Day 6: Continued...
As we finished out Friday, I went to the beach, 20 yards from our internet spot, and played in the small waves coming into shore. I also sat there and read my book while becoming mezmorized by the repetative sound of the waves hitting the beach. While I was being hypnotized by the surf, Ashley was looking up information about Decompression Sickness. This is a 'disease' people get when they surface too quickly or stay deep in the water for too long and Nitrogen gas is saturated in your body tissues and does not have time to escape while surfacing. Ashley wasn't able to ascend slowly enough during our final dive and was feeling some symptoms of this sickness. So he was looking up more information on it to find out more and to look for answers to his questions. Ashley was feeling a lot of pressure behind his ears and in his jaw. He was also feeling a bit of pain in his elbows, knees, and wrists that would migrate around and some tingling in his calfs. After doing some research he decided that the following day, his first priority was to see the dive master in the area to ask some questions.
After he was finished with the internet research, Ashley joined me on the beach just before sunset. We took a walk down the beach just as the water was turning pink from the sun going down. While we were walking, we were joined by a Raasta local who was interested in being our 'new friend.' He was willing to get, find, and sell us anything we wanted. The only problem is that we weren't looking for anything and we didn't trust this guy. He wouldn't leave us alone and ended up following us down the beach and popping up all over the place. After pestering us for about 40 minutes, Ashley asked him to leave us alone for good. He got upset and pretty defensive but left us by ourselves after a short conversation.
We walked back home and relaxed before going back out for dinner at the DeTatch Cafe. I ordered a shrimp stir fry that my mom would have died for. I also enjoyed it enough to name it "my favorite meal so far." Ashley, on the other hand, ordered snapper with a coconut basil sause that turned out to be more like a marinara sauce that wasn't quite as good. We have definitely noticed that dinner here in Belize is definitely hit and miss. You can order one thing at a restaurant and love it. Then the next restaurant has the same thing and it isn't anything like the day before. Always an adventure.
We walked home and went to bed early, like always, after a great, relaxing day.
Day 7: Saturday
First thing this morning, we walked down the road looking for a bakery and some juice for breakfast. We were recommended to visit Ms. Beulah's Bread and Buns which turned out to be a woman's house and a mediocre cinnamon bun. We continued down the city street (there is only one) in search of the dive shop and some fresh juice. We found them at the same time next door to each other. After talking to the dive master, Ashley's suspicions were confirmed: he was suffering from a mild case of DCS. Her suggestion was to go to the town across the lagoon, Independence, to see Dr. Pedro and get an injection and some oxygen. She also mentioned that since he was a diver, he would be able to tell us if we needed to make our way back to San Pedro to visit the hypobaric chamber for re-pressurization and decompression. While they were chatting, I went next door to The Shak to get our fresh juice and ended up getting a fresh smoothie instead. When I came back, she was putting a cocktail of rubbing alcohol and peroxide in his ears to try and dry them out as well as prevent any infection. We left feeling like we needed to have some sense of emergency and urgency.
After leaving the dive shop, we walked down the road to the water taxi to find out the schedule for travelling to Independence. The next taxi left in 40 minutes so we had just a short time to make a decision and leave. We walked to the hotel and decided to pack up and get to Independence. As we were leaving the hotel, we decided to rethink the process. We decided to call the hypobaric chamber in San Pedro before we went to the doctor where we thought we might be told to visit San Pedro when it wasn't necessary. We walked down to the hotel office to connect to the internet and then Ashley used the office phone to call San Pedro (something we found out wasn't allowed later so we paid the bill for the call.) The hypobaric chamber in San Pedro told Ashley that his case wasn't sever and didn't warrant a trip back to San Pedro. They recommended we find a place to get some Oxygen in order to relieve his symptoms. Instead of taking a water taxi to Independence, we asked the Police Station if there was a medical clinic in Placencia where we could receive Oxygen. We were told there was one just down the road so we walked there to try and find it. After a bit of searching, we found a place where the clinic should have been but it looked like a home. Ash knocked on the door and yelled for anyone who was in the home and after a few minutes, a women opened a woman to ask what we were looking for. Ash told her we were looking for the Medical Clinic and she said that she was the nurse at the clinic and mentioned that the doctor was not there to help. After Ash explained his situation, she said she would call the doctor to see if he could come by to help out. A couple of minutes, she opened the door and said she could not reach the doctor by phone but she was willing to help him anyway. We walked into the tiny clinic and she offered to have her husband, a Cuban doctor, check Ashley out. The nurse's husband did not speak English so the nurse interpreted the story. It was determined, once again, that Ashley definitely had a mild case of DCS and that breathing Oxygen should help. He sat in the chair with a mask on for about an hour and before we left. The clinic works on donations so we left some money instead of paying a bill. The whole experience was very interesting and a good lesson on foreign country medicine.
Ashley was feeling much better but we still did not feel we should push any limits and decided to spend the rest of the day in a very relaxed manner. When we left the Medical Clinic and walked back out to the street, there were three women who were cooking chicken on an open BBQ. We got some, along with baked beans and potatoe salad, and then walked to the run-down park to eat it. After gobbling the whole meal down, Ash and I went back to get more. We bought three more meals, two for now and one for tomorrow. While we were walking back to our room, and the beach, we stopped at the grocery store for some water. We found a tasty treat of freshly made bannana bread. We bought two pieces with our water. This turned out to be a great find.
After finishing our BBQ lunch, we took the nurse's advice and took a short nap in the room. We spent the rest of the day relaxing either in the room or on the beach. For dinner that night, we went to the Cozy Restraunt, attached to the hotel. We ordered Nachos and ate only half because they were the worst nachos we had ever had. Like I said, you never know with dinner in Belize.
We went right up to our room and went to bed early, as usual.
Day 8: Sunday
This morning, we got up at 5:00 am to watch the sun rise on the horizon of the Carribean Sea. It was a beautiful sunrise and one of my favorite things that we have done so far. After the sunrise, we went back to bed and slept for another hour. Later that morning, Ash and I got up and went back to the Medical Clinic for more Os. His symptoms had become progressively worse again throughout the previous day, so we went back. We went early because the nurse mentioned that she was headed to a Caye around 9:00 that morning. We arrived at 8:00 and it was a good thing because she was just about to leave! He sat back down and spent the next 36 minutes breathing Oxygen. While Ashley was breathing his medicine, I walked up to the top of the penninsula to purchase smoothies as well as return the alcohol and peroxide to the dive master. When he was finished at the Medical Clinic, we stopped back at the store to pick up more bananna bread, we bought the last two pieces.
We walked back to the hotel to finish packing. As I was walking down to the beach for my final 30 minutes of reading in Placencia, the guy from the car rental place asked if we were ready to go. I was surprised that he was there 45 minutes early but we were nearly packed so he didn't have to wait long. We had rented a Canarie Yellow Diahatsu SUV. The car rental is an expensive part of the trip but we decided it was the best way for us to see the last section of the country in the shortest amount of time. It paid off!
We left Placencia, navigating unmarked dirt roads, and made our way to the Southern Highway, one of the few paved roads in Belize. On the way to our next stay, we stopped in the Mayflower Bocawina National Park which was a jungle. After navigating the dirt road to the entrance, we parked the car and found the Antelope Island trail to hike. The jungle hike was 150% humidity where I sweat more than I ever had before. By the end of my hike, my non-cotton tank was soaked to saturation. Along the hike, we saw all kinds of thick vegetation, spiders, ants, and lizards. We heard a barking bird and a siren bug. Along the hike, we came to an unexcavated Mayan ruin which was interesting. Along the hike we came to Antelope Falls, the biggest waterfall in the park. The park host had mentioned that if we hike to the top of the fall, we would be able to see all the way to the Carribean Sea and then swim in a freshwater pool. We hiked the steep, rocky, slippery, muddy finish to find the viewpoint. At the very top of the trail, we found the pool. The water was so clear and tempting, we jumped in even though we had no suits. There were little fish in the pool that enjoyed nibbling at us which felt very funny and spooked me enough to persuade me to cut my swim short.
We hiked out much more quickly than we hiked in but still enjoyed coming down those steep trail and using the help of the ropes to hike/climb down safely. We didn't see anything new on the way back but we still thoroughly enjoyed being in the jungle.
We got back in the car and hit the road again. We stopped about an hour later at another swimming hole called the Blue Hole. This is not the blue hole that Belize is famous for, however. This blue hole is only 25 feet deep and about 50 feet wide. It was created when an underground river collapsed and created a freshwater pool. Instead of finding this pool vacant, like our last pool, we found it full of every overweight American in Belize. We didn't stay long and on our way out, we purchased some plantain chips from the son of the caretaker. This is one of my favorite treats.
After driving for about one more hour, we came to the capitol city of Belize, Belmopan. We stopped at a streetside fruit vendor and picked up some plantains, banannas, chips, and peanuts. One more hour of driving put us in San Ignacio, our final destination for the night. We wanted to stay at a little backpacking stop about 6 miles out of town, the Trek Stop, because it had a 9-hole frisbee golf course built into the grounds. They didn't have any vacancy so after a bit of discussion between Ashley and me, we drove back into San Ignacio to find a place to stay. The drive in search of a place to stay was quite interesting. We ended driving on the wrong side of the road as well as the wrong way down a one way street. Eventually, we figured out the little city and found the street signs that were only 2"x6" and hand-carved. We ended up stumbling on Marta's Guest House, where we rented the Jr. Suite for only $60US! This room had the quietest AC and the best bathroom of any place that we stayed. It also had a separate living area and a walk-out balcony on the third level, neither of which we used.
For dinner, Ash and I walked down the street looking for a street vendor that we trusted. After spending a week in Belize, we have discovered that the best way to eat is from street vendors. It is the most consistent food, the tastiest, and the least expensive. After not feeling sick after many meals, we assumed that the vendors were generally safe to eat from. We have eaten and slept for much less in the last half of our vacation than the first half. We found a little taco stand in front of the Post Office that Ashley thought looked good. I wasn't hungry so he tried one taco first and then ordered four more. While the woman was making his second helping, two of the crazy men sitting on the post office steps came up to talk to us, one to Ash and one to me. The conversation that the old man had with me put me in an extremely uncomfortable place. He kept telling me how 'sexy' I was and how he wanted me to come visit him at his home. After I told him to stop saying those things, he just changed to Spanish instead of English. Eventually, Ashley got his tacos and I told him to get me out of there. We walked around the corner and I was ready to go back inside and stay for the night. After cooling off, I fell right to sleep.
Well, I guess that is it til later. I am getting sleepy...sorry for any typos or confusing sentences, I know there are a few.
