UnBelizeable

Thoughts of Belize conjured up images of clear blue water surrounding magical little islands with palm trees swaying in the wind. Paradise. 

 Once we reached Belize, my fantasy was quickly squashed and replaced by the brutal reality of what Belize really is. 
I'm going to come right out and say it. I didn't like Belize. 
Let me explain.....
It happened like this:
At the Mexican/Belizian border, a colorful sign greeted us "Belize in you, Belize in me, land of the free."
"Wait a minute, isn't America 'land of the free?'", I thought to myself. 
Huh. 

The official language of Belize is English. The locals also speak Creole, which is similar to pidgin in Hawaii. They shorten up words and speak with a strong accent. 
They also accept American dollars, but do have their own Belizian currency . It's like being in the US. 
Yea..... not really. 
Belize is the most expensive Central American country . 

Everything was dandy at the border crossing, until they accused us of having alcohol and threatened to search our vehicle. This was ludicrous, of course. 
Dinh laughed at him and said "I don't drink". 
Which is the truth. He's actually never had a drink in his life. Personal choice. Goody two shoes. 
The border control man sheepishly let us pass through once he realized he was in the wrong. 
Unbelizeable. 
We shook it off and continued along. 
For our first night in Belize, we hunkered down in the small town of Corozal.

As we pulled into town, searching for a hotel, we were pulled over by a vehicle filled with 4 cops. They had corrupt evilness written all over their faces. I could see it a mile away . 
They tried to bully Dinh, threatening him with a $200 fine. Dinh showed him his police badge and they backed down a bit, but not much. They were still rude and suspicious and it was obvious that they wanted a bribe from us. They gave me the eebie jeebies. 
After that, we knew that we needed to do anything possible to avoid the cops in Belize. They were trouble. It was a little unnerving to think that the people you go to for safety will possibly extort you.  
Belize was such a stark difference from Mexico, even though it was only a few miles away . 
I immediately felt a change in the air. The people were much different. 
First of all, they looked different. Belize is a melting pot. The country itself is rather small. But it's filled with a smorgasbord of races. Most of the local Belizians look African. 

Second, the residents acted much different than Mexicans. 
The first night in Corozal, we went for a run through town. I was taken back by the constant cat calls and hisses I received. I guess they think I'll like them if they hiss at me. 
Yup. I said hiss.
A hiss as your mating call? It's the strangest thing. 
Never mind the fact that Dinh is literally a foot away from me. After the 57th hiss, I was thoroughly annoyed and just wanted to go back to the safety of our hotel. 
I missed Mexico. I wanted to go back. I never had to put up with this kind of sexual harassment there. It felt so much safer there. 
The next morning, we had planned to take the water taxi to the Cayes (pronounced keys) from Belize City .
Apparently it's what the cool kids do. 
On the drive, it was difficult to contain my excitement. "This is going to be SO awesome Dinh!!", I squealed with joy . I was optimistic and thought that maybe Corozal was a fluke and the rest of Belize would be different.  
I had read about this little laid back island named Caye Caulker that didn't allow any vehicles. 
An island where everybody knows everybody. 
An island where you could easily walk from one side to the other within 30 minutes. Where the mode of transportation was a golf cart, a pedal bike, or your 2 feet.  
An island where the slogan was "no shirt, no shoes, no problem."
Sounded alright to me. 

 We planned to stay at least 3 nights. But as the bad experiences piled up, we decided to bail early after only 2 nights. 
This is what turned us off:
•The unrefined local men (and woman) had horrible potty mouths. Every other word was the F-word. It got old fast. They said it in daily conversation. It made me feel uncomfortable because I thought they were mad at first. They desperately need to expand their vocabulary . 
Unbelizeable. 

•Some of locals were rude. We had one too many instances where they tried to sell us something with the price inflated ridiculously . If we did buy something from them, a "thank you" would never leave their lips. 
One day, as we were taking pictures of the island, a rasta dude approached us, wanting us to donate money to him for his emerging rap career. He was dressed nicely and was not skinny by any means. After we politely declined, his "pseudo-niceness" turned to blatant rudeness as he walked away, mumbling something under his breath. 
Excuse me? You can't just walk up to tourists while they're on vacation and demand money for something we see as nonessential. 
Plus, I don't even like rap music. 
Unbelizeable. 

•They don't understand the concept of waiting their turn in line. One night at a small grocery store, I watched as Dinh was budged in front of 4 times. I couldn't stand to watch it anymore and had to budge in for him. I've dealt with budgers all over the world. It's my pet peeve. They were drunk locals, buying more beer. And the more they drink, the louder they get. 
Unbelizeable. 

When Dinh and I left the hotel, we were always together. One night, while Dinh was ordering Chinese food to go, I spotted a cute dog outside that I wanted to pet. I'm a sucker for those doggies. 

Does it get any cuter?

Dinh was still inside. In a span of about 30 seconds, 4 different local men had a comment for me. "Baby in blue, I love you", one of them said. (I was wearing a blue dress.) I heard kissing sounds and again the official mating call of Belize, the hiss. 
I pretended to be completely oblivious to these uneducated hillbillies. 
In the corner of my eye, I saw them with their long dreadlocks, lazily sipping their Belikin beer.
Unbelizeable. 
If I was alone, I would have been constantly eaten alive by these locals. 
When Dinh came out of the restaurant, I put my arm in his and sneered at the disgusting men. 
This country had started to remind me of another country I'm not too fond of: Morocco. 
As some of you might recall, Morocco is on my "do not like and will never return" list. 
In Belize, the people reminded me of a mix between the Rastafarians of the Virgin Islands and Moroccan men. It ends up being a very bad combo. 
There was zero warmness in these people. 
I was over it. 

In light of all this negativity about Belize, we did meet one local man that we liked immediately . He was pushing around a little cart selling his homemade goods. He was a big boy . 

He would push around his cart, yelling out "I'm right here!", in his thick Caribbean accent, alerting people that he had some goodies. I was curious to see what he was selling and had a hankering for something sweet. 
I approached him, "Got anything sweet??", I asked him. 

"Sure do.", he replied, while presenting a coconut empanada to me. "Is it good?", I joked. 
"Yo' jus goin ta have to fine out fo' yo'self", he joked back. 
I took a bite. It's kinda like a pot pie crust, filled with a sugary coconut concoction. 
"Oh my gosh", I mumbled with a full mouth. It. Was. Delicious!
"Is it good?" Dinh asked me. 
"You see her, she enjoyin' hers, ain't she?" The large man replied. 
I was slowly savoring each bite. 
He was so warm and witty, he made me want to talk to him longer. 
"Did you make these, or did your wife?", I inquired. 
"No, made dem myself, miss", he says. 
"So you don't have a wife?" I asked. 
"No, you wanna be?" He asked. 
I rolled in laughter.
We joked around for a while and I discover he is 30 and is still single because he "ain't willin' to leave his island". I told him he would make a great husband, baking the way he does. 
That dude was awesome. He had a great energy to him. 
Dinh and I still laugh about him. 
I guess the only way I would go back to Caye Caulker is if I could hang out with him and eat his baked goods. My stomach muscles would ache from laughing so much!!!
So that was one positive experience we had. Back to the negative. Ha. 
Our bad experiences had snowballed and left us feeling jaded.
Physically, we were not the least impressed with the island. 
After you've lived in Hawaii, anywhere else pales in comparison. 
We missed our pristine Hawaiian beaches. 
There was absolutely NO beach on Caye Caulker. Imagine that. An island with no beach. Huh. 
I found the island to be dirty, with garbage and debris bobbing along the coastline.

Well, now that I've painted such a pretty picture of Belize, I'm sure all of you want to go there. 
Haha. 

Yep. Belize is unbelizeable...... Unbelizeably hard to love.

The pictures may look nice, but save your dinero, folks. There are gaggles of other places I could recommend that will blow this place away. 
You better belize it!