Jacqueline has been bugging me to put our Belize trip on the blog, so I figure you have got to make the lady happy...
My dad, his wife Laura, Jacqueline and I flew out of rainy Seattle, which is how people always seem to describe Seattle, but this past week had been particularly rainy. Our flight was not too long and since Jacqueline and I seem to spend every minute playing card games anyway, it flew by so to speak. We arrived in Cancun and of course, chaos erupted immediately. Are we taking a taxi or a bus? Which bus? So on and so forth with my dad doing most of the haggling. We found a bus for a rather inexpensive price that would take us to do
wntown Cancun. I was happy that the buses were rather plush with television, etc... Greyhound needs to take some tips from Mexico. I guess if your citizens rely on public transportation, it would be a lot better. We were dropped off at the bus depot and from there, we weaved our way through downtown Cancun, finally deciding to take a cab to our hotel. We were staying at Las Margaritas and the rooms were actually pretty nice. We were hungry so we went downstairs to get some food and drink. They had a pool table that looked like it had never been used, so Jacqueline asked if we could use it. They said sure and it was the only business establishment that I know of that would give us free pool.
Dinner was good and we finished the night with a game of Mexican train dominoes. The next day was a day to find our way through Cancun. We all took a taxi together and went to the beach. I could not believe the difference. Downtown Cancun was not that touristy, but the the beach area was ridiculous. We tried to find a place to eat, but had a tough time finding anything that was not going to cost a fortune. Finally, we just gave in and ate some expensive kind of okay food. Then it was time to patrol the shores of Cancun. The weather was not exactly ideal, being a bit overcast, so it was not exactly the time to go swimming.
Still, the water color was amazing having that same tint to it that the water at Havasu has. We walked the beach until we got bored with it and then went over to the mall. This is what you go to another country for, to go to the mall. I bought a cheap pair of swim trunks, which took some time to find. Then we went over to the aquarium and checked out all the sea critters.
A moray eel wanted to eat Jacqueline, but the glass there helped protect her. We saw the dolphins and sharks, petted a sting ray, all those fun things. Then we took a far too expensive cab ride back to downtown. I hadn't got a hang of the whole bargaining thing yet, but I would get there. Then it was a night of good food, drink, dominoes, and we even took a dip in the hotel pool. The next day we grabbed some Mickey D's and then hopped on the bus down to Tulum, still in Mexico. We grabbed some Subway and then headed down to the beach. The beaches were very nice and it was a good day to be there with the sun out. Jacqueline and I got into the water and then hung out on the beach. 
It was a beautiful day and we were enjoying ourselves when some topless woman walked by, which I did not even see. Somehow that became my fault and we headed back to the room fighting. I headed out to the Tulum ruins by myself to get some air.
Of course, I missed Jacqueline within five minutes and it is so much less fun to be a tourist when you are doing it by yourself. Tulum was an old Mayan trading town and thus, the ruins. I headed back and we patched things up for another evening of good food, dominoes, and cervezas. The next day was basically a beach chilling day and I loved it. We walked the beach for a while the next day, but mostly just hung out. Jacqueline attacked the chip stand in the evening after the drink and dominoes, but other than that, not too eventful of a day. We were all geared up for our trip to Caye Caulker. It is an island off the coast of Belize. We had to wait one more day for it though, as we took a bus down to Chetumal on the Mexican side of the Belize border to break up the bus trip. We went to the Mayan museum there, which was alright. I am not one for museums, so it was good by museum standpoints. We all crammed into the small room there and I tried to check out some football (American style) on the tv before food, drink, and dominoes wrapped up our evening. The next morning it was another bus down to Belize city. This one was rocking. As in rocking us back in forth. So far it had been the Mexican buses with tvs and comfortable seats. Belize was not so hip and this bus was an old converted school bus. It got us where we were going, though, which included an uneventful border crossing. We were set to catch a ferry from Belize City to Caye Caulker, but we had a few errands to run. So we went to get some food, where my dad and Jacqueline got fish with the eyes still attached. We also got some money from the ATM, where Jacqueline had some issues getting money. It didn't actually give her any money for some reason, so we had to try another one. (That will come up later) Then we were on the boat. The locals all seemed to know where to ride to stay out of the wind and dry.
We just let the wind blow through our hair and got the good views of the Gulf of Mexico with Caye Caulker approaching after not too long of a speedboat ride. We got to the island and had to find our place to stay. It turned out to be on the far end of the island, so we ended up having to have a guy give our luggage a ride. I seemed to be the only one who wanted to travel like a backpacker, which made life easy on me, but everyone else was dragging their wheeled luggage. I got in a bit of trouble for giving Jacqueline too much crap for hers, but I swear she carried her weight set with her also. How can such a little person have so much clothing? Anyway, we finally made it to our rooms with a great view out to a little cabana type thing off the shore.
From there on out, the days just seemed to roll together. Each night we had drinks, great food, and Belkin beer with maybe a rum punch thrown in every now and then. It was strange for me to eat out so much and the prices were not exactly cheap. We were very grateful to Dad and Laura for paying for so much good food, lodging, and making the trip affordable for us seasonal park rangers. The island was very beautiful and we explored the whole thing while we were there. There was another island without businesses on it, that Jacqueline, Dad, and I swam the cut out to. Jacqueline was a bit nervous about getting chomped by a croc, but we made the swim without problems. It was fun to see the island in its natural state and we even got chased by some dogs. We seemed to run out of trail after a bit and then made the swim back. Jacqueline and I on another day went to check out the rest of the island the other way from our room away from all the businesses.
It definitely had that island feel to it. The most interesting part about that hike, though, was when we saw a trail of blood coming from somewhere and realized that a dog just got its butt kicked and was bleeding everywhere. We were a bit nervous going by that pack of dogs to get back to our room. The island was touristy to say the least, but we were happy to do the touristy loving snorkeling trip that we went upon. We jumped in a jet boat and we were expecting a long ride, but instead it was just five minutes and boom we were out of the boat in Shark Ray Alley. There were sting rays everywhere. I was nervous to put my feet down especially knowing that the crocodile hunter was taken out by a sting ray. The water was amazing, though, as the salt content was so high, we could float with ease. I suddenly got used to the fact that a sting ray would pass by right below me. I was one of the lucky one to see a shark with Jacqueline. She tackled me and then swam away as fast as she could. I figured that if the shark wanted to eat me, it was going to probably out swim me, so I stayed and enjoyed the show. We took off from there to our next stop, which was a guided snorkel with our trip leader. On this, we had our only near injury when my dad was subsequently spotted by a moray eel, which could provide quite a bite. With less than a second to spare, the tour leader swept in with his magic stick and the eel when back into its cave in the reef. We followed the leader through an underground world I never knew existed before. The Discovery channel just does not give it justice until you are there in the flesh. I enjoyed that, but when he let us explore the reefs on our own, that was my favorite part. Jacqueline was getting cold, so she stayed in the boat. It was true that we had some of the coldest weather while we were in Belize, but it was still sixty-eight degrees out. I convinced her to come in with me and she even agreed once I conned her into getting back in the water that it was warmer in the water than sitting in the boat. I was just loving watching the fish swim out of the coral and they had to pry me out of the water to head back as we found a little niche with hundreds of bright yellow fish. It was awesome. So Jacqueline and I said enough with the island after having a subpar Thanksgiving meal there
and headed back to Belize City on the correct ferry after we waited for the wrong one on accident the first go around. We had some business to take care of in Belize City as the bank that Jacqueline tried to get money from the ATM had ripped her off for five hundred dollars. So we waited for an excruciating long period of time before I got to speak my mind to the woman there to get a reassurance that she could get her money back at some point in the future. Then we were off on the bus to San Ignacio, which lays in the jungly part of Belize. I was a bit worried about finding a place to say, since we were just going on faith, but we found a fairly inexpensive place for four days at a home with a Canadian manager. We made ourselves at home and then had some Chinese food for dinner. Sadly, for the first evening on the trip, there was no dominoes, which was fine with me since Jacqueline had been kicking all our butts each night lately. Instead, Jacqueline and I played a game of we'll call it Idiot, although other travelers know it as a different name that may not be appropriate for all audiences. The next day was spent getting familiar with our city. We walked around and talked to shop owners about trips that we could go on. We finally decided to shell out the eighty bucks and go to Actun Tunichal Muknal, better known as ATM the next day. On this day, we tried to make the best of it for cheap, so we asked around and someone told us of a good road to hike on that took us outside of town. Jacqueline really wanted to see the jungle, so she got her way. We walked down this road all the way to where a bridge was under construction stopping our path. Than we turned around a bit disappointed at not seeing too much jungle life. Then I looked up and the trees and said, "What is that?" Suddenly, we realized that we were surrounded by iguanas on all sides. 
They were so huge. We even got a bit freaked out when one just fell straight out of the tree to the ground. I guess it was the quickest way down and supposedly they are able to do that and come out okay. To me, it sounded like a tree coming down. We also got to see some leaf cutter ants
strolling along right in front of us, so we felt like we got our money's worth out of this day. The next day we were on the shuttle van taking us to ATM. This was a guided trip, which did not make me particularly thrilled, but we thought we would give it a try. After a long drive down a dirt road, we ended up at a trailhead. We took this trailhead about a mile in to where a river leaked out of the cliffside.
We put our helmets and headlamps on and took the trip through the water and into the cave. I saw a thing like this when I was in New Zealand, but there is no escaping how cool an underground river is. But that was not our final destination, as our guide spotted the place where we needed to climb up. It was somewhat difficult scrambling, but Jacqueline made it fine to this upper chamber in the cave. It is an old Mayan site for ceremonies where they used to sacrifice things for rain and such other blessings to come. There were a bunch of old pottery remains
smashed to release the spirit of the pot. The whole place was exactly how they found it only about twenty years ago, untouched by archeologists. The weirdest and coolest thing about this cave was that not only pots were sacrificed, but people also. There were skulls just laying around and near the end of the cave was the skeleton of what they believe to be a fifteen year old girl.
It was creepy, but we had a good time despite the awful lunch that they provided us. The next day, we talked about doing some other trip, but instead we decided to head off on a trip of our own. We grabbed the town bus for a couple of bucks and it dropped us off a couple of miles away at a spot by the Mopan River. We walked on to a hand cranked bridge and were across the shore and on the road. Our goal were some Mayan ruins called Xunantunich (pronounced Shoe-nan-to-nitch). They were awesome and the best part of the day was that we felt like we had this entire place to ourselves.
We were able to walk all around the ruins, up the stairs, to the very top of the building, anywhere and no one else was around. In the U.S. this place would be a mad house any day of the week. There was a ball court and some amazing stellae
(behind an amazing woman). We had a great day and for rather cheap as we explored all around the ruins. That night we ate again at our favorite restaurant in San Ignacio, Martha's. We would bring our cards and each night we had the same waiter. After a while, he would take one look at us and say, "let me guess, two pineapple juices." He was right as the juice there was awesome. It was straight up squeezed right from the pineapple. They also had this glowing pineapple that I wanted so badly even though Jacqueline thought it was a bit tacky. They also had this crazy cat that begged. At first you thought it was cute and then when we realized that it was neglecting its tiny kittens to beg, you were a bit upset with it. The food there was good too and fairly inexpensive. Thus the last full day in Belize was finally approaching. We wanted to make the best of it, so we headed down the road to a town about three miles away. On the way, a man stopped to ask if we wanted a ride, but we wanted to walk and enjoy the country side. We got to the town and found some school kids running around, but not too much else happening. Our goal, which we found in our guide book, was to find somewhere to go river tubing. Our first stop from the book was met by some crazy dog that wanted to eat us, so we decided to try a different spot. Then we ran into the same guy who offered us a ride. He told us that his brother could do it, so we walked over to his brother's place and he loaded us up into his pickup with river tubes for ten bucks and drove us to this spot on the Mopan River to start our journey. It was nuts! There was white water like crazy and the only life jacket he had was on Jacqueline. I made her go first because I knew that I could end up halfway down the river before she got up the courage to get in. Finally, she did it and she screamed her way through the white water. I jumped in too and it was serious white water tossing me every which way. Then we were off for smooth sailing down the river. There were other such places and Mike, the guy who rented the tubes to us, told us that we should go right at every chance to avoid the scary stuff. We did but we still got some real rapids out of the deal. It was not too long before we were back at our takeout point, which he said to make sure that we didn't miss or else we would be riding all the way into San Ignacio. It was one of those things that Americans could not do in the U.S. because of the insurance costs involved.
Jacqueline thought she was pretty tough after doing that and I did too. We said adieu to Mike and walked our way back into San Ignacio for our last night of pineapple juice. The next day we were up early to eat some pastries from the French bakery we visited often and we were off on the bus back to Belize City. We had a lot of bumpy rides ahead of us, so we tried to make the most of it. When we got to Belize City, I should have figured it out, but there were some hustlers there trying to get a buck from us. They told us that some bus went to Chetumal when actually it just went to the Belize border. So we talked to the guy on the bus and he told us about this minibus that would go to Chetumal. I was not sure how that all was going to work, because despite the fact that they speak English in Belize it still does not mean that it is easy to understand them. Well, we jumped on this minibus that took us to the border, but were stopped by all the border clearance we had to go through, which included some tax that we thought was in pesos, but it was in Belizean dollars. By the time we got out, our minibus was gone and we were stuck across the border. We thought the bus was still coming but a taxi driver harassed us and said that there was no bus and we were going to have to take his cab. He became very forceful and was chasing us down the road telling us some exurbinant fee for a taxi ride. Finally, I got angry and told him that there was no way we were taking his cab, he called me cheap, and two minutes later we found a cab for 1/3 of the price by some lucky twist of fate. He took us to the Mexican border where I still don't know what the hell happened there as the mass confusion ended with them just saying get outta here and we jumped in his cab again, where he took us to the bus station in Chetumal. There we caught a night bus into Cancun, where we could finally relax for a while. Once we got to Cancun, we did not know where we were going to stay, so we took a cab to the hotel that my dad and Laura were staying at. We were hoping to crash on their floor, but the place was way too nice and they were going to charge us like ninety bucks or something around that. So my dad unsuccessfully tried to sneak us in, wherein we ended up at 11:30pm taking another taxi back to downtown to Las Margaritas to stay there. We got some cheap food from a stand, which was actually some of the best that we had on the whole trip and went to bed exhausted. The next day we had to fly out, so after a big lunch buffet at our hotel that was basically all just shreaded meats, we took a bus to the airport and flew our way back to now snowy Seattle.
My dad, his wife Laura, Jacqueline and I flew out of rainy Seattle, which is how people always seem to describe Seattle, but this past week had been particularly rainy. Our flight was not too long and since Jacqueline and I seem to spend every minute playing card games anyway, it flew by so to speak. We arrived in Cancun and of course, chaos erupted immediately. Are we taking a taxi or a bus? Which bus? So on and so forth with my dad doing most of the haggling. We found a bus for a rather inexpensive price that would take us to do
wntown Cancun. I was happy that the buses were rather plush with television, etc... Greyhound needs to take some tips from Mexico. I guess if your citizens rely on public transportation, it would be a lot better. We were dropped off at the bus depot and from there, we weaved our way through downtown Cancun, finally deciding to take a cab to our hotel. We were staying at Las Margaritas and the rooms were actually pretty nice. We were hungry so we went downstairs to get some food and drink. They had a pool table that looked like it had never been used, so Jacqueline asked if we could use it. They said sure and it was the only business establishment that I know of that would give us free pool.
Dinner was good and we finished the night with a game of Mexican train dominoes. The next day was a day to find our way through Cancun. We all took a taxi together and went to the beach. I could not believe the difference. Downtown Cancun was not that touristy, but the the beach area was ridiculous. We tried to find a place to eat, but had a tough time finding anything that was not going to cost a fortune. Finally, we just gave in and ate some expensive kind of okay food. Then it was time to patrol the shores of Cancun. The weather was not exactly ideal, being a bit overcast, so it was not exactly the time to go swimming.
Still, the water color was amazing having that same tint to it that the water at Havasu has. We walked the beach until we got bored with it and then went over to the mall. This is what you go to another country for, to go to the mall. I bought a cheap pair of swim trunks, which took some time to find. Then we went over to the aquarium and checked out all the sea critters.
A moray eel wanted to eat Jacqueline, but the glass there helped protect her. We saw the dolphins and sharks, petted a sting ray, all those fun things. Then we took a far too expensive cab ride back to downtown. I hadn't got a hang of the whole bargaining thing yet, but I would get there. Then it was a night of good food, drink, dominoes, and we even took a dip in the hotel pool. The next day we grabbed some Mickey D's and then hopped on the bus down to Tulum, still in Mexico. We grabbed some Subway and then headed down to the beach. The beaches were very nice and it was a good day to be there with the sun out. Jacqueline and I got into the water and then hung out on the beach. 
It was a beautiful day and we were enjoying ourselves when some topless woman walked by, which I did not even see. Somehow that became my fault and we headed back to the room fighting. I headed out to the Tulum ruins by myself to get some air.
Of course, I missed Jacqueline within five minutes and it is so much less fun to be a tourist when you are doing it by yourself. Tulum was an old Mayan trading town and thus, the ruins. I headed back and we patched things up for another evening of good food, dominoes, and cervezas. The next day was basically a beach chilling day and I loved it. We walked the beach for a while the next day, but mostly just hung out. Jacqueline attacked the chip stand in the evening after the drink and dominoes, but other than that, not too eventful of a day. We were all geared up for our trip to Caye Caulker. It is an island off the coast of Belize. We had to wait one more day for it though, as we took a bus down to Chetumal on the Mexican side of the Belize border to break up the bus trip. We went to the Mayan museum there, which was alright. I am not one for museums, so it was good by museum standpoints. We all crammed into the small room there and I tried to check out some football (American style) on the tv before food, drink, and dominoes wrapped up our evening. The next morning it was another bus down to Belize city. This one was rocking. As in rocking us back in forth. So far it had been the Mexican buses with tvs and comfortable seats. Belize was not so hip and this bus was an old converted school bus. It got us where we were going, though, which included an uneventful border crossing. We were set to catch a ferry from Belize City to Caye Caulker, but we had a few errands to run. So we went to get some food, where my dad and Jacqueline got fish with the eyes still attached. We also got some money from the ATM, where Jacqueline had some issues getting money. It didn't actually give her any money for some reason, so we had to try another one. (That will come up later) Then we were on the boat. The locals all seemed to know where to ride to stay out of the wind and dry.
We just let the wind blow through our hair and got the good views of the Gulf of Mexico with Caye Caulker approaching after not too long of a speedboat ride. We got to the island and had to find our place to stay. It turned out to be on the far end of the island, so we ended up having to have a guy give our luggage a ride. I seemed to be the only one who wanted to travel like a backpacker, which made life easy on me, but everyone else was dragging their wheeled luggage. I got in a bit of trouble for giving Jacqueline too much crap for hers, but I swear she carried her weight set with her also. How can such a little person have so much clothing? Anyway, we finally made it to our rooms with a great view out to a little cabana type thing off the shore.
From there on out, the days just seemed to roll together. Each night we had drinks, great food, and Belkin beer with maybe a rum punch thrown in every now and then. It was strange for me to eat out so much and the prices were not exactly cheap. We were very grateful to Dad and Laura for paying for so much good food, lodging, and making the trip affordable for us seasonal park rangers. The island was very beautiful and we explored the whole thing while we were there. There was another island without businesses on it, that Jacqueline, Dad, and I swam the cut out to. Jacqueline was a bit nervous about getting chomped by a croc, but we made the swim without problems. It was fun to see the island in its natural state and we even got chased by some dogs. We seemed to run out of trail after a bit and then made the swim back. Jacqueline and I on another day went to check out the rest of the island the other way from our room away from all the businesses.
It definitely had that island feel to it. The most interesting part about that hike, though, was when we saw a trail of blood coming from somewhere and realized that a dog just got its butt kicked and was bleeding everywhere. We were a bit nervous going by that pack of dogs to get back to our room. The island was touristy to say the least, but we were happy to do the touristy loving snorkeling trip that we went upon. We jumped in a jet boat and we were expecting a long ride, but instead it was just five minutes and boom we were out of the boat in Shark Ray Alley. There were sting rays everywhere. I was nervous to put my feet down especially knowing that the crocodile hunter was taken out by a sting ray. The water was amazing, though, as the salt content was so high, we could float with ease. I suddenly got used to the fact that a sting ray would pass by right below me. I was one of the lucky one to see a shark with Jacqueline. She tackled me and then swam away as fast as she could. I figured that if the shark wanted to eat me, it was going to probably out swim me, so I stayed and enjoyed the show. We took off from there to our next stop, which was a guided snorkel with our trip leader. On this, we had our only near injury when my dad was subsequently spotted by a moray eel, which could provide quite a bite. With less than a second to spare, the tour leader swept in with his magic stick and the eel when back into its cave in the reef. We followed the leader through an underground world I never knew existed before. The Discovery channel just does not give it justice until you are there in the flesh. I enjoyed that, but when he let us explore the reefs on our own, that was my favorite part. Jacqueline was getting cold, so she stayed in the boat. It was true that we had some of the coldest weather while we were in Belize, but it was still sixty-eight degrees out. I convinced her to come in with me and she even agreed once I conned her into getting back in the water that it was warmer in the water than sitting in the boat. I was just loving watching the fish swim out of the coral and they had to pry me out of the water to head back as we found a little niche with hundreds of bright yellow fish. It was awesome. So Jacqueline and I said enough with the island after having a subpar Thanksgiving meal there
and headed back to Belize City on the correct ferry after we waited for the wrong one on accident the first go around. We had some business to take care of in Belize City as the bank that Jacqueline tried to get money from the ATM had ripped her off for five hundred dollars. So we waited for an excruciating long period of time before I got to speak my mind to the woman there to get a reassurance that she could get her money back at some point in the future. Then we were off on the bus to San Ignacio, which lays in the jungly part of Belize. I was a bit worried about finding a place to say, since we were just going on faith, but we found a fairly inexpensive place for four days at a home with a Canadian manager. We made ourselves at home and then had some Chinese food for dinner. Sadly, for the first evening on the trip, there was no dominoes, which was fine with me since Jacqueline had been kicking all our butts each night lately. Instead, Jacqueline and I played a game of we'll call it Idiot, although other travelers know it as a different name that may not be appropriate for all audiences. The next day was spent getting familiar with our city. We walked around and talked to shop owners about trips that we could go on. We finally decided to shell out the eighty bucks and go to Actun Tunichal Muknal, better known as ATM the next day. On this day, we tried to make the best of it for cheap, so we asked around and someone told us of a good road to hike on that took us outside of town. Jacqueline really wanted to see the jungle, so she got her way. We walked down this road all the way to where a bridge was under construction stopping our path. Than we turned around a bit disappointed at not seeing too much jungle life. Then I looked up and the trees and said, "What is that?" Suddenly, we realized that we were surrounded by iguanas on all sides. 
They were so huge. We even got a bit freaked out when one just fell straight out of the tree to the ground. I guess it was the quickest way down and supposedly they are able to do that and come out okay. To me, it sounded like a tree coming down. We also got to see some leaf cutter ants
strolling along right in front of us, so we felt like we got our money's worth out of this day. The next day we were on the shuttle van taking us to ATM. This was a guided trip, which did not make me particularly thrilled, but we thought we would give it a try. After a long drive down a dirt road, we ended up at a trailhead. We took this trailhead about a mile in to where a river leaked out of the cliffside.
We put our helmets and headlamps on and took the trip through the water and into the cave. I saw a thing like this when I was in New Zealand, but there is no escaping how cool an underground river is. But that was not our final destination, as our guide spotted the place where we needed to climb up. It was somewhat difficult scrambling, but Jacqueline made it fine to this upper chamber in the cave. It is an old Mayan site for ceremonies where they used to sacrifice things for rain and such other blessings to come. There were a bunch of old pottery remains
smashed to release the spirit of the pot. The whole place was exactly how they found it only about twenty years ago, untouched by archeologists. The weirdest and coolest thing about this cave was that not only pots were sacrificed, but people also. There were skulls just laying around and near the end of the cave was the skeleton of what they believe to be a fifteen year old girl.
It was creepy, but we had a good time despite the awful lunch that they provided us. The next day, we talked about doing some other trip, but instead we decided to head off on a trip of our own. We grabbed the town bus for a couple of bucks and it dropped us off a couple of miles away at a spot by the Mopan River. We walked on to a hand cranked bridge and were across the shore and on the road. Our goal were some Mayan ruins called Xunantunich (pronounced Shoe-nan-to-nitch). They were awesome and the best part of the day was that we felt like we had this entire place to ourselves.
We were able to walk all around the ruins, up the stairs, to the very top of the building, anywhere and no one else was around. In the U.S. this place would be a mad house any day of the week. There was a ball court and some amazing stellae
(behind an amazing woman). We had a great day and for rather cheap as we explored all around the ruins. That night we ate again at our favorite restaurant in San Ignacio, Martha's. We would bring our cards and each night we had the same waiter. After a while, he would take one look at us and say, "let me guess, two pineapple juices." He was right as the juice there was awesome. It was straight up squeezed right from the pineapple. They also had this glowing pineapple that I wanted so badly even though Jacqueline thought it was a bit tacky. They also had this crazy cat that begged. At first you thought it was cute and then when we realized that it was neglecting its tiny kittens to beg, you were a bit upset with it. The food there was good too and fairly inexpensive. Thus the last full day in Belize was finally approaching. We wanted to make the best of it, so we headed down the road to a town about three miles away. On the way, a man stopped to ask if we wanted a ride, but we wanted to walk and enjoy the country side. We got to the town and found some school kids running around, but not too much else happening. Our goal, which we found in our guide book, was to find somewhere to go river tubing. Our first stop from the book was met by some crazy dog that wanted to eat us, so we decided to try a different spot. Then we ran into the same guy who offered us a ride. He told us that his brother could do it, so we walked over to his brother's place and he loaded us up into his pickup with river tubes for ten bucks and drove us to this spot on the Mopan River to start our journey. It was nuts! There was white water like crazy and the only life jacket he had was on Jacqueline. I made her go first because I knew that I could end up halfway down the river before she got up the courage to get in. Finally, she did it and she screamed her way through the white water. I jumped in too and it was serious white water tossing me every which way. Then we were off for smooth sailing down the river. There were other such places and Mike, the guy who rented the tubes to us, told us that we should go right at every chance to avoid the scary stuff. We did but we still got some real rapids out of the deal. It was not too long before we were back at our takeout point, which he said to make sure that we didn't miss or else we would be riding all the way into San Ignacio. It was one of those things that Americans could not do in the U.S. because of the insurance costs involved.
Jacqueline thought she was pretty tough after doing that and I did too. We said adieu to Mike and walked our way back into San Ignacio for our last night of pineapple juice. The next day we were up early to eat some pastries from the French bakery we visited often and we were off on the bus back to Belize City. We had a lot of bumpy rides ahead of us, so we tried to make the most of it. When we got to Belize City, I should have figured it out, but there were some hustlers there trying to get a buck from us. They told us that some bus went to Chetumal when actually it just went to the Belize border. So we talked to the guy on the bus and he told us about this minibus that would go to Chetumal. I was not sure how that all was going to work, because despite the fact that they speak English in Belize it still does not mean that it is easy to understand them. Well, we jumped on this minibus that took us to the border, but were stopped by all the border clearance we had to go through, which included some tax that we thought was in pesos, but it was in Belizean dollars. By the time we got out, our minibus was gone and we were stuck across the border. We thought the bus was still coming but a taxi driver harassed us and said that there was no bus and we were going to have to take his cab. He became very forceful and was chasing us down the road telling us some exurbinant fee for a taxi ride. Finally, I got angry and told him that there was no way we were taking his cab, he called me cheap, and two minutes later we found a cab for 1/3 of the price by some lucky twist of fate. He took us to the Mexican border where I still don't know what the hell happened there as the mass confusion ended with them just saying get outta here and we jumped in his cab again, where he took us to the bus station in Chetumal. There we caught a night bus into Cancun, where we could finally relax for a while. Once we got to Cancun, we did not know where we were going to stay, so we took a cab to the hotel that my dad and Laura were staying at. We were hoping to crash on their floor, but the place was way too nice and they were going to charge us like ninety bucks or something around that. So my dad unsuccessfully tried to sneak us in, wherein we ended up at 11:30pm taking another taxi back to downtown to Las Margaritas to stay there. We got some cheap food from a stand, which was actually some of the best that we had on the whole trip and went to bed exhausted. The next day we had to fly out, so after a big lunch buffet at our hotel that was basically all just shreaded meats, we took a bus to the airport and flew our way back to now snowy Seattle.
