Day: 234

Disclaimer: I am hesitant to publish the following story because I believe it will only help to contribute to the culture of fear that is so prominent currently in the USA, and the American thoughts on international travel. Yet, I also want my blog to be the truth of what happens to me everywhere I go, so it is with some reservations that I tell you the following tale. Just please remember that almost every person I have meant in Belize up until this point has been kind, honest, interesting and helpful. Belize is an amazing place, but there is always one evil person out there to ruin things for others.

She had only left my room about a few minutes before, the sun was on the verge of rising, as I finished picking up the living room and settled in for what looked like at least a solid two hours of sleep before a new day began. For some reason I lay in a state in between sleep and being awake for a while, quickly flickering in and out of sleep on the living room floor because it was cooler that the loft where my bed was. The guest house I was in had many rattling noises in the tropical wind; the vibrating of shutters, the hiss of the palm leaves against the side of the building and general background noise of such a situation. All the sudden my eyes shot open to a sound that was out of place, the jiggle of a door handle. I glance up thinking …weird, I am pretty sure I closed the door to our room.

I hop up and through the fog of a half sleep take the three strides to the door to close it.

As I pull on it, it pulled back.

My heart jumped.

I pulled harder, only to be staring down at the eyes grizzled black man about 8 inches shorter than me and at least a decade older. A weeks worth of beard, a white T-shirt, his short nappy hair and his beady eyes were burned into my memory. The funny thing is that I am pretty sure he was more startled than I was. After a solid two seconds of staring each other in the eyes I realize out of my peripheral vision that he has something in his hand, which was only inches from my gut. I slam the door shut in his face, only to realize as soon as I do that what was in his hand, was the other side of the knob that was also in mine.

I glance down, knowing what is the most expensive thing in the room, my daypack filled with my camera, passport and wallet is sitting right there where I left it next to the table, I unzip it quickly to make sure its all there just as I hear him running out the front door of the hostel. By this point the slamming door has brought Ed out of his room to see what is going on, he looks over my shoulder and sees our living room window had been opened and that was how this bastard had came in.

I went out and glanced around, locking the front door of the hostel again. He was long gone, my adrenaline was at its extremes and it seemed that all our stuff was still there. Deciding we would visit the police in a few hours we tried to go back to sleep.

I should probably see what time it is, so when I go to the cops I can tell them details. I think as I lay wide awake staring at the ceiling ten minutes later. I get up to go check my watch. Where the fuck did I put it? I swear I left it right here on the table…

Fuck, its missing.

I go in and tell Ed to get up, and that we have to go to the station now and tell the police what happened.

Now I won’t bore you with a Pulp Fiction-esque tale about a watch, but I will say that it was a gift from my step-father on his wedding day to my mother. A good deal of sentimental value is attached, but I am also aware that this was something I risked every time I took it out of the country.

Caye Caulker is a small community of around 1300 locals so everyone seems to know everyone. When I started retelling my story to the assorted police officers at the small station they quickly came up with ideas of who they thought it might be. The usual suspects. One officer took off to look around for a couple of individuals while the other one made a report of the confrontation.

The officer looks up from his desk, looks at the size of me, looks at the size that I told him the guy was on his paper, and asks me without a hit of sarcasm:

“So if dem was right der, why you no just grab em?”

I just smiled a defeated smile, and was at a loss for words. Looking back I guess I should have tackled him and had Ed help me beat the shit out of him… but standing there looking in his eyes knowing something was in his hand (even if it was just a door knob) was enough for me not to want to get stabbed in the gut.

They took my name, address, date of birth, phone number and a description of my watch and let me know that they thought there might be a fairly good chance to find it and get it back, with it being such a small island. Who knows, I may get it back in the mail in a couple of weeks. I thanked them for their hope, and Ed and I wandered through the sunrise (taking a few pictures on the way, of course) back to our room to try and get at least a couple of hours of sleep. By this point I had been up for about 22 hours with just a few blinks of sleep.

And now back to our regular Blog:

I hide my bag under the stairs and sleep until about 8am when the bright sun is hitting me in the eyes. Ed, Brian and I get up and spend a few minutes deciding to do with the next couple of days. Since we have spent three days on Caye Caulker and are getting rather bored we decided on a change of scenery and head to the largest vacation spot in Belize, Ambergris Caye (pronounced key). It was going to be a 20 minute water taxi ride and the next one left in about an hour, I brushed my teeth, packed my bag and we all headed to the dock.

When we arrived in San Pedro (the main city on Ambergris Caye, pop 7600) we found the last room in the Lonely Planet’s only budget choice, the Ruby Hotel, and headed off to finally get some breakfast after an extremely eventful night.

With out meal meandering down, I announced my plans to spend the next three hours sleeping in our room with all three fans blowing on me, Brain and Ed were going to go off to check out the beach and the little town.

I slept like the dead. When I woke up I found that their excursion was short lived as they were both crashed out as well. It took us a few minutes but we were off to vagabond along the coast for a few miles as the sun was getting low in the sky and the light was turning beautiful.

The day ended rather uneventfully (thankfully!) with a dinner of coconut snapper, a few beers on the roof of our hotel, an me spending an hour of so writing this up before I was ready for some more much needed sleep.

I sure hope something exciting happens tomorrow!