Monday morning, my alarm was set for 5:45. We had an incredibly hectic morning, leading up to our boarding of a boat to take us to Ambergris Caye (prononuced "key") at 8:00am. Since we were once again moving to another hotel, we had packed our bags the night before, so there was a limited amount of pick up we needed to do before hitting the road. As we were doing that final packing, Kalyssa made the comment that it felt like we were some fugitive family that had to keep picking up and moving because someone was after us. Yes, that is pretty true to what it felt like.
Richard had said he'd have breakfast for us at 6:30. He indicated this would be enough time to get us into Belize City and catch our boat, though in retrospect, I'm not sure he understood the extent of the logistics that we needed to go through to accomplish this. As we were packing up the bags, I could hear him downstairs slicing up fresh pineapple and papaya, and some toast. He also had coffee waiting for us. We chatted a bit about his history on the island, and how the coral has been diminishing greatly since he's lived here. We also discussed the impact of politicians, gangs, and drugs on the quality of life in Belize. Richard had moved here from the UK back in the 70s. I hated to cut the conversation short. Geez, how often does one get to sit in the home of a National Geograpic Videographer and discuss World Travel. Alas, we had to get to our boat to get out to Ambergris.
I apologized for our rushing, but we bid farewell, and jumped in the car. I pulled up Google maps. For some reason here in Belize, I can use this app to route out a journey between two places, and it will tell me the route, distance, and time to travel, but it won't give me the step by step guided directions. I entered the address and started driving. With minimal people in Belize, and a very low average income, there was very little traffic on the road besides us. We made good time geting to Belize city. As I zoomed in closer on the map for the final couple miles or so, I saw that it had us cutting through the South Side of Belize City, right along side some of the areas the government deemed as "crime ridden areas."
I now had to choose between safety or possibly missing my boat. Safety won out, and I took another route that avoided the bad areas, but knew it would put us in more traffic. We finally reached the hotel where we were told we could park the car, and we had 14 minutes left until the boat left. As I pulled in I rattled off something to a security guard about leaving my car here while I got on a boat. He opened a large gate, and told us to go park inside. I probably could have done this and left, no questinos asked. Nonetheless, I had contacted the hotel earlier this week, and they said I could leave the car there if I paid the equivalent of about $17.50. I asked the guard where I pay, and he said inside.
Inside of course was a mess of people checking in and checking out. I ran up to the counter and explained myself to the woman behind, who clearly didn't share my sense of urgency. She slowly gave me forms to fill out, and entered stuff in the computer. To try and hurry her along, I asked if the water taxi leaves exactly at 8:00 or if there was some wiggle room. She started telling me about the competing water taxi, and offered to provide me schedules. No! I'm on my way there now, I need to know if it leaves right at 8, or if it will be gone if I'm a couple minutes late. She told me "yes, they have a boat that leaves at 8." Uggh, nevermind. After printing off, carefully cutting in half, and handing me a document to sign, she said, "Oh wait, let me give you one with the date. Took it back, ripped it up and started over. The moment the second one was in my hands, I ran out the door like there was no tomorrow.
I thrust the document into the security guards hands, and went over to a cab that I had hailed on the way in, that the girls had already helped load our luggage. We now had about 6 minutes until the boat was supposed to leave. The taxi driver also was keen on telling us his life story, and everything he loved about Belize as he leisurely drove us to the water taxi. That's great! I love conversations like that...but not today. We're in a hurry people!
We finally arrived at Caye Caulker Water Taxi at 7:59am. A man out front greeted us, took our bags and directed me to get my tickets. Both he and the ticket taker urged that I hurry, and they finally helped us get through fast. We walked through the gate and boarded the boat at 8:01...and left no more than 2 minutes later.
The boat ride was an hour and a half inside a cramped crowded boat. Fortunately, about 50 minutes into it, there was a stop at Caye Caulker where half the passengers disembarked, and the remainder of the trip had much more room to spread out. The manager of the guest house had told us they were 100 feet from the dock for this boating company. I was pleasantly surprised when we got there, that the guest house was literally at the foot of the dock. Nice! We walked in, and they told us our room was ready! Awesome!! It was only 9:30 in the morning, and I had known they had a wedding party here over the entire weekend, so this was definitely not expected. We carried our luggage up to the second floor, dropped it off, and then I went to the office to fill out the paperwork. In the office the woman said, you are the Abramsons, right? Well no, we're the Ziemanns. "Oh," she said, "My manager said the Abrahamsons were coming early, so I assumed you were then. You will actually be on the first floor. So we start our stay by carrying all of our stuff back down the stairs.
At this point we had some time to kill before the SCUBA company was to come pick us up. We walked around the town a bit, found a smoothie stand (we each got one) and then found a place that looked good for lunch called Caramba. I had a very good curry chicken with rice and beans (of course). This was later discovered that it was probably not the best decision of the day.
Allie's anxiety of her first dive in the open ocean was clearly getting the better of her, as she was getting quieter and grumpier. As we got back to the hotel, she was repeating "I don't want to go, I don't want to go." To add to the tension our ride was more than 10 minutes late picking us up. Both girls were convinced I had the wrong time, the wrong place, something was wrong. I pulled up my email correspondence with the company and showed them where it told me where and when to wait for the ride. I also sent them a follow up email to make sure somehow I hadn't been forgotten. Fairly quickly though I got a response saying my ride was en route, and would be there soon.
Eventually a cab driver arrived, and said he was there to pick us up for Scuba School Belize. The cab driver was also extremely friendly, and when I told him we had gone to Lamanai the day before, he said, "Oh, you stayed in the town where I grew up: Orange Walk." Well, yes, we certainly did. Once again, a reminder of how small the country is.
When we got to the Scuba office, we went through the various paperwork, picked out and tried on equipment, and began getting our briefing, which then finished a couple blocks away at their dock. The instructors were great for working with newly certified students, and every step they took, they tried to turn it into a teachable moment for the new divers. I though this was great, though Allie and Kalyssa had a different opinion. Quite some time later, we finally boarded the boat and drove the 2-5 minutes out to the dive site. We suited up and jumped in the water.
The first thing I saw when I hit the water was several nurse sharks about 15-20 feet below me. Allie had been all excited to see sharks (perhaps the only thing she was still excited for pertaining to SCUBA diving.) I on the other hand was more concerned with how not to be eaten if I ran across sharks. This did excite Allie a bit, however she had quite a bit of trouble sinking when she first got in, and ended up remaining at the surface for several minutes while Kalyssa and her guide descended. seemed pretty After Allie descended in the water, it appeared she was doing much better in the ocean than she had in the quarry. In fact she may actually be enjoying it.
After our first dive we ascended back to the boat. As we got back towards the surface, I felt my stomach suddenly lurch in response to the changing pressure and rolling waves. I was pretty sure I would be sick, as images of last year's Hawaii trip ran through my head. I struggled to get on the boat, and told the dive master that I'd likely throw up. Once we got up, I follow through on my promise, and was sick most of the way back to the dock for our surface interval. I spoke with the divemaster, and he recommended I pickup some adhesive patches that provide a slow delivery of a drug to prevent nausea. He said they were availble at drugstores and showed me some he kept in his box for emergencies where people have several dives, or dive training they need to finish, but are affliceted with sea sickness. I knew once I got down for the second dive, I'd be better... or so I thought.
We rested for about 45 minutes and then went back out to do dive number 2. I hurried to get in the water, but my stomach was doing jumping jacks. I began descending to get out of the waves, but too little too late. While 5 feet under, I felt it coming. Fortunately, last year I did a lot of research of what to do if one gets sick under water. The answer is simply keep your regulator in your mouth through the whole episode. Not pleasant, but I followed that advice. I had a vew fits while descending, but continued to go down. After about 20 feet and 3-4 times of very productive stomach convulsions, things began to feel better. I finished the dive with the girls, (who were all doing much better than me), and we all began our final ascent. Once again, when I got to about 15 fee of depth, I felt my stomach go at it again. The good news was, that all the articles I read about getting sick underwater were right. Keep your cool, keep your regulator in your mouth, and its not too big of a deal.
However, at this point, my body was exhausted after two dives, and a total of 14-16 sessions of vomiting (half above and half below the water) that I could barely move to swim to the boat. I had signaled to the divemaster underwater that my stomach was not doing well, and he grabbed me and guided me to the boat, and helped me remove my gear (actually he pretty much removed it all for me.) Once we finally got back to the dock, I was fairly recovered, though still extremely fatigued. He reached into his box and gave me the adhesive patch, with no uncertain instructions but to use it tonight in advance of tomorrow's dives. I told him I certainly would.
We made the walk back to the office slowly, and Scuba School Belize called a cab for us. On the way back, we passed "Casa Picasso" and Allie exclaimed that she had seen reviews for this online, and its supposed to be really cool. We figured we'd go back to the room, shower and head back out there for dinner.
When we got to the house, a guy was feeding some stingrays off the dock right in front of it. Kallyssa went over to him, and he encouraged her to pet them. The stingrays started gathering at her feet like puppies!
We walked out to the street and found a cab. The cab was an extremely old van of some sort. Seats were disgustingly worn beyond recognition, the windshield was mostly shattered, and that which wasn't shattered was in desperate need of Windex, as it was almost impossible to see out of the glass.
We asked his price to take us to Casa Picasso. BZ$8. Seemed reasonable to me. We got in the car, and I had tried to pull it up on Google Maps. However, for some reason my internet has been very glitchy on this island. My app dropped a pin roughly where I thought Casa Picasso had been, but it seemedto be another restaurant. I had guessed that perhaps this was next door. As the cab was driving, it seemed like he had gone well further than where I remembered seeing the restaurant, and certainly my map app showed him way beyond it. At this point it was dark outside.
The cab driver turns down another road, which was gravel. The ambience is getting much less touristy, and more slummy. The gravel road starts getting worse and worse. I pull out my GPS which shows that we have passed the restaurant by far. Meanwhile our driver, takes another turn and I see a giant warehouse with a line of trailer loading docks. At this point, my heart started racing, and I convinced myself, I am about to get robbed. I started considering escape routes and how to indicate to the girls that we all should bolt from the car. First, I told the driver I believe he missed it somewhere behind us. He seemed to think it really was in the direction he was headed but obliged us, and took us back towards where we had come from. We went back to where my map dropped the pin when I searched on Casa Picasso (though Google maps changed it to something entirely different that WAS there. After wandering for quite a bit, I was offering anyway to simply get out the cab, as I was still very uncomfortable. He stopped to ask another cabbie about the location, and came back with the news that Casa Picasso was closed today, but that it was back in the direction he thought it was. I asked if he could just drop us somewhere that had something. He brought us to a nearby resort. At first it looked deserted. However, he said if we walked to the beach side we'd find some restaurants. I paid him (a little extra, because at least part of his running around was my fault.
When we checked out the restaurant, it was very empty, and someone came over and informed us the kitchen was closed. He suggested if we walk another 5 minutes down the road, there was a hotel that would still be serving food. We walked in that direction. We didn't see a restaurant yet, but at one of the resorts there was a group of people at a small outdoor bar. We asked if there was a restaurant. They said, "Yes, down by the lights". One of the woman at the restaurant spoke up and said they had eaten there the night before, and it was not that great. Uggh. The 3 of us at this point were just hungry and tired. I relayed the brief version of our story, and one of the people said: "Well, we just went fishing today and caught a barracuda. You are more than welcome to eat some of it, as we were just going to give it away to someone. So we pulled up a chair, and enjoyed steaks of fresh grilled barracuda only hours old, and made a handful of new friends. Unfortunately, the 3 of us were exhausted, and didn't have the energy to sit and chat all evening, and instead headed back to the room and fell asleep early. But of course before we left, I did ask for a picture that I could use for this little blog I keep.
Richard had said he'd have breakfast for us at 6:30. He indicated this would be enough time to get us into Belize City and catch our boat, though in retrospect, I'm not sure he understood the extent of the logistics that we needed to go through to accomplish this. As we were packing up the bags, I could hear him downstairs slicing up fresh pineapple and papaya, and some toast. He also had coffee waiting for us. We chatted a bit about his history on the island, and how the coral has been diminishing greatly since he's lived here. We also discussed the impact of politicians, gangs, and drugs on the quality of life in Belize. Richard had moved here from the UK back in the 70s. I hated to cut the conversation short. Geez, how often does one get to sit in the home of a National Geograpic Videographer and discuss World Travel. Alas, we had to get to our boat to get out to Ambergris.
I apologized for our rushing, but we bid farewell, and jumped in the car. I pulled up Google maps. For some reason here in Belize, I can use this app to route out a journey between two places, and it will tell me the route, distance, and time to travel, but it won't give me the step by step guided directions. I entered the address and started driving. With minimal people in Belize, and a very low average income, there was very little traffic on the road besides us. We made good time geting to Belize city. As I zoomed in closer on the map for the final couple miles or so, I saw that it had us cutting through the South Side of Belize City, right along side some of the areas the government deemed as "crime ridden areas."
I now had to choose between safety or possibly missing my boat. Safety won out, and I took another route that avoided the bad areas, but knew it would put us in more traffic. We finally reached the hotel where we were told we could park the car, and we had 14 minutes left until the boat left. As I pulled in I rattled off something to a security guard about leaving my car here while I got on a boat. He opened a large gate, and told us to go park inside. I probably could have done this and left, no questinos asked. Nonetheless, I had contacted the hotel earlier this week, and they said I could leave the car there if I paid the equivalent of about $17.50. I asked the guard where I pay, and he said inside.
Inside of course was a mess of people checking in and checking out. I ran up to the counter and explained myself to the woman behind, who clearly didn't share my sense of urgency. She slowly gave me forms to fill out, and entered stuff in the computer. To try and hurry her along, I asked if the water taxi leaves exactly at 8:00 or if there was some wiggle room. She started telling me about the competing water taxi, and offered to provide me schedules. No! I'm on my way there now, I need to know if it leaves right at 8, or if it will be gone if I'm a couple minutes late. She told me "yes, they have a boat that leaves at 8." Uggh, nevermind. After printing off, carefully cutting in half, and handing me a document to sign, she said, "Oh wait, let me give you one with the date. Took it back, ripped it up and started over. The moment the second one was in my hands, I ran out the door like there was no tomorrow.
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| Inside the Water Taxi |
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| View from Water Taxi of Belize City |
The boat ride was an hour and a half inside a cramped crowded boat. Fortunately, about 50 minutes into it, there was a stop at Caye Caulker where half the passengers disembarked, and the remainder of the trip had much more room to spread out. The manager of the guest house had told us they were 100 feet from the dock for this boating company. I was pleasantly surprised when we got there, that the guest house was literally at the foot of the dock. Nice! We walked in, and they told us our room was ready! Awesome!! It was only 9:30 in the morning, and I had known they had a wedding party here over the entire weekend, so this was definitely not expected. We carried our luggage up to the second floor, dropped it off, and then I went to the office to fill out the paperwork. In the office the woman said, you are the Abramsons, right? Well no, we're the Ziemanns. "Oh," she said, "My manager said the Abrahamsons were coming early, so I assumed you were then. You will actually be on the first floor. So we start our stay by carrying all of our stuff back down the stairs.
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| View From Front Door of our Unit |
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| Lunch at Caramba |
Allie's anxiety of her first dive in the open ocean was clearly getting the better of her, as she was getting quieter and grumpier. As we got back to the hotel, she was repeating "I don't want to go, I don't want to go." To add to the tension our ride was more than 10 minutes late picking us up. Both girls were convinced I had the wrong time, the wrong place, something was wrong. I pulled up my email correspondence with the company and showed them where it told me where and when to wait for the ride. I also sent them a follow up email to make sure somehow I hadn't been forgotten. Fairly quickly though I got a response saying my ride was en route, and would be there soon.
Eventually a cab driver arrived, and said he was there to pick us up for Scuba School Belize. The cab driver was also extremely friendly, and when I told him we had gone to Lamanai the day before, he said, "Oh, you stayed in the town where I grew up: Orange Walk." Well, yes, we certainly did. Once again, a reminder of how small the country is.
When we got to the Scuba office, we went through the various paperwork, picked out and tried on equipment, and began getting our briefing, which then finished a couple blocks away at their dock. The instructors were great for working with newly certified students, and every step they took, they tried to turn it into a teachable moment for the new divers. I though this was great, though Allie and Kalyssa had a different opinion. Quite some time later, we finally boarded the boat and drove the 2-5 minutes out to the dive site. We suited up and jumped in the water.
The first thing I saw when I hit the water was several nurse sharks about 15-20 feet below me. Allie had been all excited to see sharks (perhaps the only thing she was still excited for pertaining to SCUBA diving.) I on the other hand was more concerned with how not to be eaten if I ran across sharks. This did excite Allie a bit, however she had quite a bit of trouble sinking when she first got in, and ended up remaining at the surface for several minutes while Kalyssa and her guide descended. seemed pretty After Allie descended in the water, it appeared she was doing much better in the ocean than she had in the quarry. In fact she may actually be enjoying it.
After our first dive we ascended back to the boat. As we got back towards the surface, I felt my stomach suddenly lurch in response to the changing pressure and rolling waves. I was pretty sure I would be sick, as images of last year's Hawaii trip ran through my head. I struggled to get on the boat, and told the dive master that I'd likely throw up. Once we got up, I follow through on my promise, and was sick most of the way back to the dock for our surface interval. I spoke with the divemaster, and he recommended I pickup some adhesive patches that provide a slow delivery of a drug to prevent nausea. He said they were availble at drugstores and showed me some he kept in his box for emergencies where people have several dives, or dive training they need to finish, but are affliceted with sea sickness. I knew once I got down for the second dive, I'd be better... or so I thought.
We rested for about 45 minutes and then went back out to do dive number 2. I hurried to get in the water, but my stomach was doing jumping jacks. I began descending to get out of the waves, but too little too late. While 5 feet under, I felt it coming. Fortunately, last year I did a lot of research of what to do if one gets sick under water. The answer is simply keep your regulator in your mouth through the whole episode. Not pleasant, but I followed that advice. I had a vew fits while descending, but continued to go down. After about 20 feet and 3-4 times of very productive stomach convulsions, things began to feel better. I finished the dive with the girls, (who were all doing much better than me), and we all began our final ascent. Once again, when I got to about 15 fee of depth, I felt my stomach go at it again. The good news was, that all the articles I read about getting sick underwater were right. Keep your cool, keep your regulator in your mouth, and its not too big of a deal.
However, at this point, my body was exhausted after two dives, and a total of 14-16 sessions of vomiting (half above and half below the water) that I could barely move to swim to the boat. I had signaled to the divemaster underwater that my stomach was not doing well, and he grabbed me and guided me to the boat, and helped me remove my gear (actually he pretty much removed it all for me.) Once we finally got back to the dock, I was fairly recovered, though still extremely fatigued. He reached into his box and gave me the adhesive patch, with no uncertain instructions but to use it tonight in advance of tomorrow's dives. I told him I certainly would.
We made the walk back to the office slowly, and Scuba School Belize called a cab for us. On the way back, we passed "Casa Picasso" and Allie exclaimed that she had seen reviews for this online, and its supposed to be really cool. We figured we'd go back to the room, shower and head back out there for dinner.
When we got to the house, a guy was feeding some stingrays off the dock right in front of it. Kallyssa went over to him, and he encouraged her to pet them. The stingrays started gathering at her feet like puppies!
We asked his price to take us to Casa Picasso. BZ$8. Seemed reasonable to me. We got in the car, and I had tried to pull it up on Google Maps. However, for some reason my internet has been very glitchy on this island. My app dropped a pin roughly where I thought Casa Picasso had been, but it seemedto be another restaurant. I had guessed that perhaps this was next door. As the cab was driving, it seemed like he had gone well further than where I remembered seeing the restaurant, and certainly my map app showed him way beyond it. At this point it was dark outside.
The cab driver turns down another road, which was gravel. The ambience is getting much less touristy, and more slummy. The gravel road starts getting worse and worse. I pull out my GPS which shows that we have passed the restaurant by far. Meanwhile our driver, takes another turn and I see a giant warehouse with a line of trailer loading docks. At this point, my heart started racing, and I convinced myself, I am about to get robbed. I started considering escape routes and how to indicate to the girls that we all should bolt from the car. First, I told the driver I believe he missed it somewhere behind us. He seemed to think it really was in the direction he was headed but obliged us, and took us back towards where we had come from. We went back to where my map dropped the pin when I searched on Casa Picasso (though Google maps changed it to something entirely different that WAS there. After wandering for quite a bit, I was offering anyway to simply get out the cab, as I was still very uncomfortable. He stopped to ask another cabbie about the location, and came back with the news that Casa Picasso was closed today, but that it was back in the direction he thought it was. I asked if he could just drop us somewhere that had something. He brought us to a nearby resort. At first it looked deserted. However, he said if we walked to the beach side we'd find some restaurants. I paid him (a little extra, because at least part of his running around was my fault.
When we checked out the restaurant, it was very empty, and someone came over and informed us the kitchen was closed. He suggested if we walk another 5 minutes down the road, there was a hotel that would still be serving food. We walked in that direction. We didn't see a restaurant yet, but at one of the resorts there was a group of people at a small outdoor bar. We asked if there was a restaurant. They said, "Yes, down by the lights". One of the woman at the restaurant spoke up and said they had eaten there the night before, and it was not that great. Uggh. The 3 of us at this point were just hungry and tired. I relayed the brief version of our story, and one of the people said: "Well, we just went fishing today and caught a barracuda. You are more than welcome to eat some of it, as we were just going to give it away to someone. So we pulled up a chair, and enjoyed steaks of fresh grilled barracuda only hours old, and made a handful of new friends. Unfortunately, the 3 of us were exhausted, and didn't have the energy to sit and chat all evening, and instead headed back to the room and fell asleep early. But of course before we left, I did ask for a picture that I could use for this little blog I keep.
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