A night in Belize City

The wall spits fire at me when I try to plug anything in.

The mattress is thick as a maxi pad, heavy flow days, the slats suspending me over the floor press into my back.

There are no lights in the bathroom, which wouldn’t bother me except for the thick iron strength spider web across the shower door and the sticky, patchy, sketchy tiles. This is exactly the kind of place that promotes shower shoes.

There are bars on the window locked tight, but a shutter on the outside swinging freely, jarring me awake every time the wind blows.

Belize is a small country that takes a long time to cross. The inter mysteries of the chicken buses confounds even the most experienced of travels, the where and they why of the pause or the stop is useless to question.

A man I talked to on the bus turned out to live in the South side of Belize City, he is a gangster in the VFP Village for Peace, but they are a violent gang. I didn’t bother to question him about peaceful violence. He told me Belize city was dangerous and that I shouldn’t stay there, but rolling in at 9pm didn’t give me too many options. 

The city itself seems like it doesn’t want to hang out with itself, the place is mostly deserted, everything is shut tight.

Luckily there are 5 foreigners, and safety in numbers we band together. 

In desperate need of the correct currency and nutrition we are forced out to forage. The people on the street look a little threatening but I’m SF trained and street wise, a little smile and conversation showed them to be sweet and friendly, though God knows what they’re doing out on the street at that time. 

Five foreigners on a dark street at night and these men now know we are all going to the ATM to pull out some money, good work Kristine. Luckily things turned out fine. Dough was grabbed and we found the only place open to eat, a park filled with at least 10 hot dog stands. Only the food cart vendors, a few homeless, and us conjugated there. I found one woman off to the side with beans and rice so I was saved food wise for another evening.

Now bed, shutter slamming, wood slats pushing and an early morning on the rise.