Flantastic

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

The cave canoeing was great.  We have a lot of caves in St. Paul carved by nature and teenagers out of the limestone cliffs that line the banks of the Mississippi.  Some are large enough that they were used by mobsters as speakeasies during Prohibition.  But limestone is soft, so there are no stalactites or mites or clumps of diamond-like crystals or splotches of yellow and pink mineral deposits that create 40-foot high abstract impressionist-like paintings on the walls, like there were in Belize.

We glided through the darkness as Jose and Alex pointed these things out with their headlamps as though they knew by feel exactly where they were.  Jose had a degree in Geology and, during the school year, taught the subject at the high-school level, so he was a great guide.

It was very peaceful, unless you were afraid of bats, the dark, drowning, or enclosed spaces.

Jose and Alex talked to one another from time to time in Spanish.  When canoes passed going in the other direction, Jose would talk to their guides in the local Belizean Kriol (their spelling).  Then he would effortlessly switch to English to point out some formation to us.  I have always envied this facility with multiple languages. I asked him which languages Belizeans learn, and when.

“English is the official language, so we learn it in school. But we learn Kriol from the cradle, the closer you get to the Guatemalan border, the more people you will find who also speak Spanish.”

Back on dry land, Mike’s wife whipped up a big meal for us, served with the ubiquitous Belizean beer, Belikin.  “You want dessert?” she asked.  Everyone nodded; we hadn’t had dessert the night before.

“What do you think it will be?” someone asked.

“It’ll be flan,” I pronounced confidently.  At that moment Mike’s wife and her helper returned with a dozen servings of flan.  Everyone stared at me.

“I’ve been to Costa Rica and El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba … flan is the standard dessert.  And it’s delicious.”  Most of them had never heard of it.

“Does it contain dairy?” “Is there gluten in it?”  began the questions to Mike’s wife.  Some of us without sensitivities happily ate their servings.

The guy who had read every road sign out loud the day before said, “You sure enjoyed being right about that, didn’t you?”

I’m pretty sure he was irritated not because I had known dessert would be flan, but because I had been so confident.  If I had been a man making such a confident statement, maybe it wouldn’t have been received negatively.  I don’t know.

All I can do is look at my own behavior; I can’t change someone else.  I’m afraid I can sound like a know-it-all.  I didn’t want to be like the guy from Jersey I’d met in Amalfi who spewed out a constant stream of facts. I decided to reign myself in a bit.  After all, what difference did it make if they knew flan was coming ahead of time or were surprised by it?

—

We drove to the border and began the laborious ritual that goes with land border crossings.  There, I did it again!  I wrote that like I’m an expert.

I’ve only ever done two land border crossings: Crossing from Minnesota into Canada is still pretty easy; you wave your passport at the border agent as you roll past in your car.

The second was the opposite, when I crossed from Jordan into the Occupied Palestinian Territories/Israel over the Allenby Bridge.  This was complicated by me being with a Palestinian colleague who had an extensive arrest record.

As far as I knew, none of us had records that would land us in a Guatemalan prison.  The agents weren’t rude or suspicious, just very, very slow.  Mark had researched the process as much as he could without actually going through it.  He handed over an envelope full of US 20s, then we stood in lines for an hour to have our passports manhandled and stamped.  That was the exit from Belize, next we had to get into Guatemala.

No Way Out

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

Mike’s Place is a tourist complex where we would go kayaking or canoeing—it wasn’t  clear—in caves. Mike’s also featured “zip lining, hiking/swimming/rock climbing, food/drink/picnic/BBQ, and Wifi.”

Wifi, in case you wanted to watch a movie set in a jungle after hiking through a jungle.

Mike’s had been founded by a Canadian guy named Mike.  Here is a picture of him when he arrived in Belize.

Mike no longer looked like this.  He had probably partaken of a lot more food/drink/picnic/BBQ than hiking/swimming/rock climbing.  But never mind, he had a beautiful Belizean wife about 30 years younger than him.  She did the cooking and serving, and she seemed to adore Mike.

—

After 30 minutes of milling about, discussing vital questions such as “Should I bring a water bottle into the cave?” “Are there bats in the cave?” “Is there a place to go to the bathroom in the cave?” Jose our guide finally corralled us at the water’s edge and gave us a five-minute background on the history, geology, and safety concerns of canoeing in caves.

I live in Minnesota so I have done a lot of canoeing on rivers, in lakes, and in wilderness areas near the Canadian border.  I know how to steer; it’s really simple.  But I had no idea what to expect of canoeing in a cave. I had questions too, but I kept my mouth shut in hopes we would get going sooner and just find out once we were in inside what was involved. Would the water be calm or would there be currents?  How deep would it be?

These questions were not answered on the Wilderness Adventure website, and that’s okay—I don’t want to know everything in advance or it wouldn’t have been an adventure. When Mark and I had talked on the phone he hadn’t known anything about the canoeing either, since he had never been to Belize.  The packing list had recommended water gear as though it would be a serious canoe trip, and I had jettisoned mine after moving twice in three months the previous year.  I had gone shopping for water shoes and water-repellant clothes, none of which are cheap or findable in second-hand stores.  I browsed the water shoes and dropped them like they were red hot when I saw the price tags.  In the end, I brought some cheap Sketchers sandals I found at TJ Maxx.  Worst case scenario, I would throw them away if this canoe adventure turned out to be rigorous.

It was extremely tame.  They made us wear life jackets and helmets—because it was a cave with some low hanging outcrops—but we never paddled faster than two miles per hour.

Here is the cave entrance and the canoes.

As we paddled into the silent cave, the hooting of a barn owl that sat in a niche high above the entrance echoed in the darkness, which closed on us as soon as we were a few meters in.

A second guide, Alex, had been called in from his Sunday off because Mike hadn’t been expecting our group.  We drifted along at a leisurely pace, looking at the formations and ancient pots left by the Maya (maybe).  We paddled about a mile into the interior, and I asked Alex about his life.

He was 25 and from El Salvador, from whence his family had fled during the civil war.  He lived with his mother; his father had gone north to California, where he had a successful business.  Alex’s siblings had followed his father one by one and wanted him to join them.  He hadn’t seen his father in over 20 years.  He had no future in Belize.  But he was the youngest child, and his mother wanted to stay in Belize.

“Last month,” he said, “My father got me a visa and I was prepared to go.  But I just couldn’t leave my mother.”

I groaned internally.  Donald Trump had just issued a decree ordering the number of refugees admitted to the US in 2017 be cut in half.  Alex had probably missed his last chance.

Unbelizable!

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

We were at the Crystal Paradise Resort in San Ignacio, Belize.  It had been a grueling day of cars, planes, airport trains, planes, and then a five-hour ride in a van over bumpy roads to get here, but it was all worth it.

There was nowhere to go for the evening, and nothing to do.  We had some beers in the central cabana, then dinner, served family style.  The food was really good, I wolfed it down and probably murmured, “Mmmm” out loud several times.  Other people, they had questions.  Was the bread gluten free?  Was the rice vegan?  Can I exchange the potatoes for carrots instead?  Can I have the salsa on the side?  Is the salsa spicy?  And so on.

I’m not a gastroenterologist.  I know there really is something called Celiac disease.  My stomach doesn’t like greasy foods, so I believe people when they say that something—usually it’s gluten but I’ve heard dairy, sugar, and all sorts of other foods—makes them uncomfortable.  But there is a certain segment of the population that is on a crusade against gluten, or dairy, or some other food.  They say things like, “Dairy is evil!”  As if a food group has intentions to harm them.  I can’t imagine life without dairy.  To me, cottage cheese is a food of the gods.

Then there are the people who say they’ve lost weight on a gluten free diet.  “Good for you,” I said to one such friend.  “But do you think maybe you’ve lost weight because you’ve cut bread, potatoes, rice, corn, and pasta out of your diet?  In other words, you’re just eating less—aka ‘on a diet?’”  That had not occurred to her.  Somehow, it was easier to think she was following dietary restrictions because she had a “condition” than to think she was just on a diet.

The family who ran the resort accommodated every request.  They must be used to American tourists.  Finally, everyone was happy and during dinner we got to know each other a bit better because we were facing each other, not crammed side to side into a van.

I might have been the first one to turn in for the night, and even though the bed was hard and the pillow was lumpy and Liz snored, I slept like a rock.

—

Morning.  Early morning, that’s my habit.  I was up at 5 or so and went outside to sit under a thatched hut to listen to the rain and the birds.  I tried to write down the bird sounds. Ooo, ooo, ooo.  Aaargh.  Wheeep! Wheeep!  Harff.  WooHoo!  I could have sat there all day, but I needed coffee.  I walked to the central hut and joined Stan, the other early riser and a veteran bird watcher.  He was there with his binoculars and already had noted a dozen different birds in his notebook.

A tiny toucan landed on a branch 20 feet from us, cocked its head at us, then flitted away.

“Wow!” Stan and I both exclaimed, “Did you see that?”

—

After breakfast, another great meal, we were off to canoe into the Chiquibul cave system into the “Mayan underworld known as Xibalba.”  We were promised it contained sacrificial remains and “spectacular stalagmites and stalactites, and the footholds carved by the Mayans over 1,500 years ago.”

We were back in the van for another bone jarring but much shorter ride, capped off with a steep hairpin road that descended way, way, way down into a valley.  At one point it felt like the van was going to topple over the cliffside,  and I involuntarily yelled, “Jesus Christ!”  This got Liz laughing, and she couldn’t stop.  In her southern Ohio drawl she kept saying, “Ah never heard anahthing so funny!  A Jew saying Jesus Chrahst!”  It was infectious; everyone in the van was soon laughing hysterically, although it may have been out of fear.

At the bottom, we met Jose, who would be our cave guide.

“Welcome to the Chiquibul caves!” he said enthusiastically.  “They’re unbelizeable!”

Yes, he said unbelizeable—you better belize it.

Getting Along

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

Finally, we were all squished into the van and Mark pulled out of the airport parking lot with Jesse in the passenger seat holding a map on his lap. I had expected Mark to use Google maps on his phone or at least a GPS, but he only ever consulted paper maps—and I have to say it made the journey feel more adventurous.

If this had been the USA, or Germany, we would have made our destination in an hour.  But this was Belize, and once we got away from Belize City, the roads were so bad we could only go about 25 miles per hour.

I had experienced bad roads in El Salvador and Costa Rica, but I hadn’t been to Latin America for a decade and I realized I’d expected conditions had improved.  They hadn’t, at least not in Belize.

The houses and other buildings were either half built or half falling apart.  Every surface was faded, rusted, crooked, or flaking.

How can I describe the roads?  The word Horrendous fits.  We have potholes in Minnesota due to the freezing and thawing in winter.  They have potholes because the roads just aren’t paved, or they get washed out during the rainy season.  There’s probably no money to maintain them, and corrupt contractors likely factor in, too.

Mark wove around as much as he could to avoid the craters, but that only added swerving motion to the up and down lurching and the side-to-side swaying.  It was like being on a boat in choppy water.

I had foolishly obeyed Mark’s first request for us to get in the van, so I was belted into the far back seat where the motion was worst.

Why is it that people feel compelled to read signs out loud?  A certain person I was sitting announced, “Rosa’s Tienda,” as we passed Rosa’s Tienda.  “Belmopan, 45,” he read as we passed that sign.  “Entering Cayo District,” as (you guessed it) we entered Cayo District.

And so on.

After an hour I turned to him and yelled, “Shut the fuck up!  We can all read!”

No, of course I didn’t. I did it in my head.  I’d like to say I found a direct but kind way to tell him to stop reading every sign, but this was only Day One.  I would be spending many hours in the van with these people.  If I blew my cool right away maybe they would turn against me and shun me.  That would really be a vacation buzz kill.

Later I learned that others had been having the same thoughts. Maybe someone had a word with him, because after the first day it stopped.

—

We jostled and bounced along the Western Highway, past the Hummingbird Highway to Roaring Creek, the charmingly spelled “Camolote”—a misspelling of Camelot?  I felt heart burn coming on.  I never get heart burn, but I suppose the van ride was doing to my digestive system what shaking does to a bottle of soda.

We passed misty mountains and clear-cut forests.  We passed the towns of Tea Kettle, Ontario Village, Mount Hope, Unitedville, Santa Elena, and finally arrived in San Ignacio, the last town before we turned off for the Crystal Paradise. None too soon, we went into a store to buy snacks, and I quickly got back in the van in the front row.  Much better.  Everyone agreed we would rotate seats, which was very civilized.

We drove around in circles looking for the turnoff until Mark stopped and asked some loitering teenagers if they know where it was.  They did—it was right before the Pepe Sanchez Insurance Agency.

After an early morning flight, a tense standoff at border control, and five hours on the road, we pulled up to the Crystal Paradise at dusk.  We were finally, really “in” Belize.

It really was paradise, at least for this Minnesotan who had left behind snow and cold.

Liz and I were sharing a room and we oohed and ahed over these swan creations, then fell face first onto our beds for a nap.

The People

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

Here’s the demographic run down on who was on this trip in Belize. There was Mark, who I’ve introduced as the trip leader, who was probably 28 years old.  He had a man bun, wore braided leather bracelets, and had very, very dark brown eyes.  A few times I found him staring intensely at me, like he was trying to read my mind, but then I realized he was just spaced out.

This is where it gets tricky.  I’ve used Mark’s real name because he’s on the Wilderness Inquiry website so you could figure out who he was if you had nothing better to do.

I’ve changed everyone else’s names.  I told the group I write a travel blog and that I would be writing about the trip, including about them. After all, isn’t it often the people you meet that make the most interesting stories?

When I whipped out my notebook to jot down place names and such, people would ask, “Is that for your blog?” and I would answer yes.  None of them asked how to get to the blog, but if any of them ever find their way here I wouldn’t want them to feel trashed.  We were all being ourselves, even if some of our selves were more irritating than others.

—

Even though I write things down, this blog would never pass a fact-checker’s muster.  So you can take the following as generally correct information.

Our group ranged from 45 to 75 years old, so I wonder if Mark felt like a baby boomer baby sitter.  There were two married couples from Minnesota. Inga’s family was Latvian and she had lived there before moving to the Pacific Northwest where she met Jesse, who was Native American and worked for some tribal concern.  They had moved to Minnesota when he got a job at a big foundation.  That had ended now, so they were in a life stage of trying to decide what next.

Mike and Joan were suburbanites and newly empty nesters.  They had a daughter with autism, and it had been an exhausting journey helping her to become independent. They were “reconnecting,” as they put it, on this trip.  Mike did something in IT and Joan was a stay-at-home mom.

There were two married people whose spouses would have hated this kind of travel.  Bugs?  Heat?  Hiking?  No way!  So they came by themselves.

Stan was a soft-spoken retired postal worker from Pittsburgh.  “I’m taking my wife on one of those Viking River Cruises in Europe next fall,” he told us.  “That’s her kind of travel—white linen table clothes, shopping, and museums.”

Stacy was a retired band teacher from New Jersey.  She and I were both Jewish, and we joked how about how it’s unusual to have 20% Jewish representation on a tour.

The last member of the group was a never-married woman my age named Liz.  She was from Columbus, Ohio and had worked in the mortgage department at a giant bank for 30 years.

So that was us—pretty homogeneous—mostly white, middle class, and middle aged.  When you think about it, it’s people like us who have the time and funds to do things like this.

Trudy’s interpreter, Emily, was the youngest among us at 45.  She lived a few blocks from me, was married to a guy from Zanzibar, and had four kids.

If you’ve ever been on a group trip, maybe you’ve experienced this—you are immediately drawn to one person, feel repelled by another, feel neutral about a third, and so on.  Emily and I hit it off right away, probably because we had both lived abroad.  While others on the trip had traveled internationally, there’s a big difference between that and living or working abroad.

Which brings me to some current news: I’m going to Ethiopia for work!  I’ve always wanted to write a sentence like that, and now I can.  It will be sometime in the next six weeks, so on top of planning my three months in Europe and the UK, this will give me writing fodder for years.

Herding Cats

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

My post about overbooked flights coincided with the story of that guy who was dragged off the United Airlines flight. My bumping experience was different, to say the least.

Flying from Minneapolis to London, Delta picked me out of the crowd at the gate and told me I had to give up my seat.  I started to protest, when the gate agent said, “We’ll put you on another flight that leaves an hour from now … it gets into Heathrow an hour earlier,” she added in a low voice.  “And we’ll give you a $750 voucher.”  Still, my reflex was to open my mouth and complain but something stopped me.  “And we’ll seat you in first class,” she added.

“Um, okay?!” I said.  My luggage went with the first flight but that turned out okay, because I was staying on a farm in a remote village called Oddington.  If my bag had come with me, I would have had to schlep it on and off several trains and buses.  This way, the airline delivered it the farmhouse door the next morning.

You are probably thinking this story belongs with those mythical tales about unicorns, but it really happened.

—

I stood by the border agent’s booth in Belize for 30 minutes.  She granted me permission to use my phone to try to contact the tour leader, Mark.  I tried a text, then phoning, which later cost me $15, and I got voice mail.  I tried an email but my phone or the connection was too slow for it to send.

Two drunk Canadian women in their 50s came through and noticed me standing there.  I explained the sitch.  “We’re staying at the Funky Dodo Hostel,” one whispered loudly, six inches from the border agent.  “Tell her you’re staying there.” She fumbled in her purse and pulled out the address and loudly “whispered” it while looking in my direction with unfocused eyes.  The people behind her in line were getting irritated.  She repeated the address several times, then shambled away with her friend.

The border agent and I smirked at each other.  She made me sweat another 10 minutes, then led me over to another booth where second agent flipped through my passport, stamped it in the most bored, sarcastic way, and let me in.

It was a rookie mistake.  This was Mark’s first time leading an international trip, and someone at Wilderness Inquiry should have trained him on it. It wasn’t his fault.  But I should have known. Each of the nine other members of my group was similarly detained, so Mark had been waiting in the arrivals hall for four or five hours.

Well, we were finally all here.  The arrivals hall was chaotic.  The Belize airport was built in sleepier times, and now Belize is a hot tourist destination so it’s just too small.

Mark kept trying to round us up and get us into our 12-passenger Ford Econoline rental van.  This was complicated by the fact that we had a deaf woman among us, Trudy.  Trudy was a firecracker—in her 70s, maybe 5’ tall, divorced with four grown children, retired—she had traveled with Wilderness Inquiry to Peru, Australia, and New Zealand.  As I’ve written, WI’s thing is inclusion, which is great, but Trudy was all over that airport checking out the gift shops. Mark would yell after her, realize that was pointless, then yell at her interpreter, Emily, who was also with us on the trip.  Then Emily would march after Trudy and sign furiously.  There were others who ignored Mark throughout the trip.  Today was the first of many times we would wait for them in the van.  That sounds worse than it was; we were a pretty easy going group.  After all, we were on vacation.

At last, we were all gathered in the Econoline with our luggage and on our way to the Crystal Paradise Resort, 70 miles from Belize City and only about 13 miles from the Guatemalan border.  This would position us for the crossing into Guatemala and on to Tikal the following day.

No Entry

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

I was on the plane ready to take off for my big wilderness adventure.

After the gate agents’ repeated threats, no one’s carry on was taken away to the hold.  I settled into my seat with the New York Times crossword puzzle, relieved to be seated next to an elderly couple who were reading paper books.  Hurrah!  No screens in my face or endless cha-Cha-cha-Cha of someone’s music leaking out of their ear buds.

I had grabbed a couple extra newspapers at work and kept out a Sunday edition, which I expected to absorb my attention all the way to Belize City.  In case you aren’t a crossword geek, the NYT puzzles get harder as the week progresses. Saturday is the hardest, but Sunday is super sized and also very difficult.  I had been pretty pleased with myself when I’d managed to finish it the previous Sunday.

Oh. No.  I somehow now had last week’s puzzle—the one I’d already solved. I must have picked up a duplicate version at work by mistake.

“Ooh, Sunday,” commented the man next to me.  I didn’t tell him I’d already solved it.  I filled it in at lighting speed and I could feel him looking over surreptitiously; probably thinking I was a genius.  Well, let someone think that, for once, I thought.

—

Done with the crossword in 15 minutes.  Two hours to kill with nothing to read but the in-flight magazine, which featured a story about John Legend. I had heard of him, and I didn’t even know why because I couldn’t name any of his songs.

I glanced across the aisle and the man sitting one row ahead of me was readying pie charts for a presentation of … a merger? … of two companies called Dermocell and Norodaq.  Undoubtedly they make pharmaceuticals for problems I don’t know I have yet.  His wife and kids were sitting next to and across the aisle from him and kept interrupting him to ask him questions.  I wondered where they were going—it was too early for spring break.  Maybe he was taking them along on a business trip that happened to be taking place in Orlando.  He seemed utterly uninterested in anything but his pie charts.

The flight attendants came by to offer snacks and drinks.  I could hear the closest one six rows away, “Coffee, tea, soft drinks?  Pretzels, nuts, yogurt balls?”

Yogurt balls?  They had said something during the announcements about “exciting new snacks.” These must be them—I started to feel excited.  Yogurt balls sounded intriguing.  She progressed excruciatingly slowly down the aisle, repeating her snack and drink mantra.

Finally, I got to request my usual Diet Coke and … yogurt balls.  She looked at me funny but handed it over. It was just a yogurt bar!  Then I heard her answering another passenger’s question after she’d moved on, and realized she had an eastern European accent which rendered “bars” as “balls.”

Still, yogurt bars made a nice change from nuts and pretzels.  Nature Box was the brand.  I looked at the ingredient list, which took up most of the wrapper.

Rolled Oats, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Greek Yogurt Flavored Coating (sugar, palm kernel oil, nonfat dry milk, Greek yogurt powder [nonfat milk solids, cultures, lactic acid, natural flavor], lactic acid, soy lecithin, natural flavor), Rice Crisps (rice flour, rice bran, raisin juice concentrate, honey, salt), Chicory Root Fiber, Organic Cane Sugar, Almonds, Glycerin, Sunflower Seeds, Apples, High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Cinnamon, Natural Flavor, Sea Salt.

For Christ’s sake!  Six sweeteners?

Anne, you will not be a purist.  You are on vacation, I told myself.

It was delicious.

—

Sun! Heat!  We walked down the wobbly stairs from the plane, crossed the tarmac, and joined the long immigration line.  Fortunately there was reading material to keep us occupied, in the form of warnings about Zika and Chikungunya.

At the glass booth, the usual serious-faced border agent asked, “What’s the address of your hotel?”

“I’m with a tour,” I said. “The leader has the address.”

“No entry without an address,” she huffed, and turned to the next person.

Gatekeepers

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

Waiting in the gate area for my flight to Belize. Why do people crowd around the jet way entrance as soon as the boarding announcements begin? It takes at least half an hour to board everyone, and once you’re in the jet way you stand in line anyway.  Then you stand in the aisle of the plane til you can reach your seat, so what was the rush?

But crowd everyone did, except me and a few other hangers back.  Maybe people thought the announcements would sound clearer if they got closer.  Why is it that airlines can propel a million-pound vehicle through the air but they can’t invent a PA system that’s as clear as a MacDonald’s drive through?

A group of military personnel stood patiently as tourists in flip flops and shorts shoved in front of them.

Ah, now I could make out part of the announcement.  They were asking for volunteers to give up their seats and take a later flight because the plane was “very full.”  You mean, overbooked, don’t you? I thought.

I used to work for a consulting firm that analyzed the data of applicants to private colleges.  Using an algorithm with 400 data points, we would sift and sort and make recommendations.  If you were poor but your test scores were high and would bring some kind of diversity to the student body and you played the marimba, you might be offered a $50,000 scholarship toward the $60,000 annual cost of attendance.  If you were dumb but lived in the Connecticut zip code with America’s highest per capita income, they might give you a President’s Scholarship of $2,000 to flatter and lure you in.

The two principals of the firm traveled extensively to visit our clients.  College enrollment, explained one of them, shared similarities to how airlines filled seats.

“Everyone on a plane has paid a different price,” he said grumpily, which was how he said everything. “I might have paid $850 to go to Sioux Falls while the guy sitting next to me paid $500.  They’ve got my travel history, they know how much I was willing to pay in the past, they probably know how much I paid for the house in Georgetown and my condo on Summit and my Volvo, so I’m fucked.”  He had done very, very well in the college admissions consulting business.

So knowing how sophisticated it all is, you have to wonder whether, when an airline overbooks, is it intentional and if so, what’s the point?

I didn’t pay enough attention to see if anyone gave up a seat.  Next they announced that most everyone would have to check their carry ons.  What the hell?  Is this because of the jerks who are trying to game the system with their one “extra carry on item?”  That used to mean a handbag or a laptop case, but now people are testing the limits and bringing purses the size of Labradors, in addition to their actual carry on.

“We’d like to thank the US service members who are flying with us today,” was the next, pretty-clear announcement, “and invite them to board first.”

The people who had shoved past these military members now turned and smiled and thanked them for their service. Some people applauded.  The soldiers looked uncomfortable and made a beeline for the gate.

I would like to think that Delta and my fellow passengers were sincerely appreciative of these military members’ service. But we’re all so detached from the wars—er, conflicts—in which we’re involved. It’s easy elbow past them in line, then give lip service to “honoring our veterans” five minutes later without much thought about what they’ve witnessed.

I interviewed a young veteran last year.  She had been on gate duty at a US compound in Afghanistan, and she told of having to turn away a desperate father who came seeking medical care for his small son, who he was carrying.  She started crying. “Maybe you should keep working at The Gap for a while,” I said gently. “Maybe it’s too soon to work with torture survivors.”

Carry On and Keep Calm

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This is a series of posts about Belize and Guatemala that starts here.

—

We would be moving around a lot on this trip, so I was determined to take only a carry on.  This was a good call because if I had brought my regular bag I would have been trying to cram it into the back of a van with the 10 carry ons of my fellow travelers, and I would have lost the unspoken competition for who could travel with the least stuff.

Checking the baggage restrictions, I was remembered that the free checked bag on international flights doesn’t always mean “international.”  I went to Canada a few years ago and they wanted $50 to check my bag.

“But this is an international flight,” I protested.

“No,” said the smiling ticket agent.  “Canada isn’t international.”

I think Canada might have something to say about that, but I had no choice but to fork over my credit card. I have to give Delta credit for clarifying things.  Instead of using the term “International,” they now list the fees by regions—checking a bag to Central America would be $25 each way.

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I hadn’t traveled with only a carry on for years, so standing in the security line I suddenly had a start—I had been so focused on packing the right rain and sun gear that I’d forgotten about the limit on liquids and gels. Crap!  As we inched forward I took out my cosmetics bag and triaged the confiscatable items.  Obviously, toothpaste, then the wrinkle-reducing miracle face cream, then sunscreen were priorities. I could jettison the bug spray, shampoo, and five other gels and liquids I was carrying if forced, but I quickly distributed things among my carry on, purse, and vest pockets, thinking maybe they wouldn’t figure out they were all from one person.

I went through, no problem.  Should I feel good or scared about that?  I choose good.

The Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport used to be the headquarters of Northwest Orient Airlines, which became Northwest, which became Delta, which moved to Atlanta where labor is cheaper.  It’s still a hub, but now we have this sprawling infrastructure without the cash flow to support it.  When people describe an ostentatious new house as, “cold and cavernous like an airport hangar,” that is not a compliment. MSP is pretty much like that—gigantic, soulless, with moving walkways that go forever, off-white walls that need new paint with billboards that proclaim, “America’s Leading Source for B to B Online Storage Solutions, in White Bear Lake, Minnesota!”

The main terminal used to be named Lindbergh, and the charter terminal was called the Humphrey.  The names were changed a few years ago to the scintillating, “One” and “Two.”  Charles Lindbergh was an anti-Semite who thought Hitler was on to something, but he was also the first person to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, which was a big deal in 1927.  Hubert Humphrey fought anti-Semitism as Minneapolis mayor in the 40s, and became Vice President under Lyndon Johnson.  Parents used to have to explain who Lindbergh and Humphrey were, which provided a little civics or history lesson while waiting at the airport. One and Two don’t pique any curious questions, but I guess they’re very, very clear.

There is Gate G, where the international flights depart.  They must have gotten a grant to redo it. It’s stuffed with shops and bars and there’re sparkly tile and mirrors and colored lights.  And of course the ubiquitous iPads at every seat—because for about five minutes five years ago, that was the state of the art thing to do—force people to order lousy food on them instead of from a real person.

There, I’ve had my say about MSP.  My opinion was reinforced when I connected through Atlanta.  What a beautiful airport.  I had to walk from one end to the other.  Some people might complain about that, but I am always glad for an opportunity to get my blood pumping.  There were all sorts of artworks and tributes to historical figures on the walls—none of which I read but I like to know it’s there.

Belize Bound

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When I was poor, many years ago, it used to really piss me off when people said things like, “Why don’t you just move to a better neighborhood?” when I told them I’d been burglarized and mugged in one week, that my neighbors kept me up all night with loud parties, and that I had found a used condom and needles in my front yard.

“I can’t afford to move,” I’d say, gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t launch into a rant about how clueless and insensitive they were.  And these were always liberals—I think liberals are often more out of touch with reality than conservatives.

I’m telling you this because some of you may not have the luxury of being able to buy plane tickets on a regular basis.  Your job may not allow you to work remotely or even offer paid holidays.  You may not own a condo you can rent out while you’re away.  I hope I don’t come off as clueless when I write about travel.  I’ve never claimed any of my adventures have been easy or cheap.  I hope some of my stories may inspire you to plan for something when you can afford it, or try something on a small scale if you can’t afford to do it in a big way.

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I was driving down scenic Summit Avenue yesterday in my beloved Mini; spring was in the air and I was listening to Vivaldi.  I felt utter joy.

“Life is beautiful!” I exclaimed in my head.

That’s not a thought I ever had when I was in my 20s or 30s.  It’s not a thought many people in Syria are having right now.  It doesn’t do anyone any good for me to intentionally kill my joy because others are suffering, but it remembering them certainly intensifies my feelings of gratitude for how far I have come.

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Back to January in Minnesota.  The holidays are over.  There will be nothing by three months of cold, dreary, short days without a holiday until the end of May.

And so I went to Belize.  It makes a difference, getting away somewhere warm, even if only a long weekend.

This would be an all-inclusive group trip operated by Wilderness Inquiry, a Minnesota-based nonprofit.  Their thing is “inclusive outdoor adventure travel.”  I totally missed that because I Googled “tours of Belize” and went straight to that trip page.  I looked at the color photos, glanced through the itinerary, checked the price, and booked it.

This was back in December, and I didn’t give it much thought until I got a call from the trip leader, Mark, in January.  I have been on group tours before, and it’s good practice to have a meeting ahead of time—if everyone is local—or to at least talk to someone to learn the expectations and ask questions.

Mark informed me about the Wilderness Inquiry mission of inclusion.  “I lead a lot of trips to the boundary waters, and this will be my first international trip,” he said, excitement in his voice.

“You mean, your first international trip ever?” I asked, a little alarmed.

“No, I went to Uruguay last year with my girlfriend.  Her family is from there.  So I’m ready.”

I wasn’t so sure about that.  The Gross Domestic Product of Uruguay is four times that of Belize. But the tour and my plane ticket were paid for, so it was too late to back out and he seemed very confident.  Everything would be fine, right?

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The night before I left, I had dinner with Vince and met his girlfriend, Heather.  I liked her a lot, especially since she gave me a beautifully boxed birthday present—a sweater and Moleskin notebooks and pretty pens, which I used to take notes on the trip.  I looked forward to watching their relationship develop.

My birthday.  Vince picked me up at 5:00 am and took me to the airport.  He’s a morning person like me, but 5:00 was even a bit early for him, so it was a very nice effort on his part.  And it’s nice to hug a loved one good-bye, just in case something fatal happens.