February 14
We left the house at 7:00 am for our 9:45 flight to Belize City. The fun began when we tried to check our bags. We’re all traveling on the same confirmation number. To begin the process, you need to let the kiosk know who you are. I’m using the Southwest app. You can scan the QR code, supposedly, but that didn’t work. After four or five tries, I gave up and just inserted the credit card I used to buy the tickets. Strike one against the app.
It has been a while since I flew out of concourse C. I was sort of looking forward to a bagel at Einstein Bagels, but they’re no longer there. Plan B was a breakfast burrito. Next, we headed to the gate. It was here that I discovered that the Southwest app wouldn’t bring up Michael’s boarding pass. When I went to get his boarding pass printed, I could no longer display either my or Genae’s boarding pass. Paper passes for all, then. I’m less than impressed with the Southwest app.
The flight was uneventful (as all good flights are). We didn’t notice until after beverage service was over that, it being Valentine’s Day, they were giving passengers free beer. An opportunity missed.
At the Belize City airport, they don’t have jetways – it’s old school. They drive the Arrested Development stair cars to the plane and we walk down to the tarmac. They did this at both the front and back of the plane, so deboarding was fairly quick. That was the last quick thing for the day.
A United Airlines flight from Denver landed just ahead of us. By the time we got in line for passport control, we were at the end of a line about a hundred yards long and about four people wide. After passport control, we go to customs. The guard let a bunch of people go without being queried about customs declarations, but no shortcut for us. We were asked where we were staying (“a private residence”) and who we were staying with. I gave them Greg’s name, but not an address or even the city he lives in. Just his name was good enough.
We were allowed to pass without being searched.
On to the car rental agency. I was third in line. It took about 45 minutes to complete the transaction. Basically, they were out of cars. One guy was told that his SUV had just been returned, but was having overheating problems. The next guy’s car needed to be washed – “It’ll only take 10 minutes. 10 Belizean minutes!” Our car wasn’t available either. Could we take a smaller car? Needing a car, I assented. “We’ll lower the price since it’s a smaller car.” The price given to me was $25 more than my original quote. That took another few minutes to fix.
We piled into our VW Nivus and headed out. To get out of the rental car parking lot, we had to pay $2 American (or $4 Belizean). I’ve never had to pay to get out of a rental car parking lot before.
Much of our 2.5-hour drive to Corozal would be in the dark on one of Belize’s best roads. (There’s a town called Corozal, in the district called Corozal. We’re headed to Corozal town.) This road is a two-lane highway, signed and striped just like roads here in the USA. The speed limit outside of the towns is 55 mph. But there are speed bumps on this highway. I’ve never seen speed bumps on a highway before. Most of them have warning signs. Most. I hit one of them moving at triple-digit speed. (The VW’s dashboard is set to metric.) Yes, we were going over 100 kph when I spotted the bump. I braked hard, but hit the speed bump harder. We did not catch air, but I was concerned I might have damaged the car. Good thing I got the insurance.
By now, it was getting dark. I got a dashboard warning telling me to turn on the headlights. Seems to me the car should be able to turn the headlights on automatically. It’s not new technology – I had it in a car manufactured last century. I couldn’t find the light switch while going 100 kph and keeping a watch out for speed bumps. Michael even did a quick (and fruitless) web search. I had to pull off the road to figure it out.
Back on the road, we began seeing trucks loaded with sugar cane heading the other way. The trucks were piled high with cane – far too tall to go under any US overpass or traffic signals. They all looked fairly precarious. Canes littered the road at each speed bump. The speed bumps, by the way, are called “sleeping policemen” by the locals.
The air was sometimes thick with smoke. When the cane is harvested, the fields are set afire. At one point, the horizon in front of us was orange with flame. A few minutes later, we saw the field that was burning – it came right up to the road.
Entering Corozal, we still had a bit of a journey ahead of us to get to Consejo Shores. It’s only about 7 miles, but it’s 7 miles of bad dirt road. It’s fairly heavily travelled, but punctuated by potholes small, medium, and large. I managed to miss most of the biggest holes while maintaining a more-or-less 35 kph pace: faster than perhaps I should have been driving, but too slow not to get passed.
We arrived at Greg’s a bit before 8 pm, which was earlier than Greg expected. I had a Belikin beer. This is perhaps the most popular beer in Belize, advertised at just about every cantina and restaurant between Belize City and Corozal. Compared to Colorado craft beers, it’s not great, but it was welcome after this drive. (The name “Belikin” is an amalgamation of several Mayan words meaning either “road to the east” or “road to the burning sun”.)
February 15
A lazy day today. For breakfast, Greg offered up some fresh fruit – guava, melon, pineapple, avocado – and banana bread.
In the early afternoon, it was off to the “beach” for volleyball. I didn’t play, but got into the water to float or sit on the bottom. There’s no beach here, and they play ball in the shallow water. The net is fifty feet or so from the shore, but today (even though some regulars said it was “deep” today), the water was about waist-deep. I ventured a bit farther from the shore, but never found deep water.
For dinner, Greg cooked up some sea bass and Spanish rice. We played games and chatted until after Greg’s bedtime.
