September 24th - Belize Checkout!

In preparation for our departure to Guatemala, we checked out of Belize today!  Phil and Julie, who are heading to Costa Rica for a new house sitting opportunity, are going with us for the sail to Rio Dulce.  They will then catch a bus to Guatemala City, and then on to Costa Rica!  They need to be in Costa Rica by October 5th, so we want to have plenty of time to sail down and enjoy a few offshore cays on the way down.  We hope to arrive in Livingston, Guatemala on Monday, September 31st, and then head down to Rio Dulce. 

 

To check out of Belize in Placencia, you usually have to take a taxi from the Moorings Office to M&M gas station.  There you take the Hokey Pokey water taxi over to Mango Creek and then catch a taxi over to Big Creek (a few miles away).  We decided to try out our new dinghy and 15hp Yamaha motor and head directly to Mango Creek ourselves, saving the taxi and Hokey Pokey charges!  So all four of us hopped into the dinghy and we headed over to Mango Creek.  We finally made it as we snaked down a long and windy creek.  Just when I thought that we might be lost, Phil recognized something, and then we were there!  We tied up the dinghy, and locked it up with our new security cable!  We asked a nice gentleman to watch it for us, and we headed out in a taxi! 

The first office was the Immigration office.  The guy came across a little macho in the beginning, but after we paid a $90BZ penalty for something, he was much happier.  We also had to pay $7.5BZ for each person.  We still don't know what the $90BZ charge was for, except maybe because we said that we were leaving the next morning, they made us pay some overtime charge. 

 

Next we headed over to the Port Authority, and the lady was really nice to us!  We paid our $30BZ to get the boat out of the country, gave her our crew list again, and headed over to Customs!  The guy at Customs was very nice, and made some copies of our crew list for Guatemala!  After that we were finished and heading back to the dinghy.  Since Phil and Julie are heading back to their current house in Monkey River, they took a long taxi over to their house.  We then left in the dinghy!  We didn't take any pictures of these events, as we didn't know if the officials wanted their picture taken.  Below are a few that we took after the fact! 

 

Heading to Guatemala in the morning!!!!  We will be out of Internet range for the next 5 days, so don't worry!  We should have some good blogs to share after we get down to Guatemala!

 

 Mango Creek

 Mango Creek

Mom hang on!!!

 

Check out our Super Charged Dinghy!