It’s been a crazy few days for me here in Belize for multiple reasons. It’s been a very telling week as far as the state of my divorce – I recently received a very nasty email from Will and I know his intention was to hurt me with his words but instead it gave me reassurance that our relationship was not right. I was so tempted to post his email on my blog as some weird therapeutic thing but I have decided against it because I’m not so sure what that would actually accomplish. That being said it is a sad thing to realize how much hate he has for me right now considering our history together. All I can do at this point is to live my life so that’s what I’ll continue to do – and there has been a lot to do in the last few days.
Corozal Carnival
There is a carnival happening in Corozal this week – well, it started last week and is continuing through this week. It’s a big deal that there is a huge Ferris wheel in the back drop of the town so despite my absolute fear of Ferris wheels I knew I had to ride this one. In the spirit of stepping outside my comfort zone I convinced my mother to walk over there with me after we closed the bar on Sunday night. I couldn’t think about it too much otherwise I would have chickened out so we got over there and I wanted to get on right away before my brain convinced me otherwise. My mom wasn’t feeling it though so she tried to persuade me to watch it first and then go on – I knew if I did this I would lose my riding partner and possibly my own nerve so I drug her in line. We got our seats in bucket number 6 and they locked the bar over our laps – now there was no going back. My heart was racing a bit – I know how ridiculous it sounds to be afraid of such a silly thing and I really can’t explain it because I love all other amusement park rides, there’s just something about this one. We slowly moved up as the attendants let people out and replaced them along the wheel – soon enough we were at the top and still at a snail’s pace waiting for the ride to reload. I have to say the view of Corozal was pretty – there are not many places to get that kind of view around town so I was trying to appreciate it. Then it happened – the wheel started to move faster and faster and my whole body involuntarily turned cold.
It had been years since I had been on one of these things and I don’t know if I just couldn’t remember how fast they go or if they actually go faster in Belize but, wow, we were moving. My hands were drenched and my stomach was doing little flips. I was trying really hard to have fun though because my mom was freaking out next to me. She was looking over at me with absolute dread in her eyes as we accelerated – I had to keep telling her that we were already on and it would all be over soon. Suddenly she felt a drop of something on the top of her head – she looked over at me again in horror told me something wet had hit her head. Then it happened – a stream of pink vomit plopped right in the middle of her lap and I’m pretty sure she almost cried in disgust. I absolutely cannot blame her, my stomach was already turning and I’m sure if I had been puked on it would have been a chain reaction that you only see in those really stupid, potty humor movies. To make matters so much worse, the Ferris wheel started to slow and move backwards – I honestly thought mom was going to jump out of the thing – she looked at me again with daggers shooting from her eyes, and told me that I needed to stop the ride. I kept repeating to her how sorry I was for dragging her on the ride but that they were not going to stop it until they were finished. So every time we went passed the attendant she tried to yell at him to stop the ride but it was no use – they weren’t listening to her. Eventually, thankfully, she started to see the absolute humor in the whole situation and we both spent the rest of the ride cracking up laughing. At last the ride ended and we were on solid ground once again. We moved over to the closest food booth to try and get some napkins to clean up mom’s lap and as I had expected, a teenage boy was also at the booth cleaning up the vomit that had landed on his shoulder. It was a case of riding the Ferris wheel too soon after too much cotton candy but it sure does make a great story. We laughed all the way back to the house and once we got home she couldn’t get to the shower fast enough. I doubt we will ever forget our first, and possibly last, carnival in Corozal.
The next day we had a two day fishing excursion planned off the coast of San Pedro, outside of the reef. So we woke up early to get to San Pedro via boat. It was a beautiful day with beautiful turquoise waters all along the way and we arrived in town about 10am. We got settled in and it was back on the boat to try to catch dinner for that night. We were only out about 8 miles off the reef outside of San Pedro and we started to see loads of birds – as you know from my last fishing trip that is our signal that fish are below. So Capt. J got the lines in the water and guessed that we were going for tuna. I drove the boat most of that day – just chasing around birds while the Capt. tried to get the fish in the boat. The tuna weren’t really biting too much but we sure could see them jumping around in the water and at one point we had a fantastic example of the food chain at its best. Our lines were in the water and a black fin tuna was caught on one of our hooks but just as the Capt. was reeling it in a shark came up and snatched the tuna off the line and got caught itself. We could see as the shark’s fins crested the top of the ocean – we were living shark week. We ended up with about four black fin tuna for dinner so we were happy. The Capt. cleaned up the fish when we got back to the dock while my mom and I cleaned up the boat. That night we all enjoyed seared tuna at Elvie’s Kitchen.
The second day of fishing didn’t actually result in any fish – we went out late morning but there were no birds in sight so instead of just putting the lines in and trolling we went out to Turneffe to do some snorkeling while Capt. J tried to do some spear fishing. We hadn’t been out there more than 30 minutes when the Belize Port Authority boat pulled up alongside his to do some checking. They simply wanted to see the registration and captain’s license which Capt. J gladly handed over. Everything checked out so we waved to them and they sped off while we went back to looking at coral. After a bit mom and I decided to relax on the boat, in the sun, while Capt. J went out with his spear gun to see what he could find for dinner. He came back with lobster – so we would feast that night. It turned out that we wouldn’t catch any fish that day despite trying. So we headed back in to San Pedro and ate a lobster dinner at Elvie’s Kitchen.
The ride back to Corozal this morning was magnificent. The water was calm and blue and the sun was shining. We had to open up the bar for business today and start a new workweek, but I will say that it was the best work commute I’ve ever experienced.
August - real time | admin | August 26, 2009 | 
Comments (2)
belize, Boat, Carnival, Corozal, divorce, Elvie's Kitchen, Ferris Wheel, fishing, Lobster, San Pedro, Sharks, Snorkeling, Tuna, Turneffe
It has been awhile since my last entry which is strictly because I have been a very busy girl lately. After my trip through Belize I started to get ready for my trip back to the states. My mom and I had planned a weeklong trip to visit Oregon where most of our family and friends are. This would be the first trip back home since we moved to Belize 10 months ago. Honestly I was pretty anxious about the whole thing because I have gotten pretty comfortable here in Corozal and I was a little afraid that my feelings may change when I went home. The result of this anxiety was that I simply had little desire to make this trip at all. Of course I did and we left for Oregon on August 5th. Our flight didn’t actually leave until the 6th so our plan was to take the ADO bus from Chetumal to Cancun, spend one night in Cancun and then catch the flight later in the afternoon. I had never actually been through Cancun so this would be a new experience for me. We also had decided to completely close down the restaurant while we were gone – Vanessa does an outstanding job running the place for a day or two without us but we were nervous about leaving them for the week and a half we would be gone. We decided to have Vanessa and her family watch our house while we were gone because we didn’t want to leave the house empty for that long, plus the animals needed some attention.
Our bus was going to leave the station in Chet at 8:30am so we had to get up early to get out of the house and make sure we allowed enough time to get through both the Belize and Mexico border. That morning it was pouring down rain with no letting up in sight – I guess it was a good day to leave Belize. We had a friend pick us up at the house and drive us to the bus station so we got all packed up and out the door at 6am (Belize is one hour behind Mexico at the moment). So we drove through the rain to the Belize border where we were leaving the country just in time since our current passport stamp for our Belize stay had been approved only to that very day. We got through there with no problem and the Mexico border was a breeze – it almost always is. We got to the bus station just in time – we had purchased our tickets ahead of time through a travel agent in Corozal so now we just had to wait for the bus to arrive. We had been warned that the bus was always very air-conditioned and therefore very cold so we had tried to dress as warm as possible – we went with layers for this trip since we knew Cancun would probably be warm upon arrival. We finally got on the bus and started our ride to Cancun and the bus was exceptionally cold. Overall the bus ride is great and I would recommend it unless you have the option to take a private vehicle. The buses are comfortable (more leg room than the plane by far). The downside is that the ride takes about double the time of a personal vehicle. It took us approximately 6 hours on the bus to get to the Cancun bus terminal. That was partly because of current construction on the roads, the speed the bus is allowed to travel at and the multiple stops along the way (about 5 for our bus). I have since made that drive in a personal vehicle and it seems to take about 3.5 hours. It cost us about $30 BZ per ticket which is very reasonable – I believe we even paid slightly more since we bought our tickets through a travel agent.
We arrived in Cancun around 3:30pm and got a taxi to the hotel. We stayed at a large hotel right on the beach and when we arrived and were able to see the water and the beach it was breathtaking. The color of the water that day looked like it came straight from a postcard – we couldn’t wait to get our swimsuits on and get in. That is precisely what we did first and we continuously switched from the pool to the ocean with some time on the lounge chairs for the next three hours. We did the very same thing the next morning until we had to pack up again to get to the airport. I will go ahead and say that Cancun itself was very expensive and very touristy – fun for one night but not my style typically. Before we knew it we were on the plane to Phoenix, AZ and then on to Portland, OR. It was a strange feeling for me for many reasons. Of course the first was the fact that we had been living in an extremely small country for the last ten months so the amount of people and activity would be an immediate change from that. The strangest thing for me was that it would be the first time going home as a single girl – I would be staying at my parent’s house for this trip but I thought I would end up feeling displaced. I just felt like I didn’t belong there anymore. I was curious to see how it would feel to actually experience all this because at that time it was all just playing out in my head.
Kristi and Mom in Cancun
I am not going to go in to a detailed description of every activity that happened on my trip back to Oregon because that would just be a very long post and probably not so entertaining. Rather, I will go through my emotions and general feelings about going back to the states from Belize. I will start with the fact that as soon as our plane touched down on the runway in Portland I had immediate tears in my eyes. At that very moment every hard time in Belize rushed to my head and played out like a movie in fast forward – it was overwhelming to be back to the place that I considered secure. In fact, thinking about that moment right now I start to tear up again. Pulling in to the terminal I knew that what I had suspected would be true – this would be hard.
It was a whirlwind of activity that week and it seemed to fly by so fast that when we arrived back at the Portland airport it felt as if we had never actually left. I did feel slightly out of place the whole time I was there. Will had taken the vehicle so I was driving around a borrowed car (at least that was available), no phone (I realized how hard it is now in this society to not carry around a cell phone – but it can be done because I was able to manage) and staying in someone else’s house. I have yet to determine if this was a good thing or not – so far I think it’s good for my happiness in Belize. I had a few activities set up for the week that I would be doing on my own – this probably doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but for me, a girl who has not really been on her own for 10 years it was a big deal. I will say that I was extremely pleased with the outcome. The whole experience felt very cathartic. I had been in a relationship with Will since college and really only spent my freshman year of college on my own which translates in to one year total in my life that I have actually lived on my own because I had lived with my parents prior to attending college. Because of this I had never really developed a sense of self until much later in our relationship but before Belize I was tremendously dependent of the actual relationship. So now, on this trip I was forced to socialize and experience things totally on my own and I am going to go ahead and give myself an A. This is all slightly embarrassing but I had previously been afraid to drive around Portland on my own, I would get minor anxiety attacks simply thinking about going to a bar on my own and usually just ended up not going as a result, and I just had a general fear about what people would think of me. I hadn’t really felt this way in Belize since Will left but I thought I would revert back to this state while in Oregon. This all seemed to have magically vanished on this trip. I drove around to places I had never been to without uneasiness – even in the pouring down rain at night. I laughed and made friends with random people at the various places I went to on my own without much self doubt. I suddenly realized that there is absolutely no need to worry about these things because by doing that I will absolutely miss out on life – so in Oregon I realized how much I had changed for the better while living in Belize. I have gone through so many major life changes while here and had to deal with so many uncomfortable situations that pretty much everything else seems fantastically possible. I am going to attribute these changes to all the experiences I’ve had in this little country of Belize and for that I will always love it here and consider it a home. Now considering I live with my mom I hope I can establish a more independent life here once my dad gets to move down because that is what I am anxious to do.
Once I arrived back in Corozal (about 7pm on the 14th) I felt a profound sadness that I can’t quite explain. Since it went away fairly quickly I think it was just the result of leaving family and friends after such a short trip. There are clear benefits of being in a place like Portland for someone like me – there are shows to see, concerts to go to, bars to drink in and more people in my age group to meet. These are all important things to me but for the moment I want to see where Belize leads me – who knows, maybe I have more growing up to do here.
Dad, and brothers (the guys we were going home to see)
