Blue, Blue, Red

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First and foremost, it is hot. So ridiculously hot that two seconds after you leave the blessedly air-conditioned hotel room, you are frying. But after you get over the fact that it is incredibly hot, Belize is beautiful and interesting. After Orange Walk, which Lizzie talks about in her post, we hopped on a water taxi, which is basically a smallish boat that is rather like a clown car (I still can't believe all the people that were waiting on the dock fit inside). About an hour later, we had arrived at Caye Caulker - pronounced 'key', incidentally - and went to find a room to stay in. We hit up one place that was literally on the beach (although most of the hostels here are), but the room that the housekeeper showed us was rather sketchy, not least because it didn't have a locking door and a sign outside kindly requested that you not encourage locals to hang out on the property.

We moved on to the Miramar hotel, and entered the office out of sheer fatigue and heat exhaustion, because the shadiness factor was rather higher. Several old men were sitting outside, a couple of strays were walking about, one or two of them barking, and the property was, rather disturbingly, contained with a chain-link fence. We picked the second of two rooms the housekeeper showed us, neither particularly pleasing but the second at least had two windows and light entering the space. We dropped off our packs and headed out to lunch.

We met a couple of fellow water taxi riders at the Sandbox restaurant and lunched with them, where they told us that they had managed to score a US$35/night room in a nice hotel WITH AIR CONDITIONING. Now, this may not seem that big a deal, but if you look at the first sentence of this blog entry, perhaps you will realize how awesome this truly was. We immediately got jealous and I got rather whiny, so after lunch we went to check the place out for the next two nights, since we planned to stay for three nights total. The room was so gorgeous and the price so right that Lizzie and I looked at each other and instantly knew we were in full agreement. We grabbed our stuff, returned the key to the other room, and moved right into the Barefoot Caribe. Oh, and how we got there? By golf cart. That's right, golf cart. That is the generally accepted motorized form of transportation on this lovely island. It was awesome fun. After dropping our stuff off, we went swimming in the Split, the only place on the island that you can swim right off the shore due to the massive amounts of algae next to the shore on the rest of the island. The water was incredibly blue and clear, it was just like you see in movies or Sandals resort commercials. However, there's a reason people prefer to swim off the docks rather than braving the algae, and that reason can be summed up with the following word: slimy. Or rather, to quote myself: "Ew, ew, ew, ew" and so on, ad nauseam.

The following morning, after a really great tasting breakfast that unfortunately took over 40 minutes to prepare, we got ready to go snorkeling. The tour operator's assistant Angel asked to see my feet, and picked a pair of fins that fit quite well. After a mask was pressed against my face and I was asked to breathe in, we were ready to go (I was the last to get fitted). We set off for a short walk to the boat, and with a total of about 8 snorkelers, Carlos and Angel took us out on the water. We had an amazing time: using a snorkel is not too tough at all and it was a lot of fun to see underwater as clearly as we can normally see above water. Just looking at the ocean floor was cool, with the different colors of coral and the sand. We also got to see a whole bunch of different fish and everyone but me saw a scuttling lobster (I had been fiddling with my mask, which unfortunately kept filling with salt water throughout the trip). We were warned not to touch the coral but I admit that I must have done so several times, which was quite disconcerting since I think it's terrible when visitors and tourists damage the host country's ecosystems.

Well, the trip was sort of a hit, with two hiccups: Lizzie got so incredibly nauseous after the second stop that we had to drop her off before heading to the Coral Alley and I came home with the most ridiculous case of sunburn I've had in years. Apparently, lying for hours in the sun on your front in water dictates re-application of sunblock. Who would have thought? The hilarious thing is that my back, shoulders and a bit of my front, as well as my left calf, are burned in an incredibly uneven way, with entire swathes of white amid the angry red. Yes, that's right, only my left calf suffered. In addition, there is literally a spot of white amid the sunburn just below my left shoulder that looks as if a splatter of sunblock had landed there by mistake. Despite these drawbacks, we did get to go snorkeling for the first time ever, and we did it together. It was a ton of fun. Lizzie didn't miss the best part of the trip, which was our second stop: Stingray Alley. The stingrays were amazingly fun and there were many of them. I touched one with my bare foot and it was smooth and glided right past me. Lizzie, who is sitting next to me, is saying that she had more fun looking at the fish at the first stop, so there you go: to each her own.

Marine Terminal shadiness (on a scale of 1-10): 7.5 out of 10 (half point for presence of living, breathing ticket clerk)
Average food service wait time (in minutes): 35 - really, we're not kidding
Number of minutes it takes to induce nausea in Lizzie in a boat on waves: 14
Sun: 1 Aleks: 0
Number of hours spent in our first room: 2
Happiness with getting away from said room for a measly US$15: priceless

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