we woke up fairly early. we then packed our meager belongings and checked out of our little room in belize city, taking care to close the door behind us, which incidently, had no doorknob at all, just a master lock and a slide bolt.
we were told we could catch a bus at the end of the block, but after waiting on the soggy sidelines, getting eaten by ginormous ants, being passed by two buses and being told they weren't going to our destination by an additional, we decided to take a cab.
we took a water taxi to ambergris caye. we met a local on the way over that shawn mistook for a prostitute and she gave us the skinny on the island we were about to reach.
we were told that the hostel we were planning on staying at was within walking distance so we lugged our baggage all the way to the wrong side of the island before we found our way, which was, of course, on the opposite end. By this point a mixture of pride, annoyance and confusion kept us from getting a taxi. (I can do it myself thank you very much...) when we finally found our way we had to wade through a sludge mine, nearly losing my shoes, luggage and sanity in the campaign.
finally we dropped anchor. there were a couple guys hanging out by the pool, no visible office. we tell them we're looking for a room and they yell out an unintelligible barrage of creole/spanish/english/god-knows patois. after a few moments a very dozy looking dude with long black dreads lopes out of the shadows. I chat with him about his rooms. do we want a private room? a hostel room? he says he'll check to see if the private room is available...
after a few minutes shawn is visibly and audibly irritated and wants to know what's going on as if I somehow have a better grasp on what that may be.
walter (yup, walter) wanders back out...
"um, so is it available?"
"huh? oh! you want me to check? hold on..."
okay, so walter is something of a THC connoisseur, but despite his lack of focus and general confusion I find myself warming up to him. he's kind of funny.
we end up getting the private room. he drops the key down to me from the top balcony and we make ourselves cozy.
so here's the thing with lodging in this country... no one has you sign anything, there's no particular checkout time, and it doesn't really matter when you pay them. it was interesting, and I also found it a little liberating. these people are so laid back that it forces you to
re-evaluate how you interact with your own surroundings and how you approach situations.
like they say, when in rome...
we were both starving by this point and decided to amble into the heart of san pedro. while the island is pretty small by our standards it's actually large for belize, and walking from one end of town to the other can take quite a long time. there are very few cars here, almost everyone drives golf carts, and so we decided to rent one for ourselves, especially since our room lay beyond the quagmire.
we decided on fido's for lunch (fee-doze). conch fritters and fresh local snapper. it was toothsome and tasty. we ended up coming back here a couple more times during our trip because we liked it so much. we drank belekins (the local brew) and laughed and ate and chatted with the beach vendors that were hanging out near our patio table.
by this time shawn was ready to explore and so he decided that he wanted to drive to the other side of the island. you can actually only drive a little past the bridge because everything gets flooded and the roads aren't exactly what you'd call roads.
we ended up at a bar called palapas. as soon as we ordered our drinks it started raining, sideways into the bar, defying the thatch roof. we met people from colorado, berkeley, and a few american locals.
while it was fun we decided to wander on...
on the drive back we passed a bar called the road kill. it was empty, with a little costa rican woman waving her arms trying to get people to stop, so we did.
the bartenders name was elizabeth. she was awesome. we had a ton of fun with her and it was also at this point that I brought an entire day of drinking to it's zenith after a shot of rum and some batty concoction she made for me. she told us what was going on in town, entertainment-wise and then...
the night was a deadpan blur from this point forth.
there was dancing... to a band called the punta boys. we met some canadians, hung out with a hooker named melissa... ran into walter, enjoyed illicit drugs and ultimately left our new canadian friend with the hooker at her house. it was strange... we dropped them off at her house, we met her small daughter and then she dropped the kid off with the neighbor so she could make a few bucks.
the night ended with me somehow punching myself in the face with a slender object, resulting in a tiny and bizarre looking black eye of sorts and me rummaging through my bags in the dark while shawn yelled at me to go to sleep and demanding to know what could have possibly happened to my eye in the few minutes that he was in the shower, until 5am when I finally passed the fuck out.
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