Caye Caulker

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The sun beating in our window woke me up at a decent hour and I was happy to know that all I needed to worry about today was what fruit I should choose for my breakfast smoothie.

I did however, still wonder if we'd be able to switch our flight or not. As I had mentioned before, the original plan was to fly out of Guatemala City, but we were so in love with the coast, that we wanted to see about spending the last week by the ocean and flying out of Cancun instead. Niki said that the max she would be willing to spend to change our flight was $150 because it was going to cost a decent chunk of money anyway, just to get all the way back to Guatemala City. I, looking on the bright side, bet her that it wouldn't even be close to that much.

I left the cabin to go use the wifi and see what it would take to switch. I went to the airline's website and then to our itinerary. Located on an obvious blue button, were the words "Change Flight". I clicked on it and was happy to see a window pop up with drop down menus for changing. Could this really be this easy? My iPhone Internet browser wasn't cooperating with the site though so it wouldn't let me scroll more side to side. I ran back to the cabin, feeling super excited, and grabbed Georgia's laptop. Niki followed me out and logged into her flight info on the laptop. Sure enough, she had the same blue button and we crossed our fingers as she clicked it. A drop down menu under DEPARTURE CITY displayed 'Guatemala City' and with the click of a button revealed a ton of other choices with Cancun, Mexico being an option. Not only was it an option though, it was also a direct flight which meant we'd arrive at five in the evening instead of 11:30pm and that we wouldn't have to have a three hour layover on Fort Lauderdale. I was starting to bounce my legs with excitement. She clicked on the city, verified that "Yes, I would like to change my flight." and was taken to the next page. As the next page loaded, I bounced up and down in my seat, clapping my hands like a freakin' child. "Hold on, hold on," Niki said, half anticipating the next page to be an expensive billing page. Her eyes opened wide to find that her new balance owed to the airlines was only like fifty three dollars or something like that. With the quick click of a button on the "I Agree" box, a window popped up with Niki's new itinerary. Silent and staring at the screen with big eyes and a dropped jaw, Niki turned to me and said shocked, "Oh my gosh, I just changed my flight! We're flying our of Cancun, Mexico!"

Now it was my turn. I logged in, went through the same procedure she did and was even more ecstatic when my billing page popped up. Instead of a new balance, mine said Customer Credit and I had been credited ten dollars back! We busted out into laughter and questioned how in the heck that worked out the way it did. Turns out it was because I had booked a round trip back in October where Niki's was just a one way ticket. Regardless of the bills, we celebrated and decided to head out for smoothies. I joked that with that ten dollar refund, I could now get a bagel TOO!

On our walk to get our fruit smoothie, we found a bakery with dirt cheap wheat rolls that we decided to grab for lunch supplies. The bakery smelled of cinnamon and bread and the lady gladly took our whole $1 for the bag of eight rolls.

After the bakery, we returned to Gloria's smoothie shack where we had gotten fruit smoothies the day before. For five Belizian dollars ($2.50 US), we got a large and very healthy fruit smoothie consisting of three fruits of our choice, fresh squeezed orange juice and ice. My drink of choice was always banana, pineapple, mango and orange juice. If we were lucky, Gloria or her dad who also made the smoothies, would hand us out glass, have us take three big sips and then empty the remaining smoothie drink into our cup.

After smoothies, we searched for some avocados and tomatoes for our rolls for sandwiches, but had no luck. Although we were able to find tomatoes, avocados were not available anywhere on the island. The locals told us that they were out of season as we sadly walked away from every supermarket. We had been so spoiled up until this point with twenty five cent avocados that we were going through withdraws.

As we walked, we also checked out diving places to get some prices. Two tank dives averaged about two to three hundred dollars and we quickly decided that diving wasn't going to happen on this island. Our travel books said that Cozumel and other areas of Mexico had just as good of diving for way cheaper, so we'd just wait. Even snorkeling was pretty expensive in Belize so we settled for a beach day instead.

We swam, sunned and relaxed all day with not a care in the world. I was so relieved to know that the ocean was going to be in the picture the next seven days and that we didn't have to ride a bus back inland. My sunny naps were interrupted here and there by a young kid selling snacks or a ball from a nearby paddle game rolling over and hitting me.

Niki and I thumbed through our Lonely Planet travel books trying to plan out our next week. The plan was to leave Belize on Thursday and head into Mexico and toward the Tulum ruins. We were now on a tight schedule and didn't have much time to waste.

Georgia also planned to fly out of Cancun but on the 19th, so we figured we would just keep traveling with her. Lee and Paul had decided to stay a bit longer and wait up for their son Ryan to meet them, so we invited Georgia along with us. She was having a lot of fun with us so far and we loved each others company, so why not.

As sunset approached, we decided to make our way back to the cabins to shower and head out to dinner. Lee and Paul had scoped out a little place around the corner from us with cheap prices and a good menu so we decided we'd all check it out.

Getting ready for dinner that night was so fun. Niki had hooked up her iPod and we were singing, fairly loudly of course, every word to Alanis Morisette's "One Hand in my Pocket". I used a comb or something of that sort as my microphone as I danced around the room singing. Georgia conveniently grabbed her camera during our performance, in time to capture a lot of it on film, definitely some priceless footage.

Lee knocked on the door to see if we were ready and Paul told us that he thought there was a party going on in the opposite direction of where we were because we were singing so loud. We laughed and headed to the restaurant for some grub. I ordered a curried lobster, coconut rice and grilled veggies for ten dollars and ate every last bit.

After dinner, we thanked the shakey guy behind the counter that reminded me of my Grandpa and headed back around the block toward the hostel. Us girls stopped in the supermarket across the street from our cabins for a candy bar. I enjoyed every sweet moment of my mini snickers bar!

We said goodnight to Lee and Paul and tucked into the cabin for the night. I fell asleep to the lullaby strumming of Georgia's guitar and Niki and I's "not so lullaby" singalong voices.