Belize Part Deux - by Socio (Mike Oghia)

First and foremost, I’m in Belize! Getting there was still not as easy as it would seem…

I left you at around 12:30 PM yesterday, Sunday 3/9, but a lot has happened since then. Basically at 2:15 PM we boarded the plane for Belize. We were sitting on the plane and the pilot came on and said that there may be some engine trouble and it’s being checked out. Baron Bliss was looking out for us for sure, because about 5 minutes later he said it was fine and we were soon in the air.

Everything’s great… well, until we got over Belize… On the way we passed over Key West, but it didn’t look that good from up in the air. I’m sure it’s a big deal though. When we got over Belize there were storms over Belize City, so our pilot started circling trying to see if it was good enough to land or not. Of course, it wasn’t.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I do apologize, but because of the poor visibility, we are going to head to our alternate destination to refuel and wait for the storm to pass.” GREAT! “Oh and by the way, that alternative spot is in Honduras, thank you.”

Well, I’ve never been to Honduras so ok! This could be fun. We land at this tiny airport/grocery store/livestock convention but we don’t get off the plane, we just refuel. Of course my travel buddy OJ and I, just cant resist to meet new friends. We end up a ways up the aisle where I meet this really cute girl named Katie. She was in a group of a bunch of really cool people from University of Florida doing service work like us. They were all really cool though.

Eventually we’re back in the air, 15 minutes later we’re landing in Belize, and we keep running into the UF people. We get through customs, pick up some lost luggage, rented a couple vans, said good-bye to our Florida friends, then headed for this place in Belmopan, the capital, called the Bull Frog Inn. We got dinner and slept.

The next day we got to Red Bank finally, and so here I am now in Independence were we’re staying! It’s 7:06 PM CST here in Belize (non-DST), I’m absolutely in love with this country, we’ve already done many community profiles of Red Bank and played with the kids, done dental work for them and some other stuff. It’s amazing, come to Belize.

It’s UnBelizeable!