You betta BELIZE it!!!

Chicken busses, chicken sandwiches, and finally…TROPICAL PARADISE.

Then more chicken buses.

bananas

coconuts

After dropping Kate off in San Lucas (see previous entry), Bryce and I took a chicken bus to Guatemala City and caught a connection to Puerto Barrios, the port town where we thought we would catch a boat to Belize (a.k.a. tropical paradise) in the morning. During our evening bus ride I made the poor decision to eat a chicken sandwich at the bus station. I started feeling sick to my stomach when we arrived in Puerto Barrios around midnight. By 4 am I was making friends with the toilet in our very budget hostel. By budget I mean there was not a complete wall between our bed and the toilet. It’s like they just decided not to finish building the wall all the way to the ceiling, which is very unfortunate for couples when one of them ate a chicken sandwich at the bus terminal hours earlier.

Feliz Cumpleaños a Bryce!

Happy Birthday Bryce! Yes, at 6am on Bryce’s birthday he was loading me into the back of a taxi looking for a private clinic that might be open at such an hour. After 3 stops we finally found a private hospital. After about 10 hours of being hooked up to an IV, a blood test, urine and stool samples, I was told I had contracted salmonella, very common with chicken here apparently. After 13 hours and $300US, I was released from this stuffy, windowless hospital, feeling much better. This all thanks to the extra special care of nurses who kept bringing me vomit-inducing foods and telling me to eat (um…but...I have salmonella!?) but mostly due to Bryce’s tender love and care and vigilance in examining the safety of every needle that poked me.

Punta Gorda, Belize

The next morning we took a boat to Punta Gorda, Belize where we thought we would find tropical paradise. Disappointingly, we found only a customs and immigration office and a friendly European man who runs a tour agency in town (with the primary purpose of taking people out of town). After wandering around for about half an hour and buying a Belize guide book we stopped in to ask this man where the beach was. He replied, “no beach”. No beach? What? “But we’re in Belize…tropical paradise. There was supposed to be a beach here. There HAS to be a beach here.” In reality there would have been. But they built a road and put boulders where the beach should have gone. Genius foresight on their part. Genius foresight on our part not to have read a guide book before traveling to Belize. Apparently, in order to snorkel for an affordable price, you have to go to one of the islands off the coast of Belize City, where you are only about 1km from the Great Barrier Reef (and can therefore get a boat to take you out for cheaper). Bryce was not leaving Belize without snorkeling. (Note to Parents and Rybolts: snorkeling is the new fishing for Bryce. So you see, it’s pretty important to him.) So, we enjoyed our first Belizean beer (way better than Guatemala’s beer) and boarded yet another chicken bus to Belize City, 6 hours away.

Caye Caulker, Belize

We spent one night in Belize City and then took a boat early the next morning to the island of Caye Caulker. The name may not sound like tropical paradise, but maybe that’s how it stays so undeveloped. It was beautiful and actually very touristy but not in the overdeveloped, resort kind of way. Lots of funky guesthouses and cabanas line the beach and we found this lovely fixer-upper called Loraine’s.

Then we spent most of our time mooching off the dock of the more expensive hotel next door. It had shaded hammocks over the water!

In Caye Caulker we enjoyed the most delicious pizza of our lives made by a French woman who was just starting out. Her friend runs a café during the day and she uses the place at night to make pizza. She’s adorable. She plays the sweetest music and the pizza is to die for. We love finding little gems such as these whenever we go somewhere new. We ordered freshly squeezed juices of all kinds and made our own fruity rum drinks! We met a charismatic middle-aged hippy woman who helped establish a manatee sanctuary not far from the island. She was crazy about manatees. I love meeting people who are super passionate about something I know little about. We met a woman who fled Texas when Child Protective Service tried to take her children away (unjustly, according to her). It was one of the more fascinating conversations of my life. We snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef which included swimming with the sting rays! It was way too short a stay but beautiful and relaxing.

sunset in Tropical Paradise!

Soon it was back to shore and then a 20 hour stint of busses, which included a 2 hour stop at the border to get our visas renewed and our passports stamped and a 4 hour layover in Flores, Guatemala where we enjoyed dinner overlooking a beautiful lake.

amazing tree on the Guatemalan side of the border (Photographer: Bryce Parent)

Water lilies in Flores, Guatemala (Photographer: Bryce Parent)

Flores, Guatemala

Flores, Guatemala

There’s No Place Like Xela!

exhaustion

We were sooo tired when we got back to Xela and sooo relieved to be back in our little home away from home after 2 weeks of backpacks and chicken bus adventures.