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To heck with chronological order. Here’s an entry from my journal -- when Jen and I started the honeymoon in Belize:
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Up at 5 AM. Ugh. On the road at 6, heading toward Philly. Arrived at the Phil. Int’l. Airport at just after 7 -- on the way, I spilled bottled “frappaccino” (sp?) on my pants, so I changed into a fresh pair in the “economy parking lot” at the airport. Checked in, passports, x-rays, take off your shoes, still plenty of time, quick breakfast, flight to Dallas.
Dallas: short lay-over, but long enough for lunch. Last chance to make calls -- message left on Pat’s voice mail -- and off we go! Window seat, Jen in the middle, pudgy teenager in the aisle seat. The p. t. copied the lyrics of a song he listened to on his CD player (with ear buds), then showed the lyrics to Jen, suggested that he had created those lines all on his own. Meanwhile, I took pictures of clouds.
And then, I looked at the expanse of water that I assume is the Gulf of Mexico. And then: land! Belize! Coastline! Trees! Lots of trees! Little roads, and little villages, in expanses of trees. Jungle! Landed at Belize International Airport -- so small, compared to the standard American fare. Palm trees! I laughed like a giddy kid. Passports checked, then get the bags, go through customs -- “Anything to declare?” -- “No” -- Picked up boarding passes, printed on regular notebook paper it seemed, with specific info penned in. And then into a 17-seat Cessna prop plane. Jen is a bit amazed by this having never been in plane like this before, not really, but I’ve flown in 2-seaters with Phil before, so it doesn’t grab my attention so much. I just keep looking out the windows at the palm trees, the water, hey what kind of bird is that? The plane drops off a few at Caye Caulker -- a neat little island, not as touristy as Ambergris Caye, more laid back, not as much to buy there. Off we go to Ambergris -- San Pedro! A little airstrip, in a not too big town (from a tourism info mag: “At the height of the Maya culture about 2 million people lived and traded on the Ambergris Caye. The population in the entire country of Belize is about 250,000 today.”). Our taxi is a little Toyato van, with a green license plate. Apparently all the taxis in S. P. are Toyota vans with green license plates. We go along an impressively bumpy dirt road to our hotel: Mata Rocks. (We had considered renting a golf cart during our stay, but with roads like that, what’s the point? We later learned that a grater periodically smoothes out the road). Along the road, we go by a stray dog who seems to love a particular pothole as a place to bed down -- the dog partially moved out of the way for us, then returned to the pothole, making a golf cart go around him without any notice on his part.
Mata Rocks Resort : A cute little place. The rooms are alright, not stellar (the oddest part was that there’s not much place to put your clothes, so it all stayed in the suitcases), but it has a nice beach, and hammocks, and a cool little tiki bar, where we could (and did) get pina coladas and laid in the hammocks and looked out on the Caribbean Sea. We chose Mata Rocks because of the hammocks and the beach and the view, and because “mata” is a Shawnee word (it means “no”), and we thought that was neat.
More to come on ceremonies and honeymoon soon . . . .
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