Our trip took a decidedly slower turn starting on Christmas Day. Begrudgingly packed up, we headed for one last breakfast at Caves Branch, and ran into Belizean Santa Claus!
He’s just like regular Santa Claus, except he also speaks Spanish and Mayan. He also sounded suspiciously like the head server at the lodge’s restaurant. And it wasn’t a voice we’ll easily forget. One of the highlights for Aimee and I each afternoon was hearing him describe that day’s dinner with unbridled excitement. “For! The! First! Course! We’ll be having salad! With tomatoes! The! Freshest! Tomatoes! And the bread! So fresh! We just made it!” Plus, since guests were coming and going each day, he gave the same orientation with the same just-above-dad-level jokes at every single meal. Oh man. We loved every bit of it.
But it was our turn to check out and let someone else hear those jokes for the first time. We were heading off to Hopkins, a sleepy beach town where we’d be spending the rest of our time in the country.
The van ride was about 90 minutes, and we arrived in Hopkins right around lunchtime. Our room was still being made up, so we dropped our bags and set off along the beach to grab some food.
The rest of the day was zero sweat drops. Maybe negative.
The hotel we were staying at had some kayaks available to float around in. I was plenty content to just hang out on the beach, but the water was so calm the kids could easily go out on their own.
An hour and 10,000 calories later, the kids floated their kayak over to some friendly local fishers. The fishers explained that they used a net to catch sardines, and hooked the sardines onto their lines to catch the larger fish. As it turns out, sardines are also extremely effective at catching 5 year olds.
I’ve never seen a kid so happy to hold a dead fish.
Christmas dinner was at one of the local resorts next to where we were staying. The resort’s restaurant advertised live music throughout the evening, which was an easy selling point for us. We caught the tail end of some local Garifuna drummers (more on that later), but the majority of our meal overlapped with a talented but comically stereotypical resort sax player. A lot of Kenny G-esque takes on Christmas classics.
That by itself would have been fine. It fit the moment. But he was turned up to 11 the whole time. Seriously. It was crazy. All I could think about throughout the meal was, “I’m going to lose my hearing to this?!” I don’t know what made me more depressed, the fact that I was spending the last week of my 30s listening to a smooth jazz rendition of Silent Night, or that I was upset it was too loud.
Sigh.
But my depression was short-lived. We were still in Belize, the meal was delicious, and we just took turns rotating out of the restaurant anytime our ears started hurting.
*Shouts* “MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!!”
