February 20
When we planned our activities for this trip, we thought it was a good idea to have a rest day after we arrived in Belize and another rest day before we returned home. I’m not going to say it wasn’t a good plan, but in retrospect, I’d rather have visited another Mayan ruin: Cerros than hung around Consejo. Cerros isn’t far from Corozal, although I’m guessing the roads are not very good.
In any event, Friday was a day of relaxation. This was not a bad thing. You see, I managed to take a trip to the Caribbean and catch a cold. Our second night here, we had a fan running in the bedroom to serve as white noise. I awoke in the early morning with the fan blowing on me. I had a bit of a scratchy throat. I was thinking this was because the fan had dried me out. I was thinking incorrectly.
Half a lifetime ago, every time I flew on a plane, I caught a cold. I’d take vacations in Phoenix and spend the whole time sitting in the sun in my parents’ backyard, sniffling and sneezing. Sometimes, I’d get back home after the vacation and take a couple of sick days. I flew to Louisville, KY, for work once and had a miserable cold. The hotel was full of military personnel for some reason. It was when Operation Desert Shield turned into Operation Desert Storm. I slept through most of the war, although I could occasionally hear the cheering of the military guests. Catching a cold every time I flew was beyond annoying.
Luckily, when I started travelling every week for work, I was no longer catching colds on every flight. I don’t know why the godz decided to remind me of that history and knock me down with a cold on this trip, but so it goes. I was mostly functional during the day, although some days I could hardly talk. When we’d get back to Greg’s, though, I’d relax and try to take a nap.
So a relaxing Friday wasn’t a bad thing.
A cold isn’t the only thing I picked up in Belize. By Friday, I had a rash of some sort on both forearms. Nowhere else, and not under my watch. If it was from the sun, why only on my arms? If it was from the sunscreen, again, why only on my arms? I never did figure it out; the rash was gone a couple of days after returning home, before I recovered from the cold.
February 21
When we bought our tickets, the original return flight was to change planes in Houston Hobby. It was a nice surprise that, a few weeks before we left, Southwest notified us that they’d changed us to a direct flight. It makes for an easier day for us, but I’d never been to Hobby before, and that would have been the 57th airport I’ve travelled to/from/through.
Greg said somebody told him that there were 85 speed bumps between his place and the airport. That seemed like a reasonable number, but it didn’t stop us from counting them. Our tally could be off by one in either direction, but we counted 74.
Returning the rental car was quick and easy compared to picking it up. We were quite early, probably could have waited another hour before leaving Greg’s, but it’s better to be early and have time to kill than to be late and miss our flight.
After we got checked in and dropped off our baggage, we went to the restaurant for lunch. We all had grilled ham and cheese – not exactly traditional Belizean fare. This was one of the few places I could find a sugar-free soft drink. Nobody had “diet” anything; a couple of places had Coke Zero, and a couple of places had unsweetened iced tea. I don’t normally consume alcohol when I’m feeling poorly, but when I couldn’t get a sugar-free soft drink, I resorted to beer. Done with lunch, we headed to our gate.
I hadn’t given much thought to how the gates work in an airport with no jetways. We were at gate 6, way at the end. (One tactic Southwest uses to keep costs low is to rent the gates and baggage carousels that are the farthest away. The rent on those is lower.) We weren’t the only people who were early. There are maybe 80 seats at gate 6, with similar numbers at the other gates. A 737 has something like 180 seats, so if the only people waiting here were for our flight, there’d be a bunch of people standing around.
From the flight status monitors, I saw that there was a flight leaving from gate 6 before ours, and there looked to be two flights’ worth of people at gate 5, too. Out the door at gate 6, we could see a plane. It was a different airline than any of the flights leaving from gates 5 and 6. It was then that I realized that the planes just come in and park at any gate, and departing passengers are led out the doors at their gate and ushered to wherever they need to go. So the folks getting on the plane at gate 6 could be coming from any gate, and when we walked out, we’d be marched to a plane anywhere in the line.
Our flight was on time and uneventful.
It was a good trip. We hadn’t seen Greg for ages, and it might be some time before we see him again. We thoroughly enjoyed all of our excursions, and the weather was nice.
That said, I found Belize a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m a desert boy. Denver isn’t exactly desert, but it’s dry here, and I’m not a big fan of high humidity. The temperature in Belize was within a degree or two of 80 for our entire stay, with high humidity. I looked forward to a shower each day, but within minutes of getting out of the shower, I found myself thinking, “I’d really like a shower!” I lived in South Florida for a bit less than a year and never did get accustomed to the humidity.