Dr. Alison Marr

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

Note: there are some picture issues here. will fix later.

Yesterday, we had a 12 hour adventure to Tikal, Guatemala (more stamps on the new passport…YES!). Now, I’m not a big history buff, but you can’t not be impressed by the work the Mayans did on these structures dating from 600BC-900AD. It’s really amazing. I’ve put some pictures here, but you really have to see it yourself to appreciate it.

Star Wars View

Stairs we climbed to the top of one of the ruins

RUINS!

Three notes about our trip yesterday:

1. Jeff claims that the view from the top of one  of the ruins can be seen in the Star Wars movie w/ the Ewoks in it. I think he’s crazy. I’ve seen these Star Wars movies and don’t remember that scene. I do however remember the Ewoks films, which Jeff says don’t exist. Looks like I’ll be sneaking those films on to his Netflix list.

2. The Mayans were really good at math (among other things), so I really appreciated the good job our tour guide did explaining their base 20 number system. He drew diagrams and everything! Good job Hugo, Jr!

3. We saw lots of wildlife in the JUNGLE! Spider monkeys and toucans to name a few. Pics to come later.

Finally, I wanted to post some pictures of our cabana and the view that we’ve been enjoying the last few days. It’s been a nice stay here in the jungle, but I’m definitely excited to head to the city/beach for a little change of pace.

our cabana

view from cabana

After my disastrous encounter/one night stand minus 23 hours and 59 minutes with the preying mantis the other day, my macho status was completely up in the air, strangely just like the 143 moths that seem to be circling our cabin in the air at all times. I know you are probably going to think I freaked out again, which is a pretty damn good guess, but that’s in your face because I bought my self this double headed Mayan serpent carved in slate (not to be confused with my friend Slade – who has successfully made the switch from country music performer to emo cover band eye line wearing keytar player). Anyway this bad boy is known for giving people strength and “othirity” (says so – carved in the back of it) so I’m serving notice to all these buggy bastards. However, one way I’ve learned NOT to serve notice is desperately spraying OFF brand bug repellent in the air only seems to make them angry and beat their lil moth wings even faster as they dive bomb your face. Don’t try that – unless it’s that new OFF skintastic scent or something, hope you guys at the office like that smell, it’s really growing on me and exudes the kind of confidence and professionalism any decent office demands . Also I would like it noted that as I typed this message I just forcibly removed a roach from Alison’s toothbrush case, no joke – I can’t even make this stuff up. I’m not sure why that is funny to me… it just is. Maybe just cause I will probably cry when I look what’s in mine.

Anyway about roaches, today brings a new story about the latest addition to our little family here, we have named it/he/she by the name of BAR, not as in I go the bar and drink Belikin Stout, which is good, but as in Big ASSSSS Roach! We found this giant fellow on the floor waving his cute lil antler? type apparati at us, as if saying I’m here to totally and completely freak you out with my giant palm sized body, but BAR didn’t know that I’m rolling with the serpents now SSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS and I had to eject him as well. You know… show my orthirity!

BAR

Random Questions:

1. Shelee – What is BAR’s scientific name?

2. Chris – How much would I have to pay you to eat this… again we are talking 4 or 5 bites easily?

Also before I go, today we went to Tikal in Guatemala with the Mayan double shot tandem of Hugo and Hugo Jr. and this giant ass Bull almost rammed our flimsy tourist van. It was awesome. Tikal was cool and you might have had an interesting day but you don’t have a thing on me until you are dodging fist sized roaches and angry Guatemalan Brahma Bulls. Serpententor out!!! SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Bulls on Parade