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The day started at 3:00 AM for a 6:00 AM flight from Austin to Houston. In Houston, we had a 4 hour layover. One hour before the flight was to board, I found out that Belize requires a notarized letter from Jason's mother giving permission for him to travel to Belize without her since he is under 18. After several texts and phone calls to Jackie, the gate agent told me that she would let us board the plane if I could assure her that Jackie would send an image of the notarized letter to Jason or me before we landed. I assured her that we would have the letter and we boarded the plane.
When we landed, Jackie had sent a letter, but Jackie had used her own language instead of the language the gate agent gave me that I sent to Jackie to use. Thus put into motion a new set of calls and texts trying to get Jackie to send the correctly worded letter. Finally, after Jackie sent multiple versions of the letter, she eventually sent something close enough to the language that I sent her and we were let into Belize!
We went through customs quick enough and got into an arranged van to transport us to San Ignacio and our hotel. The driver was friendly enough and encouraged us to get a Belican beer to drink on the 2 hour ride to the hotel. I got a beer, Jason got a red Fanta. We got some fried plantain chips and we were on our way.
The driver told us about how there was a large Amish and Mennonite population. How they were planting crops like soy beans in fields that once had citrus trees that were destroyed due to disease. He showed us the sugar cane fields and talked about how "the Chinese" were buying everything up...he said he doesn't know if they are actually Chinese, he calls all Asian people Chinese. He also talked about how the open air market in downtown opens at 5:00 AM and if we wanted fresh local food, we should get there early. I said I wanted Jason to try stewed chicken and papusas. The driver thought that was funny because locally papusas is slang term for a certain type of woman. He said the open air market would have both the stewed chicken and papusas.
What the typical grocery store looks like in Belize.
Bumps in the Road and Tapir Crossing
We got to the hotel and eventually got to our room. The room is clean and serves our purpose. The hotel clerk told us that the nearby mountain had been on fire and that it had rained three days earlier, putting the fire out, but the outside smelled like a campfire.
We decided that Jason needed shoes to walk/hike in a river in. He brought steal toed boots, but didn't realize he would be up to his chest in a river during parts of the hike. We decided to go into town to explore and get him some shoes. The front desk called a taxi for us and said it would be ten minutes, forty five minutes later the taxi showed up, but there was an Asian family waiting ahead of us, so he took them. Jason and I decided to just walk to town. Eventually, the taxi found us and he apologized for being so late and said he would take us wherever wanted to go for free. We said we needed to go to a shoe store for water hiking shoes. He dropped us off and gave me his Whats App number to arrange for a ride back to the hotel.
We went into the store and found a shoe that looked like a cross between crock and a hiking shoe. It was $20 Belize ($10 US Dollars). I also found a pair of sunglasses that I liked that were also $20 Belize. We then wondered around the town for a while, it was 4:00 PM and a lot of places were winding down and closing up. As we wondered locals would say "Hi!" to us and asked us were we were visiting from. The entire town was very welcoming! We found a small restaurant and bought two burritos and four empanadas. Jason ate the chicken burrito and I ate the pork one. We split the four empanadas. The food was amazing! We also got two waters...the total was $11 Belize ($5.50 USD)! We wondered around some more and saw an old woman with a bag of groceries. We asked her where a grocery store was because I wanted to get some Coke Zero and some waters. She didn't speak English, but motioned how to get to where she got her groceries.
We got to the grocery store and looked around and got the drinks and an ice cream bar for Jason and some cold candy bar for me. As we ate our dessert, I messaged the taxi man for a ride, but it was taking him a while to respond. A man across the street from us called over to us and asked if we needed a taxi because he would drive us. I eventually said ok and he said he would take us back to the hotel for $5 USD. On the way back to the hotel, he told Jason about how elections are held in Belize.
Once back, we then came back to our room to put the drinks in the mini fridge and then walked around the hotel, looked at the views (they are really good), the pool and the restaurant menu. The restaurant menu was disappointing.
We went back to the room, talked about going to hang at the pool but stayed in the room instead and settled in for the night. Jason checked the room for bed bugs (there were none found) and got a shower.
After Jason got a shower, the hotel experienced a blackout.
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