Beth: Our bus from Flores to Caye Caulker was celebrity filled. I thought that the man sitting beside us looked so much like Mel Gibson that I couldn’t stop staring at him. And Lauren became obsessed with one guy she thought looked like Ben from LOST. We entertained ourselves at the border crossing and pit stops trying to surreptitiously take photos of them.

When we arrived at the ferry terminal in Belize City, we were an hour late and just missed the 1:30 ferry to Caye Caulker. Lauren was frustrated — she had been fantasizing about being in the water by 3pm, but now we would have to wait for the 3pm ferry and wouldn’t even get to Caye Caulker until 4pm.

But after we sat down and looked around, the relaxing “Go Slow” attitude of Belize started settling in. And we were excited to be back in a familiar place. We had both been in this ferry terminal a couple of years before (in fact, it was our first vacation together) and that, combined with the fact that everyone spoke English, made us feel like we were home.

The boat ride was beautiful, as always. The water near the boat terminal is a murky brown, but as the boat zoomed out towards the ocean, the water got bluer and bluer throughout the one hour trip.

At Caye Caulker, the first thing I noticed was a dozen golf cart taxi’s waiting to pick people up from the dock. The island is less than a mile long, end to end, and there is no need to be driven around. ‘What a scam,’ I thought, ‘They’re trying to trick people into thinking the island is large enough to need a golf cart.’

Lauren and I grabbed our bags and booked it to Mara’s Place, Lauren’s favorite hotel on the island and where we had stayed on our last vacation here. It was at the other end of the island, a 15 minute walk with our heavy packs, near “The Split.” (Several years ago a hurricane hit Caye Caulker and “split” it into two separate islands. One of the islands is developed — the other is not. But “The Split” is home to one of our favorite bars and a really great swimming spot.)

On the way there, we noticed tons and tons of people with golf carts. Just walking down the dirt street, we found ourselves having to dodge them over and over. There were several shops offering weekly rentals of golf carts. They weren’t just for the feeble or those with huge bags anymore — it was like renting a car in Miami.

“For God’s sake, just WALK, people,” I found myself yelling.

We got to Mara’s Place and discovered that in the last two years, the prices had changed greatly too. Our “cheap” little hotel was now $38/night. Mara told us it wasn’t high season but it was unusually crowded this week — she only had one room left and couldn’t give us a discount.

So we started retracing our steps, walking back to a hotel we saw advertising $23/night rooms. When we got there, though, the owner told us that all those rooms were booked. All he had left was a $50/night room. Lauren and I sat our bags down and she watched them while I went to inquire at another place.

There, a woman told me that their rooms were $75/night (crazy!) and that the cheapest thing on the strip that we wanted to stay on was Mara’s Place.

Lauren and I agreed we should go for it, so I started jogging back to Mara’s Place to make sure the room wasn’t gone by the time we got there. As I was jogging, I saw two guys with really heavy packs that had to be going to Mara’s too — it was the only hotel left in that direction. I tried to keep casual as I ran past them about 30 feet from the entrance to the hotel.

As I trotted in, I saw three people from our bus ride (including “Mel”) leaving the room. I watched as they told Mara they didn’t want the room. One of them said to me, “you can have it!” and I told Mara we’d take it. I went inside to quickly inspect the room and as I came out, the guys I had run past were talking to Mara about a room. I confirmed to Mara we wanted the room, and she told them she was booked.

“You almost lost that room,” Mara told me, smiling.

I went back to get Lauren and my bags and saw her walking towards me. She was carrying all of our stuff: her large back on back, my large pack on front, and our small packs in each hand. In total, Lauren had to be carry almost 100 pounds of bags. I cracked up laughing and wanted to take a picture, but the camera was buried in one of the bags that Lauren quickly unloaded when I got there.

Lauren: After we settled in, we headed right to the split for our favorite split drink - Bailey’s Coladas. I had never missed a sunset at the split or the Bailey’s Colada happy hours when visiting Caye Caulker.

We showed up, and it was just as picturesque as we remembered it. The water was blue aqua, the Lazy Lizard bar was busy and jamming reggae, and people were jumping off the boardwalk into the swift currents. We noticed right away that there was an addition to the bar and that they had cleaned the place up again. Unfortunately, this meant painting over all the names and messages written on the bar. “Katie, Meredith, and Lauren, 2004″ and “Beth and Lauren, 2005″ were gone.

We asked if the Happy Hour was underway and told that it didn’t start until 6. We ordered a Bailey’s Colada to split, and shared a plate of nachos. We went and sat out on the split, sipping our delicious drink, to wait for 6pm and the sunset.

At 6 on the dot, I ran up to the bar to order our 2 for 1 Bailey’s Coladas. I was greeted with an odd tinge of disdain and was bounced around from the bar tenders to some other manager guy who decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that the Happy Hour didn’t start until 8pm today. He also mentioned that they didn’t do Bailey’s Colada 2 for 1’s, just “local drinks.” He added that this didn’t include the “Lizard Juice”, which I thought was extremely odd, considering it was the signature drink at the Lazy Lizard. I thought that the Lizard Juice was about as local as you could get.

I went back to tell the sad tale to Beth. We decided something had gone horribly astray at the Lazy Lizard. It had definitely lost some of the “Go Slow” Belizian vibe. But we stayed at watched the sunset, thinking how much we liked this place, Lazy Lizard or not.

We went back to our room and lounged in our hammock while the sky darkened. We began contemplating whether or not we should just stay in Belize until August 1, and skip over Mexico. It had been a long few weeks, and, as our blog shows, travel had been tough. We were feeling worn down and tired. We had experienced some tense moments and scary places in Central America, and after 10 months of travel, we were feeling like we didn’t have the will or energy to face another month of day to day planning and fret. Mexico seemed daunting - it was huge and we had little time which meant we’d have to book it. And Belize felt like a cocoon of peaceful relaxation. We decided to do some research on possibilities and at least extend our stay.

After showering (that’s the one thing that sucks about Caye Caulker, the water smells like sewage… we heard it’s sulfur from the mangroves), we headed out for dinner. We came across Jolly Bob’s, a large man who can always be seen frying up seafood treats on the street and who claims to be “world famous.” We saw that lobster was on the menu and decided to split one.

We waited forever. Other people had come and got served before we did. We walked to the store to get drinks and I almost spat out my milk. Being a milk-addict at home, I had felt endlessly mal-calciumed on this trip, and was exulted to see milk in the store. It was sour and undrinkable. We sat sipping our free rum and coke instead.

Finally, we were served our lobster, and it was incredible. Barbecued and filled with butter and garlic, it was tender and perfectly cooked. We decided that perhaps it was worth the hour and a half wait.

Beth: The next morning, Lauren and I fell into what would become out routine. Around 8am, we went for a jog, making it all the way to the end of the island and part of the way back. The first morning we split a pathetically small and obscenely expensive eggs breakfast, but after that, we’d grab $0.25 cinnamon rolls at a local bakery. We also would drop into a supermarket and pick up crackers and cheese for lunches, trying to pinch pennies.

After our morning jog, we’d put on our swimsuits and alternate between swimming at the split and laying in hammocks on Mara’s deck, reading and snoozing. (Tough life.)

We went by an internet place to email our parents and upload photos when we discovered that the internet was $5/hour. That was more than 3 times as expensive as the most expensive internet places we had visited in any other country. When we complained, we were told that it was more expensive at the other internet places on the island. So we quickly pounded out emails and posted blogs and got out as fast as we could. Our half hour internet sessions each day nearly busted our budget.

For our second night in Belize, we decided to go to Wish Willy’s, one of our favorite “restaurants.” Wish Willy’s is owned by a guy name Maurice who grew up in Chicago but moved to Belize 8 years ago and never plans on leaving. The restaurant is actually at his house, where he has several tables set out for people on his lawn. For $7.50, he barbecues, grills, marinates, and cooks up a variety of foods depending on what he picked up in the market that day. His newest happy addition was all-you-can-drink free rum drinks from 6-8pm.

Lauren and I rushed to get there early for the rum drinks, and we were pleased when Maurice recognized us. He brought us some rum punches and we relaxed, knowing that dinner might be a while.

We had a short conversation with some Americans who were on their post-college-graduation vacation before “Mel” and some other people from our bus ride from Guatemala joined us at the picnic table. The group included three German girls, a Mexican guy and Mel, (whose name isn’t Mel) who was French.

They had all met in Mexico, where they had taken a similar route down that we were planning on taking up. We exchanged travel tips and stories while we waited on dinner.

The dinner was, as always, amazing. It included whole shrimp that were marinated in molasses, rice and steamed veggies (which meant we could eat them!), whole fish that was incredibly tasty and tender and BBQ chicken.

We called it an early night that night and headed home to rest up.

By the next morning after our jog, Lauren and I were sitting in our hammock on our deck staring at each other. It was our second full day in Belize and we were bored already. We decided to finish the trip, bussing it all the way through Mexico. We would stay in Belize a few days longer than we had originally planned to rest up, but between Caye Caulker now being too expensive for us to really kick back and the group’s stories of Mexico, we wanted to get moving again soon.

Lauren: We had also researched plane tickets and bus routes in Mexico. Though it would be the same price to fly as to bus it, we discovered that there were the nice buses we had traveled on in South America in Mexico, making travel less uncomfortable than it had been from Panama to Belize. We could book online and, we learned, if you took the first class buses you would travel on the toll roads, which were less likely to get robbed.

Beth: That afternoon, we went in search of conch ceviche at a restaurant that had free WiFi. Conch ceviche was one of Lauren’s favorite foods in Caye Caulker, and I had never tried it. When we tried to order it at the restaurant, the waitress asked us, “Have you ever had it before?”

“Yes,” Lauren confirmed.

“Okay, cause I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into,” the waitress told us. “Some people order it and don’t know what’s coming and they are grossed out by it.”

Lauren told her she had been here before and had it many times.

“Well, ceviche isn’t in season,” the waitress finally offered.

“Oh,” Lauren said, disappointed. “So that means you don’t have it?”

“No!” the waitress exclaimed. “It would be illegal to serve it right now,” she added indignantly.

Lauren and I settled on the nachos instead but after the waitress left, we looked at each other confused. If they don’t have it (because it’s ILLEGAL), then why did we have to go through all that conversation about whether or not Lauren had had conch ceviche before.

It started raining that afternoon and the wind picked up. The whole time we were in Caye Caulker, it was incredibly windy with pretty consistent afternoon or evening downpours. Neither of us had been to Belize in the summer (only during February and March), and we both agreed that the weather wasn’t bad but certainly wasn’t as good as it could get. We started drinking 2 for 1 rum punches to pass the time.

Because of the rain and the late-afternoon nachos, we decided to wait a while before dinner. We picked up some rum and coke and stayed in watching movies. By the time Lauren decided she was hungry, it was nearly midnight.

One of the great things about Caye Caulker is that walking around at night, even by yourself, never seems dangerous. People are too friendly and laid back to be intimidating.

But food options in Belize at midnight are pretty limited. After having a Chinese restaurant basically shut the door in our faces (after Lauren begged for “just some rice!”), Lauren settled on some expensive hot dogs that were pretty tasty. We ran into Maurice from Wish Willy’s, and started quizzing him on some old Belize characters we hadn’t seen around the island. Lyrical King, a crazy Jamaican guy, hadn’t been around for a few years. Sparkles, a dog Lauren loved, had been adopted and taken to the U.S.

We didn’t like the look of the bar that was open, especially when a local guy had to be dragged into a golf cart and taken away because was so drunk, so we went back home again.

The next day, we discovered lobster fritters the on a menu of a restaurant. Since lobster was in season, we couldn’t help but try them. They were more cornmeal than lobster, but they were delicious. So that night we went in search of lobster again, trying a new outdoor lobster grill place that was a little more expensive but not as good as Jolly Roger’s. (But the lobster did arrive to our plates within a half an hour.)

The next night, our last night in Caye Caulker, we went back to Wish Willy’s for dinner. Maurice sat down and chatted with us for a while. We complained about how the prices at the Lazy Lizard had soared and that the atmosphere wasn’t as nice. He told us that the owner of the bar had died a year ago and a new guy had taken it over. The new guy was the heir to the Dole fruit fortune, explaining perhaps that less-chill and more-expensive mood at the bar.

When we shared our sadness about the forever-lost Bailey’s Coladas specials, he told us he’d make us his special Pina Colada. He returned with the most smooth, creamy pina colada we ever had, and he shared his secret recipe with us!

That night, the meal included shrimp pasta, more of the whole fish and BBQ chicken. Lauren and I got a photo with Maurice before we left, telling him we’d “see you next year!”

The next morning, we caught the boat back to Belize City. A bus to Mexico would be leaving from the dock in a couple of hours, taking us to the last final country on our itinerary.