Our trip to Belize last weekend would have been a lot cooler...

If our car hadn't broken down the night before the trip even started. At one in the morning, in the middle of the jungle between Telchac Pueblo and Motul, with nothing around but agave farms and silence, I stepped on the Jetta's gas pedal hard enough to disconnect the accelerator cable from the engine. The car would only idle along at about 2KPH, and we were miles from anywhere. We finally idled our way back into Telchac Pueblo, where some Mexican teenagers drinking in the park solved our problem using only a spare bit of wire and their wits.

If we hadn't made the decision to continue the bus trip through to Belize City. We had read that the trip took about two hours from the northern border...it in fact took about four. And arriving in Belize City at the end of such a journey is no reward. As the guy at the front desk at the hotel in Chetumal said, "There's nothing there but dirt, thieves, and grass." Grass? "Pot, smoke, marijuana," he elaborated. Make no mistake...the northern part of Belize is gorgeous. Belize City? Less so.

On the bus. We have a lot of these.

If we had arrived in Belize City with a single dollar in Belize currency. Not that driving around in a gypsy cab looking for a place to exchange money wasn't a delight.

If, after the four hour trip back from Belize City to the Belizean border, our bus that was supposed to take us into Chetumal on the Mexican side hadn't abandoned us at the border. Though hitchhiking through the Free Zone and to the Mexican border in the back of a pickup truck with my father, Jillian, a Frenchman with 200 pounds of kitesurfing gear, and his Australian girlfriend was, in retrospect, pretty hilarious.

Concerned Belizean boy on bicycle.

If, upon arriving back at Mexican immigration, the customs official hadn't yelled at me. Turns out, Mexican immigration kind of sees right through your elaborate ruse when you've been bouncing around on a tourist card since August and made a one-day trip into Belize with no luggage. Who knew?

Why, what's this? It's us on a bus!

If, after battling our way through Mexican immigration, we had a plan to get us from the border back to Chetumal, where our stuff and our hotel was. The memory I hold closest from the entire trip was of the three of us, exhausted and disoriented, shuffling our way back across the Mexican border, into the night. It felt so good to be back home, back to civilization.

Crashed out.

If, upon returning to Merida the next day, we hadn't found our car being guarded by the president of the United States. You've never seen so many soldiers. Big steel barricades, grey-clad soldiers tucked creepily into vacant storefront windows. 40 conversations with men of varying degrees of authority and kindness later, and we were in our car and on our way back home. Special bonus item: It would have been a lot cooler if my dad hadn't been strapped with several knives. In spite of all of this security, the metal detectors, the x-ray machines...no one noticed.

If, immediately on our return to our house, I didn't come down with some kind of crazy Belizean fever. I went from fine, to 101 degrees, slept for two days, and am back to fine. The cause of this is unknown, but I am pointing a dehydrated finger at you, Belize.

If the trip had taken the 24 hours I had thought it would, rather than 72. The short story is...don't take a bus into Belize in order to renew your tourist cards illegally.