After checking out of our hostel, Sarah and I hopped into our little golf cart and began the trek up north towards our resort. One of my favorite things to do when I’m not solo traveling is split my time-- hostel first, resort/hotel/~luxury~ second. I imagine that someday, I won’t be as keen on hostels (maybe?), but honestly, with the right research, hostels can be cleaner than some hotels and more fun than most resorts. I love the excitement of meeting new people and the socialization that comes with hostels, plus it’s an unparalleled way to learn new things about the destination. Everyone at hostels has recommendations on where you should eat or what tours you should do or where your next destination should be, and usually you can get some really solid budget recommendations when you’re asking people who are spending $15/night on accommodations, rather than asking the front desk at a $200/night hotel. Listen, I love a nice, fancy dinner just as much as the next but my poor wallet can’t handle luxury price tags for more than a night or two.
But after 3 or 4 nights at a social hostel, even my socialization meter starts running low, and that’s saying something because I could probably talk to a brick wall for 3 hours and enjoy it. (But I still tell people I’m an introvert???? Apparently I am not very self aware.) So, on Thursday morning Sarah and I headed towards our ~fancy~ resort about 20 minutes outside of town. We checked in and were brought to a little bungalow. After entering, we stood in a little sitting area, complete with a full kitchen (even an OVEN?!?!), a couch, and a high top eating area, while we waited for her to show us to our room. And then… she turned around and told us that we were, in fact, already in our room!!!!!!!!!!!!! Opening another door, we were greeted with a massive king size bed, and a beautiful bathroom with our very own shower (luxury). There was enough room on either side of our bed for me to do literal cartwheels (plural!!!), which is how I determine whether or not I can call a room “large.” So our room was, by all accounts, extra large. And to make things even better, guess how much we paid for it?
Guess.
Do it. I bet you can’t guess.
$0!!!! Zilch! Same price as our roundtrip flights to Belize. Nada. Which means I had more money leftover for things like SWIMMING WITH SHARKS!!!!!!!!!! This is my plug to go read the posts about traveling using points, because strategically using points was what made this trip possible.
Anyway, back to the hotel. Sarah and I quickly unpacked, filling the closet and the dresser with our clothes and taking advantage of the fact that we didn’t need to keep all of our belongings tucked away in our backpacks locked under our bunk beds. We spread our toiletries out in the bathroom, left our shampoo in the shower, and plugged all of our electronics in to charge before heading right outside to enjoy our free (my favorite word) welcome drink (more rum.) We relaxed at the pool until dinner time, when we headed to the Truck Stop for trivia with John, Andrea, and Stephanie from our hostel. Before trivia started, we sat with our Dirty Bananas (googling the recipe, I’m starting to understand why we had such a stomach ache from drinking 4 of these) and soaked in the incredible sunset over the lagoon.
Trivia was so fun and also so incredibly difficult. Sarah and I held our own (that’s an overstatement. I really only recognized 1 Apple commercial and that was mostly my only contribution. We couldn’t even remember what ancient civilization was responsible for Machu Picchu…. How embarrassing is that?!?!) but ultimately decided we probably needed to start doing trivia in Chicago for practice. After trivia finished (we finished solidly in the middle), we all said goodbye to our new friends, went back to our resort, and fell asleep blissfully watching HGTV.
The next day, we had to head back into San Pedro to meet our tour guide, Oscar, to talk about our tour for Sunday. On the drive in, we felt (actually, we heard it more than we felt it…) a loud THUMP as we drove slowly over one of the many potholes on the main road. Thinking nothing of it, we continued driving. After we spoke with Oscar, we had to go hunt down an ATM so we could pay for our tour-- which meant driving our little golf cart around downtown San Pedro for 45 minutes, trying 4 different ATMs, and parking in a no-parking zone. In regards to that last point, a nice, long traffic jam had formed behind me before the San Pedro police kindly informed me of our parking mishap and then watched me like little hawks as I tried to figure out how to turn on and drive our clunky cart to a proper parking spot while Sarah, the rightful driver of any and all moving vehicles, had disappeared into the bank.
Once we successfully withdrew money and returned to the hostel, Oscar told us that now we had to go to the airport to get our flights changed. I know I mentioned this earlier, but I cannot stress enough how low our social stamina meter was, so these added errands were not sitting super well with us. We had expected this to be a super quick, easy trip into town. Over and done with before 9am. A nice, little bop on into town before breakfast. That was our plan. Then, after the ATM thing took 45 minutes, Oscar walked with us towards our golf cart to head to the airport, and stopped dead in his tracks, pointed at our little clunker, and said “what…. Did you guys do?!?!” Following his gaze, we saw a giant metal bar, presumably pretty important to the structure, flopping around below our cart. He commented that he was surprised we weren’t stranded in a ditch somewhere and noted that it was definitely not safe to drive, so we hopped into his golf cart zoomed over to the airport. Upon returning from our final errand, we were forced to chill at our hostel and wait for a new golf cart to be delivered because apparently the entire frame of our cart had broken. Whoops. Hangry, sunburnt, and socially burnt out, we slumped into the couches in the shade, daydreaming about the quiet loungers by our resort pool.
Eventually, they brought us a new golf cart (but gave us basically no gas?! So we had to go hunting for a gas station and put $5 of gas into our new ride) and we scooted ourselves back to the resort, where we spent most of the day relaxing in the shade. UNTIL the golf-cart man returned and said he needed our golf cart back and traded us back for our old, white golf cart. He found us by the pool, we swapped keys, he said our new cart was in the parking lot, and he left.
No biggie.
Super easy.
Nothing noteworthy.
White golf cart. Parked in the lot. Same white golf cart we had “destroyed” earlier. (I have a lot of questions as to how they managed to fix it within just a few hours, but I digress.)
That evening, we went to go get our COVID tests done so we would be allowed back into the states. We hopped into our white cart, popped the key into the ignition, and scooted off toward the San Pedro hospital.
But on the way, we started noticing some things… that felt a little off.
For example, we hadn’t noticed the gas gauge on our last cart. Odd.
This white cart had a lot more trash in the cupholders. And said cupholders seemed more plentiful than we remembered. Bizarre.
And this new cart didn’t have a lock on it. Strange.
Also, there wasn’t a back seat on this one, and we could have sworn our golf cart had a cushioned seat on the back. Curious.
So when we hopped out and started walking into the hospital, we tried reassuring ourselves that this was, in fact, our golf cart. I said, “it has to be! It was parked in the same place as our old blue cart. It makes the most logical sense.”
And then we stopped in our tracks and Sarah quietly said what we both were thinking, “.......... wait, Andi. That makes the least logical sense…….. That would mean that he parked this new white one, moved the blue one out of the spot, and then got back in the white one to park the white one where the blue one used to be…. And then got back in the blue one and drove away. That actually makes no sense at all. That makes the least amount of logical sense.”
So that is when we realized we had stolen someone else’s golf cart. We were literal criminals. Theft. Thieves. Basically committed a heist. But by accident? Does it make it better or worse that our criminal activity was the result of pure stupidity? Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.
After our COVID tests (obviously negative), we hauled ass back to the resort and drove up to see a VERY disgruntled Belizean woman, with crossed arms and a very displeased look on her face. We word-vomited apologies as she explained that this was her husband’s work golf cart and she had several others out looking for us. :) Fun! Cool! We were basically wanted criminals! Love that journey for us!!
So, she got her golf cart back, and we were reunited with our older, much less nice cart. We drove ourselves to a little swim up taco bar for dinner, then back to the Truck Stop to watch yet another gorgeous sunset. After an hour of playing bags/cornhole and giant Connect 4 and drinking 1 too many mojitos, we found ourselves falling asleep, yet again, to the peaceful sound of HGTV.
Pictured above: Our actual golf cart. (Key giveaway, the padded back seat.)
The next day was our last day on the island, so we knew we had to soak in every last drop of sun. (Read: I got sunburnt again and Sarah hung out on a hammock in the shade like a smart person.) For dinner, we wandered 15 minutes down the beach to a little spot with live music and ordered a pitcher of sangria. The pitcher ended up being 14 times larger than we expected, but we were determined to finish it to celebrate our last true night of solitude. To make things even better, THERE WAS A DOG. AT THE RESTAURANT. (To be clear, we were outside, eating on the beach. A dog playing fetch inside a restaurant wouldn’t get the same reaction from me) And then.
Guess what?!
THERE WAS A PUPPY. A LITERAL EFFING 7 WEEK OLD PUPPY. FLOPPING ITS LITTLE PUPPY BODY AROUND AT OUR FEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ITS TINY FLUFFY PUPPY BODY WITH ITS TINY LITTLE PUPPY FACE CONTAINING TINY LITTLE PUPPY TEETH.
But then, just as we were ready to wrap up our meal and turn our attention fully to the puppies, our waiter came and dropped off two. More. Glasses. Of. Sangria. Ugh. My stomach curled at the idea of drinking any more of this sugary mix of alcohols that we didn’t even ask for. Clearly, the waiter must have been confused, so we told him that those glasses weren’t for us, and after some back and forth, we learned that the musician performing had bought us these drinks.
Remember earlier? When I said our social meter was low? Remember that? Well I wasn’t kidding. And the idea of speaking to a stranger (I know this goes against my entire last post) was nauseating. Granted, quickly downing an entire pitcher of sangria probably contributed to the nausea, but I also just really, truly, did not feel up to talking to a man who would likely be trying to flirt with us (why else would you buy us drinks?) If you’ve read this far, I’ll let you in on a little secret; I was not, at all, even a little bit, interested in flirting with a man at this point of the trip. Not even a little bit. My single self was more than ready for a little vacation romance, but by this point in the week, I had 0 desire to exert any mental energy talking with a strange man. Or a non-strange man. Literally, just any man. I did not want to speak to one. Sarah and I, both awkward humans with no confrontational abilities, frantically tried to think of ways to convey to the musician that we were not interested. Quietly switching our rings to our wedding finger, we realized that wasn’t enough, so we quickly requested the check and made a beeline towards the door. Stumbling down the beach, we realized, with shock, we had been so against any type of mildly flirtatious encounter that we LEFT A 7 WEEK OLD PUPPY. That’s saying something.
So for a third, and final night, we sprawled out on our king sized, luxurious bed, and fell asleep watching HGTV.
Andddddd this particular entry has rambled on long enough, so our final day in Belize will be saved for an entry all on its own. Thanks for listening to me shout into the void.
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