Leaving the Jungle, Going to the Beach

Well the day to vacate our jungle headquarters arrived with mixed feelings. We were pretty beat from the daily adventuring and ready for a couple of days by the ocean in Placencia, but we would definitely miss the lodge and all the friends we'd made there.

We had one final breakfast with all the other tourists. I think we might have eaten a little extra, the way you do when you're not sure what or when your next meal will be. It was funny because our room number had been sloppily scratched off of the assigned seating sign at our table. Seems like once we stopped paying them we stopped being besties!

If I had feelings I may have been sad to leave.

This is where the buses lined up to take people to amazing places. It was also where Robert the cab man we met yesterday was waiting to drive us. It was funny because he had the cab's hood popped up while waiting. Lydia and I both shared a quick "uh oh" glance before we got in the cab. We sat down and noticed there was a teenager in the front seat. The cab driver was turning this drive to the beach into a full flung family vacation, and both his wife and daughter would meet him there. The exact same thing happened to me while taking a cab a good distance to a city in Peru. Must be a thing.

We had a couple of photo opportunities. Here we are in a banana field. I had stayed up late the night before looking for cool places to stop along the way but I didn't find much. The natural wonders and the Mayan ruins are really the main draw in this country. I spotted Kropf's Bakery, run by Mennonites, but of course when we arrived it was closed. I've been outsmarted by Mennonites for the last time!

We arrived in Placencia and had Robert take us to an ATM to get some cash for him. It was sort of a more highly developed version of Hopkins where we went snorkeling. We got settled at our new hotel, Robert's Grove Placencia.

Placencia has been called the "caye you can drive to" because it is a very long, narrow peninsula that feels very much like an island.

Oh Robert's Grove, so much wasted potential. It's a beautiful place, right on the ocean. It has several nice pools, three restaurants, and the rooms were pretty solid as well. Unfortunately the staff was god awful. Especially in contrast with Ian's, the people at Robert's were really bad at their job. The desk staff insisted that we leave our bags with them and have someone bring them to us. Well, someone forgot and our bags never came, so we walked back and got them ourselves and dragged the bags to our room. We hadn't had even a whiff of internet since we arrived at Ian's, so we were really looking forward to it. Of course the connection was terrible, and dropped regularly. I believe that in the response the company left to Lydia's bad review on Trip Adviser, management blamed that on the weather. Pretty weak. The hotel was a good ways away from the town of Placencia proper, so we again went for the golf cart and got the heck out of there.

There were cashew trees on the hotel grounds. Each nut comes attached to this crazy bell-pepper looking fruit. I thought they were awesome so I grabbed a couple and figured we could read about how to eat them back in the room. When we got there Lydia read that they were poisonous in their current state, so I threw them away. Seems like a metaphor.

Pretty much my very first decision as golf cart Capitan was to pick up some hitchhikers. I'd been reading On the Road over the last several days, and I felt like if we wanted to have a comparable adventure that we needed to start picking up way more weirdos. The group was two younger women and a little boy. I later told Lydia that my new hitchhiker policy was to only pick up people that I'm sure I could beat up. So pretty much smaller women and children. The group ended up being Mayan, which I thought was awesome. One of the girls was very talkative so we got to hear a lot about her on the way to town. Her and the other woman were in Placencia to sell handicrafts that the people in her village had made. They were from the southern edges of Belize, which is home to a large population of Mayans. Somehow it came up that they eat lizards down there, which I thought sounded pretty cool. When it was time to let them off, they of course hit us up to buy some of there handmade crud. We had to say "no thanks" more than once. I figure giving them a ride was enough of a service that I didn't need to buy anything. At this point in my life my opinion on "crafts" is that I'd rather set my money on fire.

We poked around in Turtle Inn a bit on the way to town. It's an expensive place to stay owned by Francis Ford Coppola. It was nice but I wouldn't pay to stay there I'm afraid.

The airstrip was pretty funny. The planes were tiny, but it got worse. There was one of those parking lot arms that comes down in the middle of the road that went past the airstrip. The arm would go down when planes were landing or taking off that the planes wouldn't hit your car while flying by. This would be the airport we'd take out of town, so it was half funny and half scary. We had initially planned on renting a car and driving from Ian's to Robert's and then back to the airport in Belize city, but after seeing the condition of the roads and the lack of much to see roadside we changed our plans. I think we made a wise choice.

Some kids were racing our golf cart with their bicycle. The young diver had on a Diego Milito jersey. It seemed like a sign that I should smoke him in our race, which I promptly did.

All, my, friends, know the low rider.

Well we had very little to do but cruise around and eat and drink, all of which we did over and over. There were little booths all over selling tours and excursions. We purposely came to Belize in the off season on the cusp of the rainy season in order to get better prices and avoid all the tour-folk. Well as a result most of the tour booths were closed, and those that were open didn't seem very motivated to give tours. We tried to book a couple different ones before giving up.

We did bump into the couple that had accompanied us on the Tikal trip which was fun. Belize being such a small country definitely facilitated this. They were just wasting time like us. They had booked some sort of scuba diving excursion but the water was too choppy to go. That made me feel less stupid for not having planned something similar ahead of time. Later on in the Houston airport immigration line we bumped into another couple that we'd met at the jungle lodge. Pretty funny.

The next day we laid around and read our books a bit, swam a bit, and then gave in and rented another golf cart. I made sure we got a different one, because the one we'd had the day before was making some pretty nasty grinding sounds. Turns out someone was having a little too much fun driving over the country's many speed-bumps in a very bumpy, speedy fashion. Darn tourists.

This time we drove away from town toward Jaguar Bowling Lanes.

We had seen the place on the taxi ride to town but I had ruled it out. "Surely we'll have more exciting things to do than go bowling!", I had incredibly wrongly thought to myself.

Bowling is bowling, which is always fun. There was a World Cup game in progress on TV which was a plus. Then I noticed they had wifi! That place was like heaven. We joked that we wished we were staying at the bowling alley instead of our crummy hotel.

Back at the hotel we did get to see some pretty awesome lizards.

They move surprisingly quickly.

Hotel pool.

The hotel's breakfast went surprisingly later. Like until 11:00. I took advantage by eating it for breakfast and then again later as an early lunch. Baller.

We just so happened to be in Placencia on the first day of Lobster season, and many of the restaurants in town had lobster advertised, so we went for it.

One thing that made Placencia nice is that when a restaurant was called Omar's, Omar was standing out front grilling. This happened to us a couple of times.

I had the grilled lobster. It was nice and fresh.

The next morning was our final one. We headed to that tiny, scary little airport to face our fate.

Oh, Robert's Grove. So pretty yet so bad.

Our boarding passes were these big plastic things that they reused everyday.

The Tropic Air plane was pretty small.

We got on and sat up front. As you can see there wasn't anything separating us from the pilots. The seating reminded me a lot of a school bus, with long bench-like seats with no dividers or armrests. I had to hunch over to get in, as the plane had super low ceilings. No overhead compartments here. My carry on just had to sit in my lap the whole way to Belize City.

It was pretty scary. The plane was so small that it flew really low. The flight was pretty smooth but it was just so small a plane that every little bump was traumatizing. They were stingy with the air so the plane was really hot and stuffy. When we stopped half way in Dandriga to pick up more passengers, Lydia said she wished we could just ditch the rest of the flight and take a cab for the remainder. I was about ready to puke by the time we got to Belize City.

At least the view was nice. 

Through some quirk of airline occupancy we flew first class all the way back to St. Louis: Belize City to Houston, Houston to Washington D.C., and D.C. to St. Louis. This was my first taste of the airline high life, so I wanted to get the most out of it. Anytime they offered me anything the answer was yes. Well after flying all over North America first class won. I couldn't drink another drink, or bite another bite. They really keep you busy in first class. Hot towels, drinks, and snacks just wouldn't stop coming. By the end I just wanted to be left alone and try to take a nap. It was an awesome experience though! I can't wait until I have enough frequent flier miles to take a long flight in first class. They give you beds on those things!

Hello Belize: The Zoo Then The Jungle

The flights were pretty much uneventful. While standing in line at the Belize immigration I noticed there were American flag stickers in each booth that said the immigration equipment had been paid for by the US government.

We already had a car arranged ahead of time so there wasn't any of that unfortunate hiring of sketchy cab driver business to look forward to. Our driver was a rather tall Dutch man named William. William had a very animated, run-on train of thought that reminded me very much of Robin Williams, complete with multiple accents and sound effects. William had a bummer of a story that because he had accepted Belizean citizenship without getting married to a local that the Netherlands revoked his native citizenship. Kinda lame move on their part I would say. He certainly didn't seem too torn up about it though, so that was good.

The airport was nice and laid back. None of that scary zombie movie, faces smashed against the glass business I've witnessed down south in the past.

We hadn't been driving long when he asked if we’d like to stop and pick up some beers for the road. Um, yes, yes we would. I’d read about the local beer company, Belikin, in the guide book so I had to have that one. I thought it was amusing that the two flavors of Belikin, original and stout, both come in the same bottle with only the bottle cap color to differentiate. We are also back to the returnable bottles, so each one weighs about a pound empty. Speaking of bottle caps, William told us to wipe off the mouth of the bottle after removing the cap because sometimes they rust.

Belizean dollars are pegged to 2x the US dollar which makes the math pretty simple. Everyone seems to take US dollars so I haven’t had to mess with ATMs at all.

Stopping at the Belize Zoo was a big reason that we wanted to hire a car in the first place. We flew into Belize City, but the guide books make it sound pretty rough.  A healthy level of crime mixed with not much to see made it a good place to skip. Typical wisecracking William chimed in that Belize City was really just Detroit with palm trees. Belize Zoo was pretty near the city but outside of it, so we didn't get to see any of the city charm. Going to zoos in other countries is awesome because you will definitely see creatures you hadn't seen previously. I would say the majority of the animals that I saw at this zoo I had not known to even exist.

The Belize Zoo has it easy because it is already in the jungle, so they really just put a few fences up around terrain that was already there. It's funny because the place is so wild that you'll often see awesome animals in places where they aren't even supposed to be.

Lydia got too close and got a camera full of comically large beak.

The gibnut, nicknamed the royal rat after it was served to Queen Elizabeth during a visit.

This Ocelot was making a whole lot of noise.

Jaguar. They apparently spend about 2% of their time murdering and the other 98% in a jungle coma.

Each animal had its own cool hand painted sign.

I gave bonus points for rhyming.

Harpy Eagle

Jabiru Stork

After rattling all of those animals cages and poking them with jungle sticks, we were famished. William suggested a local restaurant by the name of Cheers. I couldn't stop laughing.

Every last beer that we ordered in the country came with a napkin wrapped over the top. It's meant to wipe off any possible rust taste.

The food was fine but not a single person new my name. They didn't even seem super glad that I came.

Further down the road we reached a police checkpoint. Driver William asked us for one of our empties as we approached. Will asked them to hold his beer while he looked for his driver’s license. They all had a good chuckle and then we were on our way.

We stopped at a supermarket briefly, then took a quick cruise around Belmopan, the capital of Belize. (William: the Chinese control the supermarkets. They’re just better at it. Tenacious.”) According to my pre-trip reading, the capital used to be coastal Belize City but it was moved inland in the 1970’s after a particularly brutal hurricane. Belmopan looked pretty rough in its own way. Even the parliament building was pretty sad looking. He drove us by the US embassy which was quite imposing by comparison.

The farther we got from coastal Belize city, the more jungle-like the scenery became.

When we finally arrived at Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch Lodge, it was like entering the Garden of Eden. The thatched roof guest quarters are separated by mazes of all types of plants and flowers. One thing that we were concerned about were the bucket-full-of-holes jungle showers, but apparently the rooms have been updated and there are now indoor showers in each room. Suits me just fine. There are no glass windows, only screens throughout our little cabin, so I can occasionally hear large winged insects trying to get in.

We were ushered to the front desk where we got cool towels, some welcome drinks, and got to sign lengthy liability releases.

Each day our bath towels were arranged in an animal shape with flowers all over the place. There was a lesser version of this towel origami happening at our recent cruise.

We had been warned about the deafening cries of the howler monkey but so far the exotic animal calls are a constant, soft background music that you can just ignore if you want to. We brought earplugs thinking it might be hard to sleep with the monkey symphony outside but we've been fine so far.
The food is really good, but its presentation is a bit summer campy. There are four courses, and each one is preceded by the head camp counselor’s explanation presentation. Seating is assigned, but luckily dinner was next to a nice family. If you stay the entire time then dinner will take 2 hours, but mom of the family Cathy pointed out that since we don’t have TVs or really anywhere else to be that dinner conversation is not a terrible form of night-time entertainment. It's also a good way to get information about the place from the other inmates. Lydia said the whole thing reminded her of what our recent cruise’s forced meals were like, only these were completely way better.

Dinner time is when the tour guides go table to table to drum up interest for their respective adventure itineraries. We figured we would get all of our week’s worth of tours lined up immediately, but the situation here is much more relaxed. We don’t really know where we will be going until the day before. Tomorrow we will be starting off with some cave tubing. Sounds tubular.

I probably went to sleep at like 8pm this night. A long day of awesome experiences will really take it out of you.