Day 1 - Belize City

In great contrast to the last time I started a big trip, I had absolutely no problems getting to Belize. Even on a day when the entire northeast was being pummeled with snow, sleet and rain - and all flights (after mine) were delayed by at least an hour, I left on time and arrived early!
As I already mentioned, my life for the past eleven months has consisted completely of school, work, and more school. I haven't had a chance to do any leisure reading or even leisure thinking - so naturally the first chance I get to let my mind wander, all I can think of is school. As the Yucatan Peninsula began to appear through the clouds on our descent toward the Belizean coast, I couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of the tropical jungle landscapes, coastal swamps, and coral atolls that were racing beneath my window in the context of my environmental biology class. Stop! You're done with classes! This is vacation now!!! I smacked myself in the forehead and forced myself to imagine the pristine beaches of Honduras where I'd have nothing to do but think of nothing and drink cheap rum drinks. Much better.

Jaime from CouchSurfing promised me that he would pick me up at the airport, and told me not to worry about how to tell who he was because he would recognize me.. I don't know how he planned to do that... All I knew was that he had a white Jeep. I waited outside the tiny terminal for about an hour, and was just about to give up and hop in a $20 cab into the city when a green Toyota pulled up and a guy around my age yelled "Max?" out the passenger window. We introduced ourselves and I hopped in. Jaime turned out to be a 25 year old Latino, Spanish-speaking lab chemist who worked in a hospital just outside of Belize City, who hated Belize and hated Barack Obama. His friend Mark was driving the car - he was a 20 year old Creole, Creole-speaking lab chemist who worked with Jaime and thought he was crazy because he LOVED Belize and loved Obama. They spoke English most of the time, but they kept accidentally switching into Creole, which is damn hard to follow.

We stopped off at a Belizean place for lunch, and I got some roast chicken with rice and beans. Mark is a vegetarian and couldn't find anything to eat, and Jaime doesn't like to eat at all, so I enjoyed my meal alone. They were very interesting characters... They were on a lunch break and left me to finish eating while they went back to work. I spent the next few hours wandering around the city and taking in the Caribbean atmosphere before I met up with them to get dinner and some drinks.

For the largest city in the country, it's very unimpressive. There is nothing I would call "urban." Mostly just small crowded, lively, and very colorful streets surrounding a small port where fishermen and cruise ships share docking space. I was approached by the usual beggars and con artists, but after abandoning my soul and any hint of patience while I was in India, I wasn't falling for their tricks. "I'm sorry you haven't had a job in 29 years and you have no legs, buddy, but you're not getting my wallet. Get lost." Traveling has definitely opened my mind, but it has also taken away my compassion. I'm not a walking ATM.

The warm 90 degree sun and vibrant Caribbean colors of the back streets of the city were very relaxing after my time in grey Beijing and the cold winter of New Jersey. Months worth of stress began working its way out of my system to the beat of the reggae streaming from every storefront.

Speaking of Beijing, this city is FULL of Chinese people!!!! Half of the signs were in Chinese. As my Belizean friends put it, the region is undergoing an Asian invasion. No one knows why, and no one really cares too much. (The story of Belize..) I decided to mess with their heads, so I walked into a Chinese grocery store that clearly was only frequented by other Chinese. The ladies at the front counter giggled to each other, "Why did that white guy come in here? He can't even read anything on the shelves." I walked back up to the register with a can of my favorite tea from Beijing, and asked them in Chinese "do you guys understand Mandarin? How much is this?" After they recovered from the shock, they all screamed and started rapid-fire interrogating me. We all had a good laugh at how much China sucks and how much Belize sucks more. (They don't feel comfortable around so many black people and they don't like the hot weather.. did I mention that Chinese people are brutally honest in their judgement?)

Mark picked me up a while later and decided to give me the grand tour of the city. We spent about five hours exploring EVERY street in the city. Multiple times... It was definitely something that most visitors to Belize City never experience. I was priveledged to see every major drug dealer's house and BMW, every illegal street racing spot, every scene of a murder or a rape in the past five years, every slum, every gas station that used to be something else a few years ago, every school that Mark had attended, the house of every girl Mark had had a crush on since he was 5, and every house of every person he knew --- which I'm assuming is every person in Belize... I saw the hospital he works at about four times, and I drove by the city's one casino at least eight times. It was quite the tour.

Jaime turned out to be a little nuts, but as I learned during my tour of the city, Mark was a very interesting guy. He told me all about the problems of Belize and how they will never amount to anything as a country as long as they keep killing and robbing each other. People are too poor, the government is too corrupt, and the nearby tropical archipelago and local girls are too beautiful for anyone to ever accomplish anything. Mark loves his country, but he feels strongly that the only way to get out of the cycle of poverty is to get out of Belize. He plans to go to Spain.

We had some Chinese food for dinner and ate it sitting on the sea wall that looks out toward the barrier islands. Lobster is so abundant and cheap that I treated myself to a $4 lobster chow mein. We talked philosophy. Life was good.

We met up with Jaime for a few drinks, and I passed out as soon as I got back to the apartment. It had been a very long day. Bright and early, Jaime drove me to the bus station, and I hitched a ride to the Guatemalan border. In total, I spent less than 24 hours in Belize, but I definitely got to see more of it than most tourists who just head straight for the beaches. Thanks CouchSurfing!

Next up - Guatemala