Northbound travails

The sailing trip served as the culmination of the Central American leg of our journey. After a day of recuperating, we headed North again from Placencia to Belize City. This was a repeat of the bus journey we'd taken a week earlier to get to Caye Caulker; the sailing trip had taken us back down South. As it was, it was lucky we'd had some practice at the bus trip, as, just like the time before, the only bus of the day arrived, and departed, in very un-central american style, 20 minutes early. If we had turned up at the scheduled time, we would have missed the bus, and probably, our flight.

As it was we got the bus and arrived at the airport with a solid 5 hours to spare before our flight. Belize Airport doesn't offer much to the waiting traveller. There is a starbucks style coffee franchise, which proudly upholds the global tradition of airport coffee outlets that serve astonishingly bad coffee, a couple of shops selling over priced sarongs and those little street signs with people's names on them (they very rarely seem to have a Max sign) and a liquor shop, charging very western prices for western spirits.

The five hour wait would have been painful enough, but as our flight neared, we saw the first rain we'd seen in Belize. Those few raindrops very quickly turned into a torrent, accompanied by a storm. And that was followed by the announcement that the plane we were meant to take to Dallas could not land in Belize and was diverting to Honduras; for the second time on this trip our plane landed in the wrong country. We weren't on board this time, but the potential inconvenience was far greater. We had two hours to make our connection from Dallas to Seattle. That was always going to be tight, given that in the USA you have to clear customs and collect your bags at the first point of entrance, so the two and a half hour delay in Belize looked like it had put paid to our hopes of making it to Seattle that night. To add some more drama, American Airlines announced that the crew were reaching the end of their legally permissible shift time, and that if the plane did not leave Belize within 45 minutes of landing, it could not continue that day and we would have to stay in Belize.

As we waited and worried, it struck me that if you are stuck in an airport for an extended delay like this, and facing the possibility of sleeping in either Dallas or Belize airport, Americans (and Canadians) are probably the best people to do it with. On both occasions that we had these delays, the Americans on the plane seemed to turn into one big happy family. Everyone turns around and starts sharing their life story with the people around them. Perhaps even more importantly, they share their food and drinks as well. On the way in we got sandwiches and chips which someone raided from the airline. This time a Canadian family offered us their (already opened) bottle of coke. I have the feeling that if it was a plane full of Australians, or Germans, most people would, while trying to stay positive and offering each other the odd exasperated smile, pretty much keep to themselves and their friends. And I certainly couldn't see them all profusely thanking the crew for working the extra hours to get them home, as our fellow passengers did.

In the end the plane made it out of Belize, and there were so many people on it connecting to Seattle that they held the Seattle flight for us too. It meant that we arrived in Seattle at about 1am, but it was better than staying in Dallas. The drama hadn't quite finished for us though, as we arrived at what appeared to be a very locked and closed hotel. I hadn't tipped our taxi driver, partly because I wasn't sure about the etiquette, and partly because he had clearly gouged us on the price (it was not a metered taxi), so he left before we could turn around. The only person around was a drunk guest of the hotel who had lost his key and couldn't get in. He assured us that without a key, it was impossible to get in. Fortunately Kate was in no mood to debate our next step with an intoxicated wanderer, nor to tolerate a sleeping receptionist. She found an intercom button, which was actually answered after a few buzzes. I don't think our drunken friend was the sharpest tool in the shed, because he hadn't tried that course of action. Just to round off the night, the hotel informed us that they had mistaken our booking, and that there was only a room with a single bed available. We had left Placencia at 6.30am Belize time. By the time we got into bed, it was 3 am in Seattle, and 5am in Belize. We didn't waste much energy worrying about the room.