Belize side trip

I was back in the states for a visit with my family when I decided to go down to Belize for a short trip to visit one of my son's best friends. He and I have fished together in the bay area and I wanted to fish in Belize for some of the tarpon and things they have so when he invited me I jumped at the chance.

I flew down to Cancun Mexico on one of the cheap package price tours and spent a night at a hotel. I went out on the town that night by myself and had a blast. I can't get into the entertainment in this blog since this is a G rated blog but I had a fantastic time. The next morning I caught a bus from Cancun down to Belize. The bus cost about twenty five bucks and it was a five hour ride each way. It was one of those fancy first class buses with a girl serving drinks and sandwiches along the way. I thought the ride might have some nice scenery but except for a couple of spots where the road was slightly elevated all I saw were rows of trees all the way down along the flat coastline.

I ended up sitting next to a girl from Belize and we started to talk on the ride. We had fun talking. She was very open and told me way too much information about herself but I didn't mind because it made the long ride go faster. When we got to Chetumal Mexico at the border with Belize, she asked me if she could stay the night with me at my friend's house. I told her I would see but would help her find a place for the night either way. My friend met us at the border and he was surprised to see me with a nice young lady. He took it in stride and told me she could spent the night with us. We drove over to his place right on the beach in a town called Consejo. We met his family and then he took me to my room. It was a two bedroom, fully furnished house. My girlfriend and I took a shower and got cleaned up then we went over and had some dinner with my friend at a local bar restaurant. It was pretty quiet around Consejo since it was just a tranquil little village.

The next morning we gave my girlfriend a ride to the bus stop and got her off on her way then we toured the area. The wind was howling off the water so we gave up fishing there and we went into the mangroves. The water in the mangroves didn't look the right color but we threw lures for a little while until his little brother that we brought got too bored and we left to drive around town some more looking at all the sights. Back at the house we checked out his boat and his new pet snake that he had found in the water a few days earlier. He did not intend on keeping the snake but he wanted to make sure it was healthy before he released it again. The next morning the wind was still blowing too hard to get out on the water. The water there is very shallow flats and the wind makes big waves which cause the boats to bottom out when they end up in a trough between waves. Since we didn't want to damage the boat we didn't want to risk it.

Instead we decided to go on a road trip around Belize because the weather report was for continued high winds. So much for my tarpon fishing. We drove down to Belize City checking out the sights along the way. My buddy told me about how he was driving on this road one day when some men with machine guns stopped the cars. A Columbian drug plane landed right on the road and it was refueled with a truck while the cars were held back. Men with machine guns guarded the plane. Then the plane just took off again and they let the cars go. We met up with some of his friends and checked into the casino hotel right on the beach. We fished off the docks at the hotel and caught some weird looking catfish but not much else. It was still fun. The next day we drove out to ride through a cave down a river on inner tubes. The four of us went together. We stopped off at a zoo on the way to see some beautiful black jaguars and lots of birds and other local tropical animals.

We rented our inner tubes and hiked down to the cave opening along the river. We were with a guide as required in a small group of other tourists, mostly young couples from the States. The water was cold at first which surprised me but after a few minutes adjusting to it we had a lot of fun drifting though the big cave while floating on our inner tubes. There were rock formations and openings here and there with sunlight streaming in that looked nice. It only took us a couple of hours to do the entire float trip. It was fun and interesting but I wrecked my camera in the water. I had it sealed up in a ziplock bag but the bag leaked and the camera died when it got wet. If you ever go, take a waterproof camera with you.

We drove back to Consejo and the next day we went out to Ambergris Cay and got a hotel at San Pedro. San Pedro was a nice little resort town full of nice little bars and restaurants. There was a live concert on the beach that attracted a large crowd that night. We sat on the beach and listened to the music drinking some beers and smoking some of the local. The locals were all Rasta stoners. Everywhere we went the smell of weed was pervasive all over Belize. My friend waded out to hip deep water and did some casting for bonefish or whatever he could catch. I just watched him fish from the beach as I watched the girls walk by along the beach.

We booked a fishing trip with an outfitter our hotel set up for us. We were late getting started and the fishing was inside the reef for triggerfish and stuff. We talked him into going outside the reef to troll for some larger fish and he reluctantly took us. We caught almost nothing and nothing of any size. It was just a nice boat ride. That night a Cuban refugee boat made it to the shore. It was a pathetic looking piecemeal boat that used inner tubes to help keep it afloat. About twenty people men women and children were on the little boat. I had a hard time believing that this rickety boat made the journey from Cuba with that heavy of a load in it but it did. We took some pics horsing around in the boat.

I found the local people in Belize to be very difficult to work with. They are so laid back that they don't even bother answering questions and make no attempt to help you get what you want like in this case we wanted to go on a serious fishing trip. They have office hours when they feel like it and go fishing if they feel like it and so forth and mostly they feel like smoking their weed more than anything else. It was frustrating for us since we only had so much time available. We considered going diving at the blue hole which is a world famous diving site right near where we went fishing. We rode in our fishing boat near it and could see the color change in the water that gave it the name blue hole. There is basically just a big deep hole that is lined with coral and sponges and lots of colorful tropical fish. You can snorkle near the surface or dive as deep as you are qualified to dive. It was a crowded spot with lots of tour boats anchored around it.

We partied for a couple more nights around San Pedro and then flew back to Consejo on a puddle jumper flight. My fishing trip to Belize was a bust fishing wise but I sure had fun anyway and my son's friend was a perfect host for the trip. My friend gave me a ride to the border and I took the bus back to Cancun. I didn't have a hot girl next to me on this ride, you can't have everything all the time. I had a night to go out in Cancun though before my flight back to the States. I had a fantastic meal for dinner at a little restaurant that caters to the local Mexican workers. That big meal pretty much took the get up and go right out of my system. I tried to go out and have some fun but I was just too tired and full of good food. I sat around and watched a show at one club and talked to some girls I met there but I ended up going back to my room alone and got some sleep in before I flew home to San Francisco the next morning.