Saturday, November 20, 2010 – Moving Day - UPDATED:

Saturday, November 20, 2010 – Moving Day:

An early rise at 6:30am. A final weighing of the suitcases, a little shifting.  Francisco, Rosa, Rosalind and Sharene leave for San Ignacio for the weekend.

It’s cool and rainy. Great.  The plane ride should be fun! At least we don’t have far to go.

The last laundry is done, and we are ready.  It’s 8:30.  Guess we just sit and wait. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a glimmer of internet.  It’s been out since Thursday night.

10:25 am - YAY INTERNET!  I’ll post the blogs from Wednesday on … and will upload pictures and video after we get to San Pedro.  For now…just the postings! SEE YA WHEN WE LAND!

Moving Day – UPDATED:

Gerald was bored from waiting so he re-tuned his guitar and started to pick some songs. The acoustics on the front porch are great! When the neighbor, Ken, drove by, he stopped and decided to go get his guitar and join Gerald for a few minutes. Of course, Jimmy Buffet songs were played. We had the people across the channel listening and having a good time! One last JB song for the Parrot Heads and we have to leave. Patti, Lucy, Jane, Lynda and Glen come by to say goodbye. I got a little lump in my throat saying goodbye…we’ve had such a good time here and the place was truly growing familiar. The only person we didn’t get to say goodbye to was Sharene…so…BYE SHARENE! It was nice to meet you! And thanks for your hospitality!

We load the truck and off we head to the airport to get our officially laminated boarding pass. We are the last ones to board, and of course, people refuse to occupy the front seats first (what is wrong with people?), so I have to weave through an isle about 12 inches wide and all of the seats to get to the seat directly behind the pilot.  It’s at this point that I wished I had eaten beans the night before and weighed about 300 lbs so I could wave my big derrière in their faces (not that it wasn’t bad enough anyway!) Oh well. 

We end up flying through some heavy rain clouds and make more stops than I anticipated. First, we stopped in Dangriga, then Belize City International, then Belize City Municipal, waited for 45 minutes then finally off to San Pedro. All in all, considering the weather, it was a pretty good ride (only a couple small rollercoaster dips).

We get to San Pedro, unload and get our luggage.  Rob picks us up in a golf cart and even I had reservations about getting all of our luggage on it, but he did. And off we went.

This is a busy little town! (I’ll take and post pictures later). We weave through the streets (which make Placencia look great) and he ended up taking us down the beach because the one main street is pretty rough. Plus, the streets are water covered from all the rain. We cross the bridge and get to the condo in one piece and carry all our bags up the stairs.  Luckily we are only on the 2^nd floor. Rob shows us around, and there is even a cell phone to use. That’s cool.

Everything sounds fine right?  Well, here is where it all goes wrong.  And, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s just me! Am I having a string of bad luck? (Tooey! Tooey! Tooey! Tooey!) =)  Am I expecting too much to want to have a place clean and in decent condition?

The first thing we see is the broken blinds on the door.  Someone probably didn’t have them tied down right and they got mashed in the door during the hurricane. So…there will be no privacy. Now I have to find something to hang over the door…which will so look like a trailer park. It’s a small thing individually. You don’t get stuff like that fixed quickly.  I’m thinking the best thing to do though is to take it down and put a curtain up or something. But I digress. Allow me to continue.

I took my shoes off, and started to walk around the condo.  The floor felt dirty…I took the suitcases outside and swept off the sand and started to sweep up the sand we brought in earlier with the suitcases as we dropped them by the door, and noticed I was sweeping up lots more than just sand.  There was dirt. I was also barefoot, and you could feel the dirty film on the floor.

Oh no! Not again! Now I start looking around.  The appliances are dirty, inside and out. The coffee pot actually has dirt in the water well part.  But it’s gross dirty on the outside too. Along with the blender. Crumbs on the toaster. The fridge is rusted on the front doors (which you can’t help in the Caribbean) but at least the inside is clean. It just looks bad. And someone left us 3 beers…too bad we don’t drink beer. But I might start. The stove looks ok, and the microwave is not disgusting.  The dishes look ok too, but someone has put a couple dirty greasy forks back in the drawer… so you know I have to clean it all now.  Someone left tortilla chips in the freezer so I took them out and threw them away and a big cockroach was in the trash. EW! Ants are running all over the counter tops and in the cabinets and drawers. Most of the kitchen towels and dish cloths are dirty or hard and crispy – like they’ve just been laid out to dry, not washed. The ones lying on and under the sink are sour smelling. Gotta wash em all.

Off to the bathroom. There was no toilet paper left here, thank gawd I brought some from Placencia. (Don’t you think they should warn you about the absence of certain essential items not being in a place before you get there? They did the same thing in Turks & Caicos when we rented a villa there! You think for $2500 for the week they could put 1 stinking role of toilet paper in the villa until we could get to the store? I digress again.) Anyway, the bathroom counter has old crud on it, not too awfully bad, but you know I’m cleaning it before I lay any of my stuff on it. And the shower? Yuck. You can see clean streaks, so you know it’s just built up dirt, mong and mold.  There is a spider making a home in the corner. I’m positive the shower curtain has never been cleaned.  It has rusty orange mold and mildew on it. There’s a cleaning project for sure. The towels are stained, and some look like they were used to clean an engine. But I don’t know if it’s from the water or not (more on that later) and I can’t tell by smelling them because everything in here smells musty, but I’m going to wash them anyway. 

And the best?  Ah, yes, the best is yet to come. Hang on to your hats.  Into the bedroom we go.

The drawers have dirt and hair in them, there is a button on the floor at the edge of the bed, so you know it hasn’t been swept good, there is a spider making a home by the big floor vase beside the dresser. Of course the closet stinks like mildew. The extra sheets and what appear to be blue Delta airline blankets, occupy 4 of the drawers in the dresser, along with one of the big louvers from the bedroom blinds. But the best ladies and gentlemen? The best is when I turned with big wide eyes to look at the bed.  Do I dare?  Of course I dare.  I have to sleep there! I pull back the coverlet and top sheet a little to inspect. And they look wrinkled. Not like a bad fold wrinkled, but wrinkled like someone had slept in them. I look at the pillow cases and they are the same. I smell them, and you can smell body odor.  Then I pull the top sheet down further…and yes, there in all its glory, proudly displaying itself to me, are stains. And not “these are old sheets” stains.  These were “the last couple that stayed here liked each other a lot, and had a REALLY REALLY GOOD TIME” stains.  I’m not lying.  I called Gerald to witness…and I took a picture. No one would believe this. I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS! OH MY GAWD! That is when I almost cried. And then I took the sheets off and saw the pillows. That is when I wanted to leave.  (I won't gross you out with the pictures...)

But, I realized nothing was going to be done about it, especially tonight.  And the owner already had my money. So we’re just screwed. Make the best of it.  

We start to clean up a little.  I didn’t want to unpack my things and put them on anything without washing it.  And we are getting hungry and so tired. So we decide we will go eat and then go get some cleaning supplies.

We leave to get dinner and then to the store down the street.  We eat at the restaurant here at Reef Village. Once we ran through the pouring rain, we were lucky to find a table that rain was not coming through the loosely woven palapa roof – actually we didn’t, but the rain stopped and we didn’t get any wetter. But, the food was yummy and they were very friendly.

We picked up some cleaning supplies and a big bottle of water at the store down the street. Then we come back and start washing dishes, sheets, blankets, towels etc. Gerald did a great job helping – no nap this time! =)

While we are cleaning we notice that the water is brown. I had asked a local in the restaurant about the water, and she said she drank bottled water.  She was young, and I didn’t know if it was just the generation, but now I understand. So all the laundry and dishes are getting washed with brown water.  This is worse than Mexico!

It’s pretty noisy here.  Our doors, while they face the east, the sunrise and the ocean, also face a main road. The drunks are a plentiful on this Saturday night and we can hear them whooping and hollering at The Cantina down the street. (and this is the quiet end)  But it stops at 9pm – and I’m thankful the restaurant is conscious of the time. Then we hear a big ruckus further down the road. Drunks of course.  Someone is screaming…loud…and the “F” word is prominent.  Great. After about 45 minutes the screaming dies down, and I can’t take any more cleaning. My legs, hips and back are killing me. But at least I have “clean” sheets now and I’ve put two layers of cases on the pillows.  That makes me feel a little better.  I take a quick shower and get ready to try to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day Scarlet.     

BONUS:  I’ve decided to have a contest. It’s the “What did Tina Find” contest.  The winner will receive…well…some wonderful locally handmade (from Taiwan) item with San Pedro, Belize written on it. Who can tell me what this item is that I found in the bedroom while cleaning:

This I did NOT pack! Can’t wait to hear from you on this one!

Some views from the condo: