The gringas are out, the gringas are out!
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2007
1
12
Trip End
Jan 15, 2008
Where I stayed
Barefoot Caribe
Caye Caulker, Belize
Friday, January 11, 2008
We waited at the bus stop for awhile, and eventually were picked up by a bus going into Belize City. We went back up the Hummingbird Highway to Belmopan and east to Belize from there, in three and a half hours. In Belize, Sarah wanted to try walking through the city from the bus station to the water taxi station, to see if our initial three or four impressions of the city were really accurate. They were. It's a pity all major transportation goes through that one awful city.
We had to wait about forty-five minutes to catch the taxi, but it was a beautiful day and the ride was lovely. Once we got to Caye Caulker, however, we found that our room had been over-booked, so we had to find somewhere else to stay. By the recommendation of the staff at Costa Maya, we ended up at the blue Barefoot Caribe Hotel. At first glance, it seemed okay, but we were to learn that certain facts which would not make this a place to come back to. We ate at the Sports Bar and Grill, which had excellent smoothies, and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the island, using the internet, buying souvenirs and checking on diving for the following day. We ended up making reservations for a dive at Frenchie's Dive Shop. (After being snickered at because I had rather a backwards view of what "certification dives" were.) The weather all day was absolutely perfect and what I had been expecting for the first week of our trip. I don't think it could possibly have been prettier. We got the blue sky, turquoise water, white sand, and waving palm trees on the second go-round. On our travels around the island, we happened across a lot filled with cats and junk. Not garbage junk, just junk-junk, and several dozen cats. In the middle of all of the cats was a single dog, flopped in the shade. We talked to the cats for awhile, but a bystander started asking to marry me so he could move to Phoenix (why?!) and we took our leave of the Cat Compound. Those felines were planning a world takeover. Phase One was probably already complete and we don't even know it. Cats are sneaky like that.
For dinner, we stopped by Don Corleone's, our favorite stand-by by now, after a fruitless effort earlier in the day to find the Rasta Pasta Rainforest Cafe. We reasoned at least we could get the pizza, if we stopped by early enough. In addition to being able to get pizza, we ordered a weird topping mixture and they did it right. This may have been the first time we managed to order pizza in a foreign country with any variation from the menu at all and get exactly what we wanted. I went ahead and ordered coffee and dessert, since Don Corleone's does such a good job.
After dinner, we spent a long time wandering around the island, ostensibly in a bid to find pool tables that were not in an annoying karaoke bar, but really just because we were bored. We didn't really find any, though we did stumble across Rasta Pasta, a jewelry seller who seemed very in need of friends (he talked to us forever and ran off to get me a souvenir cigar, leaving us in charge of his stall), the Chinese quarter, several clubs for locals (I use "club" in the very loosest sense, since one of them seemed to be in someone's garage with a neon sign), a sign on the beach proclaiming a "party" somewhere (evidently you had to take a small boat out to the party) and the radio transmitter for the island. Our shining moment of brilliance for the evening - while meandering along one of the darkened back streets, it occurred to me that in a city, this would probably be considered dangerous. So we took stock of how much money we had on us and made sure our passports were safely back in the room in case we got mugged. Then we kept going.
Sarah was the first one to try our shower before bed, and this is when we found problems with the sewage smell in the room and in the water, combined with a near complete lack of drainage. Since we couldn't very well leave at midnight, we resolved to check back at Costa Maya the next morning. Their rooms may be dark and overbooked, but their water does not have a palpable odor and color.
