My Belize

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

I walked the dogs down the street in Orange Walk, Belize, tonight.

Here I am, in my Belize.

It has been a long two months of working to come here (and a nearly longer two weeks Driving to come here). What do you do when you get to where you have been going? I am smiling and my heart is light. I am too tired for anything else!

We stopped at a gas station to ask about hotels. The one we found in Corazol, just across the border, rejected us due to pups. But a wonderful Asian woman, Lynn, (the only hour-long best friend I've ever had) at the Shell station outside of Corazol let me plug in my dead Belize phone to buy minutes and try to call Michelle in Cayo to tell her we had arrived. Lynn told me about a hotel in Orange Walk but said she should call her sister Sherri instead and we should stay with Sherri. Because it was so late, because we had the dogs....

Overwhelmingly kind.

We drove through Orange Walk and waited by the hospital parking lot for Sherri and her husband to come on a scooter to meet us. He said they had guests at their house, but would take us to the hotel in town and introduce us.

I have never been introduced at a hotel in order to get a room! This was so gracious and just awesome. Maybe this is the Asian way? I don't know.

We secured a room at the delightful Orchid Palm Inn in Orange Walk. Such a relief from our last and most miserable hotel in Mexico that my dad slept about 12 hours...and could have slept longer I think. It's a charming place with tropical plants and flowers and a gated place to park where the pups could stay in the car just outside our door. We both woke up this morning and laughed with relief.

We are in Belize!

We had a good night's sleep (except for the neighbor dogs barking at my dogs in the car, who were uncharacteristically quiet. They are so disoriented now that I am wondering if they will ever return to their usual selves.)

I wandered out into Orange Walk with the dogs at night to find something for them to eat after we arrived. Once we open the emergency bag of dog food, there's no closing the back hatch of the car again. It's all packed in like puzzle pieces, one misplaced item and it's a total repack. (I exaggerate...). I left the Enroute Bucket of Pup Food on the top of a cabinet in a hotel in Texas or somewhere, so we've been buying meat and bones along the way for the dogs since then. And sharing the remnants of our delicious fish dinners with them. They are a little skinnier. They don't care. They believe life as they have known it is over. They believe they are only Car Dogs now, with no hope of rabbit chases left in life. Perhaps not rabbit, pups, but I think an iguana or even a gecko will give you a good run in a day or two.

I did not find anything for the dogs at this hour. But I found a center of town with a lit Christmas tree and food vendors and families milling around. Orange Walk is very picturesque - I had never been here in my summer visit to Belize.

We had no problems at customs, tomy relief and amazement. I had nothing left in me for problems.

When you cross the border here, there's no clear step to take. There's a casino and insurance agencies and a throng of parked cars and you just wonder "Where do I go?" And no one tells you. It's as though you are already in Belize and can just go about your business. So I kept driving. Then came the gates and fences and Officials. A man came to me and told me he was Melvin, a customs agent here to help me. He was so welcoming and helpful that I was suspicious.

"Are you a customs agent or a broker?" I asked. I didn't want another broker.

"I work for customs, it is my job to help you through." he replied.

Oh my. Melvin took the dogs and walked me in to the building where we went with the dogs into a small room. They were to be examined and paperworked. Then the car matters would come next - a temporary permit for the car covered with seven-some US states of dirt and the whole Gulf Coast of Mexico too. And then a review of our Belongings.

Considering all that had to happen - customs was a breeze. It was worse to get into Mexico - and far more expensive! Leaving Mexico - paperwork and return on my deposit promising I would leave and not be a tourist - took from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and coming through Belize customs took from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. That was all!

Melvin kept wanting to take the dogs from me. He asked me if they would make a mess in the building.

"Oh, no," I assured. They won't do that. (You know, except under extreme stress when they have been traveling for two weeks and they are taken away from me by a stranger in a large building of hundreds of people milling about...then it's really unknown. Unknown no longer.)

Melvin burst into the BAHA office (Bureau of Animal Health and Agriculture?) where I was explaining that I did not bring the cat after all and he thrust one of the pups at me.

"Your dog poop in the building!" he accused me.

Ay yi yi. I had promised he wouldn't. Nothing is easy. Maybe don't keep trying to take my dogs from me in a strange place where they will be more stressed out than two weeks of car travel has already made them, I thought. Why can't they just stay with me....?

In spite of the international spectacle made by Eli, they let us through. I paid a smidgen of duty on gifts brought in and they didn't sift through my belongings or make us stay through the night and the Insurance Man, who was our next stop, clued me in on getting a temporary six-month permit for the car, which will allow me not to pay duty. Whew. All of my online research has told me that I would have to pay up to 56% value of the car in duty, so that made me happy.

In a time when everything could have gone Awry, I feel like God planted all of these Helpers in my path. The Ana's and Lynn's of the trip. From Melvin walking me through customs and cleaning up after Eli, to the insurance man giving me Great relief about the car process, to Sherry "Introducing Me" at the hotel. And I didn't mention the guy on the Mexico side who worked through all of the papers and made calls for me to be able to get through under the wire before Mexico closed at 5 p.m.

The way was paved before me. So much could have gone horribly wrong - and nothing did. Why, again, have I been so stressed and Irritable this whole way? I hate that. Everything has worked out. Everything was going to work out. There was never any wonder.

Even when I do not feel the relief of it, God always paves my way. Paved in Mexico where none of us - people or dogs - encountered any harm. We saw the accidents on the side of the road with drivers who had passed us, but we weren't in any of those accidents. Our cartop bins that could (though don't) hold items of intrigue for people in the night, were never sliced from their place on the roof while we slept. The banditos and all of the nefarious people in the news terrorizing Mexico did not cross our path. We didn't get the least bit sick from food or water (or our own medical frailties) on the trip. These are not nothing. They are showerings of grace - blessings undeserved whether I have been able to see and receive them or not (such as....through almost all of Mexico.)

There are moments when things do not go well. When the back hatch will not close. When the luggage flies from the back of the car onto Eli as we drive. When we are stuck behind trucks we can't pass and night falls and we are still driving in Mexico and there are No Known Hotels within two hours. When a biopsy comes back and it is melanoma. When you go to the doctor again and there is Another Suspicious Spot. When your 24-year-old nephew is suddenly gone. No goodbye, no last "I love you." This is still grace. What a mystery. Even what we call bad is still a withholding of the worst - grace that will not allow more burden than we can bear (no matter what our opinion of that limit may be).

I am grateful and relieved and quietly exuberant to be in Belize. I don't know what these months hold, but it will be wonderful and full of grace, the path paved before us.

Love and Adoration,

Susana en Belice (Bay-Lee-Say, as they say in Mexico)