I Will Officially Eat Anything. Deal With It.

Another update from Central America! I'm sure you've been waiting for this -- you've probably been staring at your computer screen for days waiting for this very entry and now that it's here, you can resume eating, drinking and using the bathroom!!! Or probably not... either way, here are my thoughts since the last time I wrote down my thoughts.

Our last day in Caye Caulker (pronounced Key, FYI... cuz we didn't know) was a lazy one. We needed to recover from our burns! We went out to breakfast and I got an amazing waffle (Whitney got a grilled cheese on the thickest bread I have ever seen in my entire life) and then we took naps. Well, Whitney napped, I basically just lay in bed, surfing the net and playing games on my phone. Then we went out looking for seashells. And then there was some more napping. And then we went out for dinner, where we got grilled lobster!! Missing lobster-fest on Caye Caulker was a bummer but there was still plenty to go around! It was delicious.

After that, we walked to the Lazy Lizard which is at the far end of the island. Buzzfeed has said it's one of the most unique bars in the world because you can just climb in the water from the bar! It is a really good place to people watch -- everyone is either drunk, sunburnt or both! We wanted to watch the sunset from the dock because pretty drinks and pretty sunsets go together like any alcoholic beverage and a hand should go together. They had a lot of frozen drinks (a personal fave) but we figured we should go with the "world famous" Lizard Juice. It IS, after all, their signature drink. In hindsight, it's probably their best selling drink because everyone says "oh, we HAVE to try it!" then realizes that it's garbage and orders something else. It was NEON green. We have absolutely no clue what was in it because the ingredients weren't on the menu and when we watched the bar tender, she went behind the bar and came back with a blender full of pre-mixed swamp juice and ice. It was probably part battery acid, part bleach and part lemon-lime soda but we really don't know. The cherry on top of the whole thing was an actual cherry, but it really didn't help. At all. The sunset, however, was as lovely as the drinks were nauseating.

After all that we -- you guessed it -- took a nap. Just a short one though cuz we were going back out for trivia at one of the local bars! We got some appetizers (stuffed mushroom caps and Belizean chips/dip) and Whitney ordered a Belikin beer because it's "the beer of Belize". We hate beer. But we HAD to cuz it's like the country's mascot. P.S. We suck at trivia and not even the Norwegian girls who joined our team could help us.

This morning we started the day with more waffles! Ok, I got a waffle, Whitney got fruit, granola and fruit. Then we found swings so we could sit on the beach and rock back and forth! We returned to our hostel to pack up our gear and then we were headed to the ferry. Belize it or not (more puns!), but the ride back to the mainland was more uncomfortable than the ride to the island. I was half under the cover, half outside so I ended up sweating from all the insulated indoor heat while burning up from the sun.

Luckily for us, our hostel is super close to the water taxi, so we didn't have to pay for a land taxi and simply walked. We are classy and have a private room with AC! We also have a TV with like 100 channels IN ENGLISH! The TV is nice because Whitney wanted to take more naps.

We headed out to find the rainbow Belize sign, which is a cool tourist attraction but then the crazy rain started. Sheets and sheets of rain. So that didn't last long. Which was good because it was almost time for Whitney to take another nap.

When dinner time came, we didn't know where to go. Belize City is not nearly as touristy as Caye Caulker so the restaurants aren't as obvious. We asked the people who work at the hostel where they like to go but they didn't have any suggestions; I'm not sure how you can live somewhere AND work in a hostel and NOT have a favorite restaurant but they didn't. We ended up walking around aimlessly, making our tourist presence rather obvious when we went into a sports bar. When we told a guy there that we were looking for real food, he pointed us in the direction of a local place. Drunk men with a cigarette flopping out of their mouth know where the good food is. We ended up at Nerie's which is NOT for tourists. Local food to the extreme. Whitney for chimole which is a chicken and egg soup, but not like you're thinking, our (poor, sweet) server told us that it's black before we ordered. We decided that any Americans who do end up there hear chicken soup and are not expecting what they end up with. Whit really liked it (and so did I!). Now if that seems adventurous, you're never going to believe what I got: split pea and pig tail soup. Mhm. Our server, who is described as poor and sweet for the insane amount of patience she showed us, the world's dumbest customers, said it was her favorite. When we got it, I wasn't sure how to eat it. It looked like they'd left two big bones in the soup, which was fine with me because I know LITERALLY nothing. It was good. It came with chicken. So our server comes back and asks if we're done and I say yes and she looks down at my bowl and says "you didn't eat the pig's tail..." Turned out "the bones" were actually covered in the meat that we were supposed to eat "like chicken." (... world's dumbest customers...). So we let her take our dishes and tried the pig's tail. Whit gave up after a bite but I actually liked it and as our server said, "once you eat pig's tail, you'll eat anything," so that's the story of the time I officially became someone who will eat anything. And also the story of the time that
I thought I had eaten pig's tail when I actually had not.