This morning Alison hitched a ride on a turtle all the way to the much talked about Jaguar night club and I finally broke the curse of the manatee.

If I could figure out how to rotate this image it would be nice

curse is broken!

Dear o’ great and all powerful manatee god,

Yesterday I might have made some mistakes and offended you by suggesting I would ride on one of your own, or training you to leap to freedom over my head like the lovable whale in Free Willy, and quite honestly I had also written about putting you into a headlock, until you submitted and became my new pet but I thought that might be a tad over the line and deleted it.  Well friends, it was all wrong… each and every bit of it and any offense I played upon these precious and lively manatees was avenged ten fold upon me with a massive manatee curse of epic proportions.

I started the morning by trying to cook what looked like waffle mix in a waffle maker, I believe now it was some sort of coffee cream… the staff workers here were not pleased.  A bit later on the boat I went ahead and fell from the edge into the main cabin onto several people that cushioned my horrific looking fall.  The seas were angry that day my friends, and ole Jefferson’s stomach along with the curse of the manatee required multiple vomits.. in the water… in snorkeling gear… with people swimming by.  But o’ great mantee god you were meriful and allowed them to be secret pukes that no one noticed and I just wanted to say I really appreciated that.

In the end, I think we learned a lot about each other today, mainly I won’t ever make fun of you and in turn please call off this horrible curse you placed upon my lowly human body.  Ohh I also got sunburnt.

Thanks, your new servent

jeff

Today has not been my favorite day of vacation. I knew the day was not going to go well after Jeff and I poured creamer into the waffle iron instead of the waffle mix. This lead to some guy and his young daughter making fun of the Aggies (I had an A&M shirt on) not being smart enough to do anything and telling his daughter she will not be going to school there. THEN, I was yelled at by the wait staff in Spanish for making a mess. Ugh…I wanted to help clean it up, but they kept speaking Spanish and wanted nothing to do w/ me…so I decided to come back to the room and shower to get ready for our manatee adventure. THEN, the water would not turn on in our room….for a good 20 minutes. It finally came on, but it wasn’t very warm and didn’t have a lot of pressure. Only good note: I didn’t ruin the waffle maker. It seemed to work fine the rest of the morning.

After the chaos of the AM, I thought for sure the full-day cruise would be great. Don’t get me wrong our sailboat was amazing and the crew was super nice, but I don’t think I’m a big fan of sailing or of snorkeling. BUT, the snorkeling we did do was very good. We also got to explore another Caye: Caye Caulker…so that was neat.

Additional bad news: No manatees. Our guide searched for at least 30 minutes while we were snorkeling, but he couldn’t find them. Bummer.

However, the night ended well with a nice hot shower and a chance to blow-dry my hair! Then, we had what we would consider our best meal so far at a place called Fido’s (overlooking the beach). We had a calamari appetizer, lobster (for me) and bacon wrapped shrimp (for Jeff). We topped it off w/ a slice of Key Lime Pie. All good!!

Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow. I really want to snorkel w/ some real sea creatures (turtles, sting rays, or nurse sharks), but I’m not sure I’m ready for another boating adventure….stay tuned…

• About 50% of people think I’m Belizian… until they hear my awesome tex-mex gringo spanish and I see them throw up in their mouths out of how badly I’m mangling their language. My bad!
• Everyone speeds around the island on golf carts, which to me seems hard to take yourself seriously in one of those, maybe we need this in the USA to avoid road rage? I haven’t seeen any golf carts that are souped up with spinning rims or a wing yet though.
• Shoes are totally over rated here… no one wears them, which is fine but FYI there are dogs and there umm remnants around, if you know what I mean.
• Plantains with every meal… I think people here just can’t think of anything else to do with them.
• Our vacation sleep schedule has evolved to nursing home lights out hours, 9:30 PM – 5:30 AM – No Jello though.
• I spent half of yesterday singing that damn “HUNNNNNGRYYY EYEEEES” song from Dirty Dancing, damn you Patrick Swayze.  Shout out to Justin Haworth cause I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him play his leg like a guitar to this one.

Are you familiar with the endangered species, manatees? You know the ones the environmentalists want to save? Well tomorrow we are going to save some, and by save I mean snorkel with, evidently you can do that sort of thing here without any problems. Actually it seems like you can do pretty much anything here without any problems, you better belize it!  Anyway my goal tomorrow is to one up everyone, seize the moment and actually ride one of these bad boys or at the very least I’m hoping I can coax one to jump over me like that killer whale in the Free Willy movie.  Alison just told me this is impossible, but I’ve assured her anything is possible… if you just put your mind (and in this case the manatees peanut sized brain) to it.

Anyway… if you haven’t guessed, we are on the island now – far far away from the roach motel and various friends we have made along the way.  Here are some more Tikal pics for now.

Look, it's my brother Chris!

Toucan Sam