our last night, talking with Nish and Doug, Kurt and Meegan, and a new couple named Dennis and Melissa. I had one rum and coke, which was about all I could take after a week of having one or two drinks every single day, and we eventually called it a night and went to bed.

[click here for pictures]

This morning I did not have any adventures planned, yet I got up early anyway. This whole trip I have been getting up before 8 a.m., on my own. I suppose it’s probably largely due to the fact that we have been going to sleep somewhat early (11 p.m. or so).

Doc went diving in the morning, along with Brett, Kurt, and Megan. I think that he’s really enjoying it. The divemasters have cancelled the trips to Blue Hole and Glover’s Reef, so all the divers are just staying on the barrier reef this week, which I guess is still probably pretty damn cool. I puttered around this morning taking pictures, and then took the laptop to the lobby so I could upload some of my photos to flickr.

Even though I technically have an internet connection while here, I haven’t really been using it as much as I thought I would have. I mean, I know I’ve mentioned getting online for three or four days now, but when you compare it to my normal online schedule (averaging about 70 hours per week, I would say, between work and home), it’s nothing. The connection is slower than molasses in January, but I don’t know that that is necessarily a factor. I have not missed TV at all, I have not once had the urge to make a phone call, and I also haven’t wanted to listen to any music on my iPod. It’s weird how my nearly-total disconnect from the fast-paced hurry hurry world of my normal life, where I constantly attempt to absorb as much audiovisual information as possible, happened so quickly and easily.

Maybe that means that when the apocalypse comes, I will survive because I adapt well, and society will value me because I have skills that don’t require electricity.

Speaking of activities that don’t require electricity, later in the morning I sat in a beach chair in the shade of a palm tree and watched for Doc coming home from sea.

Once he arrived safely back on land, we ate lunch (I had a mini pizza with bacon… WAY too much bacon, and y’all know about how much bacon it would have to be for me to say something like that).

At 2 p.m. we hopped in a van and drove several miles out to a spot on the Sittee River, where we disembarked and got into canoes and kayaks. The kayaks were not the kind where you basically enclose your lower half inside the boat, and if you tip over you’d better hope you can right yourself quickly; these much less scary “sit-on-top” kayaks were very flat plastic boats with flat areas to sit on, seat backs to hold you in place, and little grooves for your feet. The canoes looked much safer, but we were told that the kayaks, despite their smallness and flatness, were actually more stable. So Doc and I decided to be adventurous and climbed into a blue kayak.

Which immediately started to fill with water. We were both horrorstricken by how fucking enormous we must be that we could sink a kayak between the two of us. We were both on the verge of scrambling back out onto the dock, but they told us that they were actually SUPPOSED to partially fill with water — that’s just how these kayaks worked. We were not entirely convinced, because there didn’t seem like there was much kayak to fill before the damn boat was completely underwater. But we decided to give it a go. So we paddled down the river, with a few inches of dirty parasite-filled tropical river water sloshing around our legs, feet, and unmentionables.

Not that I was paranoid about, you know, parasites and my nether regions. Not at all.

We paddled down a short stretch of river, shaded by graceful tall trees and under a nice little bridge that I was almost too tall to fit under — Doc paddling for power, and me using mine to steer. And then we emerged onto a very large pond, in full tropical sunlight. The temperature zoomed up into the high 90s, and I started to sweat. As far as we could see down the river, there was no shade at all. I began to think that this was all a Very Bad Idea; it was miserably hot and still and we only had a little bit of water between the two of us, and I had no clue how far we had to go before we reached the pickup site.

I began having flashbacks to the day that we canoed down the Brazos river for six hours in 100-plus degree heat, with only one gallon of water for four people (us plus Ginger and Kathryn, I think). The river was so low that we had to walk our canoes through the shallows for much of the time, and poor Doc had a screamer of a cluster headache and was getting badly sunburnt.

So I was having all these visceral memories of the Canoe Trip From Hell, and my mood plunged. I wanted to get this stupid adventure over with as quickly as possible, and so I attempted to paddle more quickly so we could get ahead of the pack and zoom on ahead. Doc was much calmer (probably actually enjoying himself!) and kept telling me that I didn’t need to paddle so quickly, or at all, and basically to just stop and look around a little. I kept thinking, snakes, mosquitos, heat, sunburn, headache; I was miserable.

Then, around the next bend, we saw it: a rain squall coming up the river, headed right for us! It was wonderful. We got soaking wet, and the temperature dropped. My mood immediately improved. I began to slow my frantic paddling and enjoy looking at the huge orange iguanas in the trees and on the banks, the turtles, birds, and various other wildlife. Kathryn even saw a crocodile. Luckily I did not, nor did I see any water snakes.

After about two hours, we reached a little dock near where the river emptied into the Caribbean Sea, and we hauled our canoes up to the trailer, got into the van, and went back to Hamanasi.

At dinner, I wasn’t feeling all that well and I couldn’t eat much. I didn’t even want dessert. This may have been partly due to me feeling extremely uncomfortable because our dinner group had expanded at the last minute to something like 14 people, and the Hamanasi staff was balking at putting together a table that big when we hadn’t let them know ahead of time (and rightly so), and members of our party began moving tables around on their own and insisting that Doc and I not eat dinner by ourselves, which we were attempting to do in an attempt to alleviate the clusterfuck. After nearly a week of social interaction, I also felt like my supply of social energy was running dangerously low at this point. (I am, after all, an introvert and I need lots of alone time.)

Our group had made plans to go out to a little bar in Hopkins Village called King Kassava, to have drinks and hang out with some of the Hamanasi staff and village locals, and up to this point I had planned to go, even though I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it (me + strangers + alcohol = much awkwardness on my part). However, I realized during dinner that I was becoming more and more anxious about the prospect of going, and after a discussion with Doc, who understood that I was feeling anxious and graciously agreed to do whatever I wanted to do, I told everyone that I wasn’t feeling well and had used up all my social energy for the week. Of course there were protests (”we’ll come back as early as the earliest person wants to come back!” — it never works that way, and I said so) but I held my ground. We came back to the room and watched a movie instead.

I think I made the right decision. Kathryn told me later that I would definitely have been uncomfortable at King Kassava — she very much felt like an outsider there, and if she did, I certainly would have, even more so.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I’m developing an anxiety disorder. I often am terrified at the prospect of going to places where there will be people I don’t know, especially when I don’t know how or if I’ll be able to escape.

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 this sand is a slightly finer grade than the sand back on the mainland. This is because…” and he launched into a tour-guide style geologic monologue about the makeup of the sand on the island.

The snorkeling was much better today than it was on Sunday. This may be partially due to the fact that I had brought a bottle of defogger with me, and I could actually see through my mask. My feet were still sore and raw from where the fins rubbed them on Sunday’s trip, but I went ahead and put them on anyway and just gritted my teeth through the pain. Next time I’ll know to bring my diving boots.

We stayed out in the water for quite awhile today, and everything on the reef was crisp, sharp, and colorful. I saw many different kinds of coral – brain coral, fan coral, cactus coral (I don’t know the actual names of most of them, I’m just describing what they look like). I saw a barracuda, a spotted eagle ray, a lobster, tons of fish including blue tangs, yellow parrotfish, scorpionfish (which look like giant mottled ugly lumps of coral until they move), sergeant majors, buttonsnappers, and so many others in all different colors.

It started to rain so we came back to shore (which was good because I’d forgotten to put a new motion sickness medication patch on this morning, and I had just begun to feel a bit queasy) and walked back to the marine biology students’ station (International Zoological Expedition) near the dock. The rain really started in once we got back and didn’t let up for probably 30 minutes. The divers had come back already and were having grapefruit juice and cookies. They went back out in the rain, but we were all so cold standing on IZE’s porch and the rain kept coming down, that we decided not to go back out again. Eventually we walked back to the other side of the island to fetch our gear, and when Tom realized we weren’t going to snorkel again, he pulled a full-on three-year-old temper tantrum. I think he was joking, but I’m not certain. He made blubbering noises and kept pointing at the ocean. Seriously.

On the boat ride back, one of the Canadian women sat next to me before Tom could and whispered, “I’ll protect you this time.” She told me “He’s not from MY side of the family.” Tom announced to the boat captain before we started back that he’d be wanting to stop a few times to videotape the surroundings and dictate to himself into his camera. At least I didn’t have to sit next to him. Poor Giovanni got the brunt of it, and shortly after we started back, he moved over to my side of the boat instead.

The boat had a pretty nice sound system, and the captain and dive masters had an iPod plugged in, playing really loud reggae the whole way back. I guess we were the party boat. We stopped at Bird Island, where all the giant pterodactyl-looking frigate birds and brown- and red-footed boobies roosted. It is a tiny island but it’s completely overgrown with trees and vegetation, and hundreds of birds circle overhead and roost in the trees along the shore.

Back on the mainland, I met Doc (who had come back on the other boat) at the pool, took a shower, then went to lunch. We ate with a fellow diver from a nearby resort, Carol, and her friend Sylvia, a little old lady from Italy, who thought that the bouillabase in Belize sucked. Sylvia kept reaching over and taking food off my plate. It was a very strange lunch.

I took a nap for most of the afternoon, and woke up shortly before we were due to eat dinner (tonight: house salad and a beef “fajita” – barely seasoned beef wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise – with coconut rice, and fruit crumble cheesecake and coffee. Oh, and lots of wine!). We had a lot of fun at dinner, talking and laughing about all sorts of things, including how Doc and Brett fooled the dive masters into thinking that they were afraid of manatees… which led to ideas for a TV show called “Humanatee” about half man/half manatee Jason Seaworthy and his adventures.

After dinner we played Trivial Pursuit in the lobby, boys against girls. The boys won by the skin of their teeth.

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 right away. I think we basically just relaxed and did as little as possible all day. That’s kind of what vacation is for, I suppose.

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 fork of a tree. She said it tasted like carrots or jicama.

After 15 minutes or so of hiking this moderate trail, the difficult part began. The path was steep — about a 75 degree incline in parts — and slick with wet leaves, wet roots, wet rocks, and lots of red mud. It was tough going. We had to grab roots and rocks to pull ourselves along, and in several places, we used knotted ropes tied to trees to haul ourselves upward. And this trail seemed to never end. I was panting and heaving and sweating in the 90-degree heat with 100% humidity (hello, rainforest!). I had to stop every 15 uphill feet or so to catch my breath. The hikers had split into two groups by this point, and most of our group seemed to be having similar troubles with exhaustion, although I think I was having a more difficult time than anyone. The other group seemed to be in much better shape, as they got to the top a lot faster.

About halfway up we reached a scenic viewpoint, Antelope Falls, which was only semi-interesting – a small stream pouring through big chunky granite boulders. We stopped for a drink of water and a bit of a rest here. I didn’t realize we were only halfway up. If I’d known, I might have elected not to go any further because I was so hot and sweaty and my leg muscles were twitching with exhaustion.

The remainder of the uphill trail was the worst part — extremely steep (those 75 degree inclines I was talking about) and treacherous with mud and steep drop-offs. In places, the trail was less than a foot wide before it went nearly straight downhill into the ravine. After a very difficult journey, we made it to the top, where we were rewarded with a gorgeous natural pool at the base of a waterfall. It was about 20 feet in diameter, and 20 feet deep. The water was very cold, maybe 65 degrees or so. We all stripped to our bathing suits and (eventually) took the plunge. Going in gradually was just not going to work – it was an all or nothing situation!

I got bitten by what I think are sand flies on both hips, probably while sitting on a rock in my bathing suit deciding if I really wanted to plunge into this water. I am really glad I did. It was incredibly refreshing after that hot muddy sweat-soaked hike. We swam around in the pool for a while and sat on a rock ledge under the falls themselves, pouring down cold and hard on our heads.

Eventually we had to put our sweaty clothes back on and go all the way back down the trail, which was almost as difficult as going up. The danger of slipping and falling down the trail or into the ravine seemed much greater while going down. We all tried to be careful but I think we were so tired and our legs were kind of like jelly by this point, that most of us bit it at some point. Doc twisted his ankle and whacked his forearm against a rock hard enough to form a knot. I thought he was going to go off the edge so I dove for his leg and grabbed on tight, while Nish dove for me and grabbed my legs. He caught himself in plenty of time but I was really frightened that I might lose him to the ravine. I slipped a few times, landing on my right wrist and whacking my tailbone on a rock. What impressed me was how easily our group worked together coming down, alerting each other to slippery spots and helping each other along the way.

The wildcard in this whole vacation turned out to be another guest who was with a large wedding party of Canadians. The Canadians were nice enough, and we couldn’t figure out why they’d invited Tom on their vacation because they seemed like they were actively trying to avoid him the whole week. Tom looked like Stephen King in a fishing hat, and he took every available opportunity to inject his knowledge of geology into every situation, whether it was appropriate or not (it usually wasn’t). His wife seemed very meek, and I only heard her speak two or three words the entire week. She also seemed to be doing her best to avoid him. He usually prefaced his lengthy monologues with “Well, you know, in Manitoba…” While we were at the pool at the top of the mountain, I glanced over to the bank and saw Tom COMPLETELY NAKED from behind, shorts around his knees, digging in his bag for his swim trunks. I feel even worse for poor Doc, who was standing on the other side of him and happened to glance back at that crucial moment. On the way down the mountain, Tom wound up at the back of the line with our rear guide, Lorenzo, who probably wanted to pull his own eardrums out of his head by the time the day was over.

When we arrived back at the visitor center at the bottom of the mountain, the other group of hikers (who were mostly the Canadians) had been waiting on us for 40 minutes – and they were hungry and pissed. It seems that Lorenzo had the keys to the van containing the lunch cooler. They gave us some pretty dirty looks, but frankly, since they stuck us with Tom at the back of the line, I had no sympathy for them. Lunch was delicious tuna salad sandwiches, roasted rosemary potatoes, grapefruit juice, water, and a wonderful little treat: a mini Snickers bar in each lunch box. It was hot and we were filthy, but I was so hungry I did not care that we were eating while sitting on a dirty concrete floor with flies buzzing all around. The air conditioning in the vans on the way back to Hamanasi was one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

When we got back to Hamanasi, Doc had developed a mildly nasty cluster headache so he napped while I joined the others poolside for a drink and chatting. Later we met for dinner (tomato/mozzarella salad and shrimp pasta salad, strawberry ice cream, pinot noir, and coffee). Then we all climbed up to the rooftop of the main building (where they plan to move the restaurant some time this fall), so the smokers could smoke. We chatted for a while, watched the stars, and then came to bed.

[click here for photos]

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 or red brains, some like lacy red and purple fans, and some like saguaro cactus. Fish surrounded us everywhere we turned! We saw a large barracuda, a spotted moray eel, bright yellow parrotfish, blue tangs, a huge lobster, and a conch in its shell with eyeballs poking out, among other things. I took some photos with an underwater film camera; I hope they turn out.

My mask kept fogging up really bad, and every minute or so I’d have to flood it with water to clear it. I forgot my mask defogging solution, and the spit technique wasn’t cutting it. Eventually I learned that if I kept just a little bit of water in the bottom of the mask, I could tip my head forward to slosh it around the inside of the mask and that would clear up the fog. Unfortunately, the water doesn’t stay in the eyepieces; it also migrates to the nose compartment. If I’d had a nose plug then I probably wouldn’t have accidentally inhaled a big snoot full of seawater. That hurt like hell. It went all the way through my sinuses and down the back of my throat. ,

I really should have brought my wetsuit boots because the fins hurt my toes and the tops of my feet. I strapped them on pretty tightly but they kept slipping off anyway. The up and down motion of the waves on the surface made Kat a little seasick so we escorted her back to shore, then Giovanni and I went out a second time. After 20 or 30 minutes, he said that the current was too strong and we’d have to head for shore. It was a long time and a hard swim before we made it back.

Apparently when you get water in your sinuses, there are little hidden pockets where it can stay without you realizing it. Every time I bent over for the rest of the day, seawater would come dripping out my nose.

We walked back to the dock side of the island and met up with the divers who were on a break between dives. We drank grapefruit juice from a cooler and ate chocolate coconut cookies as a snack. Doc wrote “Katy + Doc = (heart)” in the sand with his toe, but from upside down the heart looked to me like a light bulb. I knew what it was supposed to be, but I decided to be funny and said ‘Katy + Doc = light bulb?” Then Kat chimed in that it looked like a butt, and Brett said it looked like garlic. So all week we’ve been saying “Lightbulb butt garlic!” to each other as a joke.

The current was too strong to snorkel anymore, so Kat and I waited on the dock while the divers went out again, for about an hour. Giovanni got back on the boat and C-Dog stayed with us; he couldn’t dive anymore because he was too hung over (har!). We decided to wade in the shallows around the dock instead, and he took a nice long nap under a tree. I got sunburned a bit sitting out on the dock. The sun is so intense that it feels like pins and needles on your skin. I’m not sure how much sunblock I’d need in order to not burn, but it was more than I had on, apparently.

While we waited, we watched minnows swimming in the shallows, as well as little black and yellow striped fish, long bluish fish with really long blue needle noses, who would occasionally spit water, and a few other interesting things. A couple of pelicans were diving for fish. They circled the shallows, then dropped out of the sky like a spear and because it was shallow, it looked like they were coming straight down and BOING! getting their beaks stuck in the sand on the bottom. But they were agile and managed to scoop up their meal, turn upright and sit on the water while swallowing. Huge frigate birds circled high overhead; they looked like pterodactyls. I pretended they were.

Doc says that he enjoyed the diving for the most part. He and Brett went down to 60 feet, although Brett was having trouble equalizing the pressure in his ears and mask (maybe he had a cold?). They saw sea turtles, colorful fishies, and some other nifty things.

The boat ride back to the mainland was much calmer than the trip out. We showered and changed, and had lunch. I took my book out to the beach and laid on the sand under a palm tree and read for a while, drinking lots of water (the seasickness medication patch I was using makes my mouth feel very dry). Then I fell asleep for I don’t know how long. Doc wandered around with his camera for a while. Taz, the beach cat, laid down next to me for a bit while I was sleeping. Doc got photos.

Later, we sat on our balcony and talked to Doug and Nish on the next balcony over. We looked at pictures of their 16-month old son, Rohan, which they had on a memory stick that we put into our MacBook Pro for a little slideshow. He is the most adult-looking baby I’ve ever seen, and incredibly cute. Nish visited the bar and brought me back a drink called a Monkey LaLa, which I think probably means something vulgar in the local Garifuna language. It was fantastic – a frozen drink made with coffee, cream, Bailey’s, maybe some Kahlua, maybe some sort of fruit juice, maybe a little coconut.

A while later, we all met for dinner (black bean soup, lasagna, key lime pie, coffee, more Belikin). We invited Kurt and Megan, divers from Wisconsin, to sit with us. They seem really nice. Kurt graduated from Plano Senior High in 1988. Small world!

After dinner we were pretty tired, so after stopping by to see Kat and Brett’s treehouse, we came back to the room and went to bed.

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 driving to Houston in the wee hours of the morning.

We finished packing and double-checking our luggage, travel documents, etc., then went to bed for a few short hours of sleep.

We were on the road by 5:30 a.m. Mom had graciously agreed to house-sit for us while we were gone. I thought it was kind of ironic that she’d flown in from Houston the previous day, and now we had to drive down there ourselves only a few hours later.

On the drive down, I was not feeling well and we kept having to stop every 30 minutes or so. I guess I was stressed out from the possibility of our vacation dissolving before our eyes. I have a sensitive tummy anyway, and the added stress of having to change our carefully crafted plans at the last minute made me a little sick.

We arrived at the airport, parked our car in a remote lot, found Kat & Brett, and made it in plenty of time to our plane. The flight itself was blessedly uneventful, and we landed in Belize City only 30 minutes before our connecting flight to Dangriga was scheduled to leave. We disembarked the plane directly onto the tarmac and waited in a crazy long line to get through immigration. All of us were convinced by this point that we were not going to make it to our next flight. Immigration went very smoothly, but it took forever for our luggage to come out on the conveyor belt (put there by a guy standing in an open doorway, hauling the suitcases off a cart that someone had driven up to the door). Then we had to go to the ticketing counters to get our new boarding passes, which didn’t really take that long, but every minute that ticked by was that much less of a chance that we’d make our flight. By the time we were done, it was ten minutes past departure time. Then we had to go through customs, which was another long line.

We hauled ass to the gate (one of only three at the airport!) and, beyond all odds, were told that the plane was still here waiting for us, and to have a seat for a few minutes until they were ready for us. Brett went to the bar and got us a very-much-needed fruity tropical drink that the we shared before being escorted across the tarmac to our 12-seater single-propeller plane.

I thought that I’d be kind of freaked out on the little plane, since the last time I was on one I had a panic attack, but it was actually kind of fun and rather soothing (this is very likely because I was so relieved that we were actually ON this plane instead of stuck overnight in Belize City!). We flew over shrimp farms, swamplands, tree-packed hills, and what must have been tens of thousands of orange trees, arranged neatly in little orchards. When the plane came down in Dangriga, that runway didn’t look nearly long enough and so I had a little fit of apprehension. Doc was taking photos out the window the whole flight, and Brett was giggling from excitement at the size of the runway, as well as the fact that if we overshot it, we’d end up in the Caribbean Ocean.

I guess that little planes don’t require too much, though, because the runway was just fine. The Dangriga airport consists of that one tiny runway and a tiny little building with a ticket counter, a few chairs, and a TV.

A driver from Hamanasi was waiting to take us to the resort, so we loaded all our luggage into the van and from there it was a very bumpy 30 minute drive down a rough highway, through the little village of Hopkins, and finally to the resort.

We were greeted at the door with glasses of fruit punch, and then shown to our rooms. Our room was extremely nice and very spacious, with a Spanish tile floor and solid wood furniture. We had a sofa, wardrobe, table and chairs, solid wood 4-poster bed with a shelf at the head of the bed, and a bathroom with beautiful deep green tiles and an open shower with a window opening up onto the tropical landscape. We unpacked our clothing into the wardrobe, took a few minutes to relax and freshen up, and then went downstairs to meet everyone for dinner.

All meals are served in the main house of the resort, and they require dinner reservations each night so that they can spread out all the guests over a 6:30 to 8:30 period so as not to overwhelm the kitchen. The main house also contains the gift shop, check in counter, bar, and lounge area. Meals are eaten on a large covered patio with tables and chairs. It was wonderful to eat outdoors with the cool ocean breeze and sound of the surf. They do a pretty good job of spraying for bugs, too; we weren’t bothered very much while eating.

This first night, I had a delicious bowl of creamy smoked tomato soup, grilled flounder with pesto and coconut rice, and key lime pie. I also had a local beer called Belikin, which tastes (to my unsophisticated palate) a lot like Shiner Bock.

After dinner, Kat & Brett, Doug & Nish, and Doc and I walked down to the beach and out onto the boat dock, where we laid and looked at the stars (oh my god! There are so many you can see from here!) and swung in hammocks for a while.

[click here for photos]