I've done something few others have

While in Belize, I had the experience of a lifetime. I learned to scuba dive. When training to become a scuba diver, you are taken through a variety of practice dives. An instructor teaches you about your equipment, how to hover perfectly in water, how to avoid and how to recover from problems.

The last training dive is mainly about recovery. We were taken on a boat, two miles out into an ocean reserve. The waves were four to seven feet high and the boat ride was exciting. Belize has the second largest reef system in the world. This reef is located just off shore from the island we were staying. The diving boat, taking us, seemed to be thrown around by the ocean.

The boat came up to a buoy, and while rocking mightily, we all put our gear on. I'll say it right now. I hadn't had the feeling of sea sickness before. But, I was starting to feel it then. I was counting the seconds until I could jump in.

There were two groups of people on the boat. Us, who were learning, and a group of travelers from Utah and Australia. We all stood in a line and jumped out in turn.

While in the water, the travelers swam together in a group, as we swam to the other side of the boat. We all were rocking back and forth in the waves.

When our instructor jumped in, we all started to dive down. The going was rough, the first fifteen feet we fought swells and waves. It was the first time where we actually had to swim down, instead of sink. But, after fifteen feet, things smoothed out. We continued our dive all the way to the sea floor.

The floor of the ocean was around 40 feet deep. We swam along it as the pure blue water surrounded us. We felt we could see for miles. The sand below was perfectly white and smooth. Croppings of orange and brown corral reefs popped out of the ocean floor. We curved our way through obstacles until we found a large clearing.

In the opening, the three of us, my friend Joshua and our instructor Sam hovered in a triangle. We practiced emergency techniques like taking the air tank off, pushing it away from us, and then putting it back on.

The last test we practiced was the emergence accent. At forty feet we were supposed to take out our breathalyzer and swim all of the way to the top of the ocean. This imitates what would happen if you had no air and had to get out.

It was my turn first. Sam, swam over to me and demonstrated a small example of exactly what I was to do. I needed to breathe out the entire way (air in your lungs expands as you go up) while letting the air out of my life jacket. I also needed to swim up slower than the bubbles I was blowing out.

I took a deep breathe, took out my breathalyzer and started swimming up. I watched the bubbles of air build up around me as I slowly paddled my way towards the shiny surface. Sam, swam up after me.
Then, about fifteen feet away from the surface, the water started moving me around. I swam up through the mess of waves, easier than I had earlier when I dove through them. At the surface, I kept myself afloat for a couple of seconds until Sam came up. Then, he had me manually inflate my life vest (I was pretending I had no air in my tank). So, while going up and down in large waves, out of breath, I was blowing into my life vest. I started to feel very light headed.

Sam could see it in my face. "Don't worry, it will be a lot smoother back under water."

He disappeared back into the depths as I put my breathalyzer back in and deflated my life vest. By myself, I swam back under, fighting the waves and current of the open ocean. After the ocean smoothed out, I could see the ocean floor and Joshua and Sam practicing the same techniques. Then, it hit me. I was sea sick. I was going to throw up, fifteen feet under water.

I started to panic. I had no choice, it was going to come regardless of what I wanted. I pumped myself up as much as I could, and thought through it as much as I could.

I grabbed my breathalyzer, closed my eyes, and yanked the breathing apparatus away from my face. The wonderful Belizean food I had been dining on left my body. After the first rush left, I gasped for air. I thrusted the breathalyzer back in to my mouth. I took half a breath and the urge came again. So, I yanked it away again as I filled the ocean with tacos, beans and rice. Once again, I gasped as I slammed the breathalyzer into my face, trying to find my mouth. I opened my eyes, to see a fog of brown float away from me. Then, dozens of fish, groupers and other beautiful fish came and started feasting on what had departed. It was the most concentrated amount of wildlife I had seen so far on the trip. Weirdly it was a beautiful sight.

I coughed a couple times, wiped away my tears and took a couple of seconds to calm down. I then dove down to where Joshua and Sam were finishing up.

Back on the boat, Sam told me that breathalyzers are designed to be thrown up through and next time I should try that.

Thanks.

Belize: No Security (Day 1)

"Do you have your passport? Get your passports out. Keep moving. Form single file lines. Families stay together. Get your passports out."

I reached into my cargo pocket. The passport was hard to grab, being in my pocket for a couple hours had folded it to fabric in my shorts. I was able to pull it out before strangers started giving looks of confusion. There we were two "tourists" in a worn airport terminal, standing in line, trying to get through customs. Customs, in the loose sense of the definition. Customs equalled a person sitting on a rickety old bar stool next to a four foot high post with a small surface for passports on top. There were four lines of people trying to get to three custom agents. The middle two lines were not merging together happily.

There was no rope. No tape. No "heavy security" trying to get into this country. Only us tourists and customs agents that would rather be somewhere else.

Joshua and I waited patiently. We quietly watched everybody herd themselves into Belize.

It was my turn.

The customs agent asked in a thick Jamaican accent, "What is your business in Belize?"

"Um," followed by a small pause, "tourism?"

The custom agent looked up annoyingly, scratched his nose, skimmed to an empty page in my passport and stamped it. "Next..."

"That's it?" I thought to myself as I received my passport back. "Wow."

I walked the fifteen feet to the baggage carousel. Looking back, I watched Joshua go through the same process.

"That was simple." Joshua said as he approached me.

"No doubt."

The carousel started up, and our bag quickly came through. Joshua grabbed our giant duffel bag and carried it over to the wall. He unzipped it and pulled out our backpacks. We quickly put everything (including the duffel) inside our packs, put them on our backs and walked out of the front of the terminal.

The sky was totally gray. The clouds had arrived.

"You need a taxi?" A creole man gently said while walking up to us. Other people quickly followed him. "I can take you to the city, you need a taxi?"

Joshua replied with a nod and a "Yes."

"OK, follow me."

We walked by a line of taxis parked next to the terminal sidewalk. The man took us to a Lincoln town car a couple cars down the row. He opened the trunk, took our bags and put them in. Shut the trunk and walked away.

"You can get in," the man said while walking away.

Joshua and I looked at each other, shrugged, opened the door to the taxi and sat in.

"The seats are leather," I said.

"Yeah, this is a nice taxi," Joshua answered.

We sat there, watching other people leave the airport. Some found taxis, some started walking down the road, others met family members.

The trunk of our taxi opened. A couple was placing their backpacks in the trunk. The girl had curly hair and petite frame, her boyfriend was husky and pale. The boyfriend opened the backdoor and sat in, his girlfriend sat in the front passenger seat.

"Hey," he said to us.

"Hi."

A man opened the driver door and sat in. We had not seen him before. "Are all of you going to Belize City?"

All of us agreed as the taxi left the airport.

Belize: Rainy Season (Day 1)

Joshua was dosing on and off the whole flight. I couldn't shut my eyes. How could I? A million things ran through my head. How was my fiance? Would I be able to talk to her while I was away? Would she know I was okay? Our wedding was in two weeks. What if something came up? What if something would go wrong? Should I have gone on this trip? I didn't want her to be stressed out. I wanted her to be calm. I wanted to make sure she was taken care of.

Even though I felt the desire, I couldn't dwell on those worries. I had to figure out stuff happening right now. I was about to land in a foreign country, and I had no clue what was going on. I love to travel, please don't take it the wrong way. The only other country I've been to was Mexico. But, Cancun and Jaurez don't nominate me to the "travelling abroad" club. Both cities overflow with Americans. A trip to Belize is entirely different.

"We'll catch a taxi into town and walk around. You have our guide books, right?" Joshua spoke from behind closed eye lids.

"Yeah."

"Okay then."

For me, it wasn't that simple. The concept of letting things happen did not come natural. My whole life was one calculated move followed by another. Every decision was thought through. Every concept required logic and reason. And, here I was in a plane, flying over the Caribbean, about to land in Belize City at 7:00pm with no plan. Yes, almost night time. Yes, no plan. Yes, I was slightly concerned.

Maybe the whole picture wasn't clear. "Joshua, you know the airport is ten miles away from the city?"

"Mm-hmm"

"And, it will be dark when we get there."

"Mm-hmm. It will be okay. Just relax."

I looked away to the window. I may have appeared relaxed, but I wasn't.

A couple minutes later, the pilot spoke over the intercom. Every third word was a random mess of static, but the main concept still got through, "Even though we're a couple hours late, don't worry about your connecting flights. They will wait for you. They don't get paid unless you make it to your destination." After those words, the people around us shared in a sigh of relief. I couldn't participate.

Staring out the window, I watched clouds and waves. I saw the shoreline approach from a distance, the beaches were yellow and white. I could see the break waters in turbulent waves filled with white foam. Trees started to pop out of the green canvas along the shore. Small features started to reveal themselves as our airplane continued onward. Then buildings, ponds and roads appeared. Belize was under us.

The pilot reminded people, again, that their connecting flights were waiting for them. The plane shook as wheels opened up. A runway appeared below and the airplane touched down. A smell of greenery filled the cabin as we taxied across the runway, heading towards the main terminal.

I watched silently from my seat. I saw smaller aircraft, the likes of millionaires out on fishing ventures. I also noticed wreckage and abandoned aircraft. The terminal was getting closer, a red brick building with small turret like aircraft control tower on top.

We stopped. We were atleast 75 yards away from the terminal. Why did we stop?

People started to unbuckle and stand up. They grabbed their bags from the storage bins and collected their items from around their seats. Why did we stop? We weren't at the gate.

Out of my window I could see people running around. The luggage trucks already started to work on collecting bags from the belly of the plane. All of the engines of the airplane turned off. The plane went awkwardly quiet. A small vehicle pushing a set of stairs drove up to the side and connected to our plane. We were going to get off outside. I didn't realize they didn't have gates. Was this normal? Was this safe? Where were we?

I wasn't the only person suprised by this. Other people were commenting, too.

Joshua and I stood up, grabbed the guide books, and walked out the plane. Going down the stairs, I was causiously curious. I was watching everything happen on the tarmack, at eye level. I could see the belly of a larger jet, and the people working on it. Looking up, I could see the pilots in the cockpit collecting their belongings. It was an experience. It is not normal to see this in America.

The line of passengers snaked it's way to the terminal. Passengers followed each other instinctively.

Small, single engine airplanes were lined up near the line of passengers and their pilots stood, holding signs, hoping passengers would see them. Some would yell into the crowd, looking for their passengers, "Smith, going to Roatan. Smith, going to Roatan."

Clowds were rolling in from the west quickly. I could feel the humidity rising as the wind picked up. "I wonder if it is going to rain," I remarked.

"It's almost the rainy season," Joshua answered, "I wouldn't be suprised."

The sun was setting. I didn't want it to rain.

Belize: Learning to Let Go (Day 1)

Joshua and I were wandering around the international terminal in the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. A thousand questions were rolling through our heads. "Why is our flight late?" "How much longer will it be?" "Will our flight be cancelled?" "Should we go somewhere else?" But, more importantly "Where were we going to eat right now?"

We passed an Irish Pub, but shepherd's pie didn't sound good. We passed a McDonald's, a taco hut and more. Nothing looked appealing. We had another 2 hours before our flight was going to leave. We needed a place to hang out. We needed comfortable booths, privacy and solitude. We had decisions to make. Important decisions, too. We had no reservations and no plans. There were no decisions made on what we were going to do when we landed. All we had were two guidebooks and our backpacks. We need to think about plans. We needed food.

There it was, an answer to my prayer. A place where we could spend a couple of hours and hash out what we were going to do. We had found TGIF!

We had passed it earlier while moseying around, but I didn't pay much attention to it. We walked up to the hostess and she sat us down at a booth. "This is perfect," I thought. I put the guide books I was carrying onto the table. Bookmarks and stick-it notes stuck out of many pages. Scribbles filled margins, highlighted sections and handwritten thoughts were scattered throughout. I was rearing to start making a case for a plan.

Then Joshua spoke up, "Jere, I don't want to make decisions now."

"Okay..." My face contained only a blank look. "Do you think we should make them on the airplane?"

"No."

"Okay..." Confusion was setting in.

"I just want to see how things go. I think we'll have more fun if we just play it by ear."

"Okay..."

I knew that Joshua wanted to do this. It was his intention all along to not make decisions. He wanted to land in Belize and go from there. I had agreed to this plan, even though I was still holding on to the hope we'd know where we were going and what we were doing. I had maps and routes planned out. We were going to be able to see most of the country by my plan. But, this was Joshua's trip. He paid for it. I was just going along for the ride. This was Joshua's present to me, a round trip ticket to Belize City, Belize, Central America.

He was going to be my best man in two weeks. I was getting married and this was my bachelor trip. It was my turn. Our friend's don't throw elaborate parties for weddings, we take vacations. We took my friend Jonathan out backpacking for his wedding. My fiance had already had her bachelorette trip in London with a friend. It was my turn and we were raising the bar.

Something inside of me became nervous. If we were going to be travelling with out a plan, would we be safe? or secure? This notion filled me. After we realized that we'd be landing in Belize City in the early evening, there would be no way we would be able to go anywhere the first day. I became consumed by the thought of thieves, gypsies and sketchy people in a city we both knew to have obvious dangers. We would have to catch a taxi into the city. The buses were already done for the day. What would happen?

"Don't worry about it." Joshua chimed in. He knew what I was thinking. If anybody in our group of friends tried to plan things out, it was me. "Just eat your dinner. We'll be fine."