Thursday, May 17
It rained all morning of the last day, which threw the chatty investor’s prophecy from earlier into further shadow. Or maybe he was going by the rainy season calendar. From all we could tell, people more or less followed it religiously.
“In two weeks the rain will come and it will not stop until November.”
I had never heard that type of attitude toward weather. I’m used to weathermen being 90% right 10% of the time, as the saying goes. It seemed like everywhere I went the weather got more erratic.
Nebraska winter: a mix of snow and tank tops, dipping to -16. Summer: mostly tank tops with a high of 105.
South Carolina summer: sudden rain showers cropping up whenever you forget your umbrella.
Colorado Front Range winter: not actually snowy 90% of the time. You can go golfing again as soon as the snow melts in 2 days.
New Zealand: don’t like the rain on the eastern coast? Just drive to the other side of the island.
But this tropical predictability is wild and strange. Their weathermen must be celebrities; they must be very bored. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be RIGHT with such regularity.
Still, it was technically a few weeks before rainy season and it was raining, at least for the morning. The faucet was just turning on and sputtering out a few splashes before the deluge. Luckily, being non-tropical people, we had prepared with rain jackets in the event that a stray thunderstorm had followed us from our feral longitude.
We slogged through the muddy streets (apparently sand can be muddy) of Caye Caulker while other tourists zipped past in covered golf cart taxis on their way to the water taxi docks. There are only two taxi companies. They don’t exactly operate like clockwork as the weather is supposed to, but we didn’t have too long to wait, which was good since the flight left around noon.
I had given my mom the backpack I had gotten from my company (Patagonia, people. I’m not that cheap). It had the logo stitched on, of course (Ok, maybe I am that cheap), and was pretty good at attracting comments since the company has a loyal following.
“What’d you have to do to get that?” A guy in his thirties who was sitting across from us in the terminal / shack asked.
“Have a daughter who works there,” we replied. That began a fun conversation about his job, which was even more interesting. He basically followed carnivals around as a worker. He didn’t always have the same job but the core group of workers seemed to stay pretty much the same. Or at least, he saw a lot of the same people who just work events and use the opportunity to hop from country to country. South America has a lot work that way.
Now there’s a “career” that you won’t hear about at the job fair. I’m always happily astounded by these unheard of jobs – especially travel jobs. South American carnivals, “white monkey jobs” in China, TESL, fruit picking in Australia, Kibbutz in Israel to name just the more well known jobs.
Anyway, within an hour we were disembarking at Belize City and paying a guy in a Dodge Caravan $25 to take us to the airport. $25, per Wiki Triip, is the normal price for that. Having lived in Asia for a while, we tried $20 but the guy would have none of it.
The Belize airport is tiny. There are 2 lines for security and once you’re passed that, you step directly into the only terminal. There is no spiriting 3 miles to find the right terminal in Belize, which meant that even though we feared being late, we had plenty of time.
And that was it. Nine days roasting in mild adventures just below the Tropic of Cancer and then back to Colorado.
For anyone interested in visiting Belize, our middle loop wasn’t too bad: Belize City-Hopkins/jungle-Guatemala-San Ignacio-Caye Caulker. We missed out on the north and south in exchange for Guatemala but since that was my personal favorite part of the trip, I don’t regret it.
Belize is certainly more pricy than Asia though the roundtrip flight from Denver was only $374. In total, James and I spent about $900 each – which is more a day than we usually spend traveling. And that includes literally everything: 9 days of airport parking, meals, car rental, gas, border fees, entry fees, everything.
That’s about $66 a day for daily expenses, including Jeep rental, though keep in mind that we only eat 1 or 2 meals a day.
One could’ve used only hostels and buses to save a bit, of course. But after doing the math, renting a Jeep to drive everywhere (including Guatemala) was actually cheaper than hiring drivers to go that far with 3 people. Plus, and I’m adamant about this, wandering around at your own discretion is way more fun.
For comparison, in college I took a trip from the east coast out to the Grand Canyon for less than a week. We paid for lodging only one night and only paid for food half the time and it cost $600.
In the end, do I recommend Belize? Sure. But after a week or two, hop over to Guatemala, Mexico, or Honduras and continue on from there.