Back from Belize

Well, I´m back safely from my solo journey to Belize. It was a great trip, lots of fun, and good to converse with some true English speakers in Belize, even if the majority speak a form of English a tad difficult to understand. The new album up on the other site gives a nice summary of my adventure, but here I´ll recap and fill in the cracks.

As I said in the last post, the plan was to leave Monday morning for Belize. As with most of my plans on this trip, that didn´t quite pan out. The morning bus was full, so I took a bus Monday night (8:00) which arrived at the border around 7:30 the next morning. Got into San Ignacio, a town near the border, which is a great base for exploring the surrounding natural beauty. Unfortunately, I only budgeted a little time here, but with the time I had I rented a canoe and explored the river a little bit. I got to see (and hear) a TON of birds... some plain, some absolutely beautiful. After some fun on the river, I headed off for Monkey Bay Wildlife Refuge, where I was gonna stay Tuesday night. I asked the bus conductor to drop me off there, but we ended up driving right by it so I headed on to Belize City then out to Caye Caulker via water taxi. After more than a bit of searching, I found a bed (the island was fairly crowded this week) and settled down. Went out for a dinner of conch with stew beans and rice... it was delicious. Almost all the meals there are accompanied with Marie Sharp´s hot sauce, a fantastic blend... if you can find it, I recommend it. After dinner, I headed back to go to sleep (it was early, but one doesn´t get a whole lot of sleep on a Guatemalan bus, so I was tired). To my suprise, I walked into my room to discover that my roommate was a 50-something year old woman... after short deliberation as to whether I was indeed in the right room, I decided to go to bed and forget about it. She was actually quite friendly, and I enjoyed talking to her a bit about her life and philosophies on religion.
So Wednesday I just kinda chilled, which is what you do on Caye Caulker. The only street signs say ¨go slow.¨ It´s not hard to fall into this way of life after a bit. That day, I talked to some of the other people in the hostel... I was the youngest and also the only American, which was an interesting experience, but there were a lot of cool people there and a lot of cool stories. It was good to sit and talk with them without having to translate everything in my head after hearing it or before saying it. I enjoyed my stay there, brief though it may have been. A cold front moved in that night which pushed rain in and pushed me out. I headed out to Monkey Bay, where I had no trouble finding a room and settling in for the night. Fortunately for me, the group there from England was heading to the zoo in the morning for a tour led by one of the Monkey Bay employees who used to work at the Zoo, so I got to tag along with that. The zoo only has local species, and all their animals were either injured, orphaned, former (illegal) pets, donated by other zoos, or born at the Belize zoo. Basically, the Zoo aims to be an educational facility for the Belizean people, an encouragement to appreciate the wildlife rather than fear or exploit it. Hopefully it works. It´s a good goal, anyway, and the animals were certainly well cared for and had space to roam.
After the visit to the zoo, I headed towards the border... succesfullycrossed back over into Guatemala Friday afternoon, only to find out that there were no buses running in Guatemala because of Good Friday. Fortunately, I had shared a cab with Omar, a guy a few years older than me from Mexico. He was really nice, and we hunted hotels, gathered bus information, and hung out for a little bit Friday night. Then came the long journey home... we boarded a bus in the border town at 5:00 on Saturday, then arrived at Flores (near the ruins of Tikal in Northern Guatemala) at 7:30. We boarded a Guate-bound bus at 7:45 and arrived a little before 7:00 Saturday night. It was quite a trek.
So that´s the basics of my journey to Belize. Now I´m back to work at the church. Thankfully, I´m a little busier this week than I have been in the past. It´s mainly data-entry style desk work in addition to my teaching, which isn´t great, but at least it´s something to do. Hopefully things continue to improve on the boredome and loneliness fronts, and hopefully God grants me a heart truly joyful to be here and takes away my discontent. That´s what I´m praying for, anyway. But at least for now I´m refreshed and more appreciative of this experience than I was a week and a half ago. Thanks be to God for safe and enjoyable travels in Belize, and for the new boost of energy he has provided.