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LAST DAY IN PARADISE!!! So sad.
We woke up at 6am and hauled all of our luggage out to the boat. I rode Cinthia in on my bike so she would be some what worn out. I met madre' at the BC's dock and we went to the airport so I could grab my money and Cinthia's kennel. I walked the kennel and madre' rode my bike with Cinthia to Tropic Cargo. Alberto was there just like he said he would be and we paid for Cinthia, crossed our fingers that she would be on our flight and headed back to the main terminal to wait for our flight. About 5 mins before we were to board madre' saw Cinthia being wheeled to our plane. That was a stress reliever. We said our goodbyes with lots of hugs and kisses (thanks again madre' & padre', love you!) and boarded the plane without making eye contact with Cinthia. We sat at the front of the plane and we saw Cinthia being wheeled away and the plane doors being shut! WTF!
There was nothing we could do but hope that she would be on the next flight out. We flew to Caye Caulker expecting the plane to fill up with more people and maybe two people got on! We were very confused as to why she didn't make it on our flight. We got our luggage at Belize International and Matt went straight up to the Continental desk before they were even open and told them what was going on. The Tropic Air manager walked by and he explained everything to him as well. The manager was irate that cargo didn't fill the plane as they were supposed to. They told us that they would make a few calls and let us know what was going on. Another employee from Tropic air was very helpful in letting us know that cargo didn't fill the plane like they were supposed to because there were supposed to be some passengers on Caye Caulker that didn't show up. They were doing all they could to get little Cinthia on the next flight but they new as the day went on the flights were getting full.
All we could do was sit with our baggage and hope to see her come around the corner. At this point everybody working at the airport knew what was going on. We were told to check in for our 3:50pm flight to Huston, TX and if Cinthia made it in time we could change to the 11am flight. After we were checked in William arrived and we let him know what was going on and would she make it in time to get everything taken care of? He had me give him all of her paperwork so he could start processing it just in case when she arrived all we would have to do is slap some stickers on her kennel. It turns out that Continental hires another company to do all this paper work and that is what the extra $200 BZ is for. William was very professional and efficient. He got all the paper work sorted and we were told that she would be on the 10:15am flight, so says the captain of the plane.
I went down to tell this to William and ask if we should even bother changing our flights or would it be too late? He said yes do it and I looked at the massive line for Continental. He told me to get in line and he would see what he could do. Matt had all of our documents so he took Matt up to the front of the line and spoke with a Continental employee and I could see that they were doing something. William came and got me out of line and told me that they had figured everything out and our flights were changed. What a good guy! We walked down to his desk to pay for Cinthia and he still needed the $200 BZ handling fee, in cash don't forget. I was about to cry from all the stress but I didn't need to worry because my man took care of everything. William ended up taking $50 BZ (that was all the cash we had) and writing us an official receipt for the handling fee. Damn my mans good.
As we were paying for everything Cinthia showed up and was so excited to see us. Matt gave her some kibble and she looked pretty normal for what she had just gone through (not like Kristah who would have been freaking out!) William put all the stickers on her cage and they took her back with the luggage. After we were through security we had enough time to grab a hot dog and a coke for breakfast and then it was time to board. We got the emergency exit and it was so spacious. Once we had landed and got through immigrations we picked up our luggage. We thought for sure that we would have to pick up Cinthia and all go through customs together. We asked several different people and we got "yes" "no" "yes""no". We didn't know what to do. I saw someone at the Continental baggage desk and asked her. She clarified how Cinthia was traveling and said no she will go straight through to Seattle.
We had to trust her, go through customs, recheck our luggage, go through security again and find our gate number to Seattle. I think I could breath at this point and thanked Matt so much for all his hard work communicating with everyone because we both knew if I had to do it, it would come out but, but, but. We had Wendy's for lunch and waited for our flight. This flight is always packed and we took off a little later than expected due to finding space for luggage. Our seats were the first ones in coach but there were two ladies sitting in our seats. Once Matt asked me what seat numbers we had they acted as if they made a mistake and we knew that they did it on purpose because of the leg room at the front...bimbos.
A few of us had to put our luggage in first class because there was just no more room. There was this older man trying to shove his extremely full little suit case in the overhead compartment and the stewardess was almost yelling to him that it would not fit so stop shoving. She told him that they would have to check it and he would have to pick it up at baggage claim. I swear I saw this 70 year old man turn into a 7 year old having a temper tantrum. I squeezed by and sat in my seat. When we landed we let all the first class out so we could get to our bags and the old man saw that someone (the stewardess) had put our laptop on his clothes bag (the kind a suit goes in with the hangers sticking out the top) and he freaked out and threw our laptop into the next overhead compartment. I laughed to myself and told Matt, the stewardess heard me and apologized for the old mans behavior. We caught up to the old man and his wife and Matt politely told him that just because he was upset with the airline does not give him the right to throw around other peoples luggage.
At this point if he was a cartoon his head would be filling with steam and it would be whistling out his ears. He yelled something back and we just laughed at him as his wife was standing in between us trying to direct him forward. It made for a pretty entertaining flight. We got our bags and asked where we should pick up Cinthia. They gave us a map and said the cargo building a couple of miles away.
Karlene was right on time and we headed straight for the cargo building. With the way our day was going I thought for sure that it would be closed. They were open and we signed for Cinthia and got her from the back. She was so excited to see us and I leashed her up and we went outside for a potty. I wanted to give her a drink but her food and water bowls were not with her kennel (like the website told us to have accessible). I went back in to ask were they were and they said they did not see them but gave me a little bowl and water.
As we drove home we sussed out a plan for Kristah to meet Cinthia. I knew if we walked her in the house Kristah would freak out and bark at her so we had Karlene hold her on a leash in the front yard while we went in to say high and get love. She loved us all right but could smell Cinthia all over us. After a couple of minutes we opened the door for them to meet and it went pretty well. Kristah didn't bark once but she wasn't wiggling her tail she was too busy investigating. Cinthia of course wanted to jump all over Kristah so we took them both in the house and out to the backyard for another potty before bedtime.
Its our last full day in paradise and we decided to walk up to Captain Morgans to give the coffee guy one last chance. He said he was still waiting on his stronger coffee to come in (he's from Portland, he knows how we Seattlelites like our coffee). He told Matt that he would make them as strong as we wanted no extra charge. They were still weak and I think we nailed the problem. We think he was using regular ground coffee for espresso coffee. I tried that once because I was desperate and it tasted exactly the same, watery! Oh-well we tried, at least Cinthia liked it ;)We had to have our last breakfast at My Secret Deli but Oscar wasn't even there to say goodbye. He was in Belize City on business. As we were finishing up padre' got a call from Continental Airlines, for me. William the guy setting up Cinthia's plane ticket home called to tell me that we needed to get her to Belize International 2 hours before our flight to process all the paper work and she would need to be in the States 2 hours before we flew to Seattle to clear customs (we only had a 1 hour and 51 minute layover) or she would have to stay overnight for $100 US. That was not the disturbing part, he also told me that there would be a handling fee of $200 BZ ($100 US) that needed to be paid in cash to him. I wanted to scream out loud! I am so done with Continental Airlines they are pathetic. We were already knee deep with getting Cinthia home so I just dismissed that and started the process of changing our flights to get her to Belize International 2 hours before we flew out and an earlier flight to Huston to clear customs.First stop after lunch was Tropic Air, they are the airline that flies from island to main land. We had no problem changing our flight except the lady said that the dog will have to fly in the back of the plane and will be charged anywhere from 1 seat to 3 seats. Just to let you know 1 seat is $100+ US! We told her that Tropic Air Cargo told us that she could fly free. She called over to the cargo building and said that nobody there talked to us about that. We rode our bikes the few blocks down the road to the cargo building to explain our situation. The man that told us Cinthia would be no problem, as he put it was not there. Alberto was at the front desk and he was a great help calling the main terminal to ask why she would be a problem and help us in figuring out a way to get her to Belize Int. We finally decided she would fly for $15 BZ as cargo but that would not be guaranteed (cargo only flies when there is space on the plane). We took a gamble and said we would be there to drop her off at 7:30am for the 8am flight.Back to Tropic Air to change our flights for good to the 8am flight. They have no problem with customers changing flights no charge as long as the flight is not full. When the flights were all taken care of we rode down to SAGA to officially pay for Cinthia and Madre' gave a very generous donation. Ingrid said good bye to Cinthia, thanked us for all our volunteering and gave us the last donation bucket (which had a few more dollars in it). After all that stress we had to go for ice cream. The gal at Mariano's Arcade that scoops our ice cream gave us an extra scoop because padre' came in after breakfast to get an ice cream and head home but he just happened to mention that we were leaving tomorrow. Thanks padre'! On our way home we ran into Jean and her dog Snoopy. Cinthia and Snoopy got along like they were long lost buddies, Jean was so surprised and happy. We let them play for a good long while before we had to separate them so we could go on our way. As soon as we got home we started the daunting task of packing. We were planning on going out but I didn't feel like it as we were packing. We got done around 8pm and madre' convinced me that we should go out. So glad she did we had a great last night at Legends Burger House for Jam Night. We thought we would only stay for a few songs since we had to get up super early but we ended up staying until we got kicked out. We said goodbye to everyone and headed home.
I was brushing my teeth when Matt says "go take care of your dog". I walk out to the patio and she was stuck at her shoulders in the railings! It was so funny. I pulled them apart and nudged her back in with my knee. We all rode bikes into town and stopped by Pampered Paws to pick up the donation bucket and thank them for all their help. I was going to get flea and tick medication from them but I knew that we were going to SAGA and it would probably be cheaper there. We had breakfast at Lime. While we waited for the food I gathered all the buckets and counted the donations. We raised $50 BZ ($25 Us) in 4 out of the 5 buckets. We said goodbye to Sharon and thanked her so much for helping us raise the big bucks. We rode down to SAGA and we were almost there when Matt realized that they were closed. I don't think we will ever remember that they are closed on Sundays and Mondays!Back to Pampered Paws for some flea and tick medication and then it is time for one of our last ice creams. Madre' offered to buy me a bikini so we went shopping and left the boys reading there books. I found a bikini and she found a dress for a steal! We went and got the boys and headed home. I called Continental to reserve a place for Cinthia on the flight home and all I had to do was write an email to the guy I was speaking with and tell him our flight number and a few other things he asked for. After I was done sending the email we took the boat out the reef again. I took madre' back to where we saw the puffer fish and on our way back to the boat we saw a shark. I took the spear gun out and was only able to hit one fish but it got away. Matt tried again and was able to get one more fish. We called it a day and headed home to have dinner at Aji (two buildings south of us).
Matt was up at 6:30am checking the wind it looked good but it was just to damn early so he forced himself to go back to bed. He was on the water by 8:15am shortly followed by me and padre'. Matt was kicking himself because he should have gone out when he first woke up, it was super light. Matt attached the GoPro camera onto a pvc pipe stuck in the sand out in the water. We rode by it and did what we could but there was nothing. We eventually gave up and I made eggs and bacon for breakfast and we read books by the pool. We decided to go to the reef and go snorkeling because time in paradise was running out. Dad speared a fish and madre' accidentally let it free when she was cleaning out the bucket it was in. Matt went out with the spear and got a couple more fish plus a scare from a huge moray eel flowing his bag of fish tied to his waste!We got back around 3pm and Maddie the little girl from upstairs wanted to walk Cinthia. I told her we were going to shower so if she didn't want to walk her anymore just put her back in the porch area. When I was done showering Maddie was outside and said that Cinthia rolled in something. Did she ever! You could smell that stench for a mile, why oh why do dogs have to roll in stuff? It was bath time for Cinthia we had to use our shampoo for the perfume it was so bad. I was cleaning her feet and there were quite a few ticks in between her toes. Matt pulled them all out and we gave her a good examination for anymore.Jerry and Kathy had us and a few others over for Happy Hour. Boy was I happy, there were hot wings, bean dip, veggies, curry and pina coladas! So yum. Dad was the entertainment for the kids doing magic tricks, riddles and math problems. We went back downstairs at around 8pm and took Cinthia on a walk. Matt noticed that it was pretty windy and decided he was going out. Dad wasn't going to let this opportunity pass him by so he went too. I would have but I was excited to get pictures of the glow sticks on the kites. The moon was I think one day past full and it was super bright (not so good for glow stick pics). The boys packed up around midnight extremely happy they went out. 
The first time we have had to set an alarm this whole trip, for a dog. We ran Cinthia all the way into town and we had coffee at Sail Away Cafe'. She was so tired she sprawled out on the floor while people had to step over her, they didn't mind. We got to SAGA at 9am and there was no sign of Ingrid, I asked the only lady there cleaning out the cages if she was going to be in and she told me that she just had to run out for a minute. The vet and assistant came in around 9:30am did some things with some kitty's and then called us in. Cinthia didn't mind waiting around she had a tiny little black puppy to terrorize in the mean time.The vet was really good with her letting her sniff all the tools he was about to probe her with. She got wormed which she liked the taste of and a few shots that she didn't even notice. It reminded me of Kristah when we took her to the vet for the first time and she slept the whole time even through getting her shots, she hates the vet now though. The vet checked her up and down and gave her a clean bill of health. The vet said that Cinthia might be tired the rest of the day because of the shots. Ingrid came in and printed up her health certificate and we were good to go. We rode passed Pampered Paws and paid for the kennel, they even agreed that if we were not able to raise the money they would take the kennel back for a refund, very nice people.So much for Cinthia being tired, as soon as we hit the beach trail she wanted to get out of the basket and ran all the way home. We had some cereal for breakfast and got ready to kite (10/12m). Madre' took pictures and watched Cinthia for us. I called for Cinthia to jump in at the end of the dock and she started to get excited and bark. A few tacks later madre' yells "have you seen Cinthia?" I laughed and said she might have gone back to the condo for water or something. Matt went in because he flipped his kite inside out and I went in because it was getting a little light for the 10m. There was no sign of Cinthia so we took off on our bikes up and down the beach asking people if they had seen her.Matt and I split up and as soon as I got back she was sitting under madre's chair by the pool. I went looking for Matt with no luck. He came back glad to see she was back but irritated because he went all the way down to Legends Burger House and talked to a couple riding their bikes that said they had seen her. Wow she went for a long walk. Matt and I went to the Palapa Bar for a late lunch and people at the bar recognized Cinthia. The wind was pretty light when we got home so Matt and I were going to share the 14m. He went out and it was a lot lighter than it looked, so came back in.We rolled a huge log out of the sea as a decoration for the landscaping, went in, cleaned up and played Phase 10.
We woke up at 9am with not one peep from Cinthia the whole night. We fed her breakfast and took a walk north up the beach to Captain Morgans for coffee. On the way Matt did some training exercises and Madre' had joined us on her bike and the coffee was...lets just say we won't be going back. We put Cinthia away and made ourselves some cereal. Madre' went out to the pool and Cinthia escaped over the enclosure Matt made, guess its time for off leash training. She stuck around really well just exploring around the pool. I walked her around the buildings off leash for a potty with no problems. Later we went into town for Chinese. We tied Cinthia up outside and she found a dog to bark at across the street but besides that she did fine.After lunch we stopped by The Lime to introduce Sharon to Cinthia. She was out running errands so we went to SAGA to talk to Ingrid about getting her shots and health certificate. We needed a kennel to start training Cinthia and Ingrid said that she could sell us one if Pampered Paws did not have one. We stopped by Tropic Air to ask them if they had any used kennels they could sell us and they said they only had two for transporting dogs back and forth. We told them we were trying to adopt Cinthia from SAGA and wondered how much it would be for her to fly to Belize City. They said they would transport her at no cost. Tropic Air has been nothing but fabulous.Pampered Paws had one used kennel and a few new ones we could buy. The used one did not have all the clips to keep it shut and the guy said he would have to ask the boss how much it would be to sell and that the boss would be back at 5pm. It was 4pm so we went to ice cream and the beach on Central Park. Cinthia had a whale of a time running up and down the beach and eventually found another dog to play with, unfortunately the owner was a drunk. It was almost 5pm so we went back to Pampered Paws. They told us we could buy it for $80BZ ($40US) and we thought that was really expensive for a used kennel that didn't work properly. We told them that we would rent it for the night and think about it if we could use that money towards buying it, they agreed.Matt got the kennel home and Cinthia ran the whole way. We put a towel in her kennel and fed her and she ended up loving the kennel and sleeping in it all night. I picked the left over bbq'd chicken for madre's curry and we had tuna sandwiches for dinner.
We woke up early to go to town because Matt has been having an ear ache and it is getting worse. On the way to town we had to hide under a tree because it started to rain and I didn't have any jacket. We new madre' & padre' were right behind us and one of them would have a poncho for me. Dad went to a Gynecologist when he sliced his finger open with his kite lines to get some stitches a year ago so we went to the same doctor for Matt's ear. There was a line waiting but as soon as he got to us he figured out that Matt's ear ache was indeed a middle ear infection. He gave him a prescription for ear drops and an antibiotic. We went to three pharmacy's to fill the prescription and the last one only had the antibiotic in a generic form which is fine we just didn't know if they were selling us the right thing. We bought it and rode our bikes back to the doctor to make sure and they did sell us the right antibiotic.After all of that we finally met the parents at The Lime for breakfast and they were almost finished. We ordered breakfast and then Matt, madre', and I went to SAGA to walk the dogs. There were some more volunteers there leashing up some dogs to take them on a walk and we got to talking. One of them said not to take Cinthia because there was a couple trying to adopt her, we laughed and told them it was us. The other volunteers made it easy for us to get all the dogs walked today. When we got back we let Blossom and Cinthia play for a long time before we decided to go and ask Ingrid if we could have Cinthia for the night. Ingrid said no problem do you need food? We told her we would get some at the store and whatever we didn't use we would donate.On the busy streets in town I put Cinthia in my basket lined with her towel from her kennel. She did really well. We went to Pampered Paws and picked up some food and a piece of hide for her to chew on later. While we were on the beach I let her run but when we got to the trail on the beach towards our house I put her back in because it was to narrow. When we got home we set up the patio for her by blocking the entrance and making a bed for her. She had a snack and lapped up some water. We played ball for a little bit and then I took her on a walk north of us on the beach. Madre' joined us on her bike and we went all the way up to Journey's End about 2 miles. I was banking on the fact that she would be so tired and sleep all through the night. On our way back we picked up this really long cool piece of wood as a push stick for the boat. I left Cinthia with her raw hide and went to get ready to Tuesday night at Legends.We were going to take her with us but she was passed out so we left her. We had a light dinner at Legends, heard a few songs and called it a night. There was a bunch of British men (boys really) that ended up coming from the British Army Training camp on the mainland of Belize. I thought it was a bachelor party or something because they were so young!
I went up stairs to see Kathy about another print out for more donation buckets and she showed me how far she'd come on the flag. It's fabulous! She said she had to do a touch up here and there and it would be done. I went back down stairs and reformatted my ad to fit for the newspapers. We moved the boat off of the shallows at high tide and got ready to go into town. Jerry came down with the finished flag and my print out. We had to hang the flag before we left so we all went out to the dock for a flag raising ceremony (OA=OceanAire).Matt and I rode into town while madre' and padre' drove the boat. Matt had the GoPro on his wrist refilming our ride into town. We were to meet at My Secret Deli for breakfast but the parents weren't there. I figured we could get some of my errands done in the mean time. While riding to our first stop Matt got video of the man with the pet raccoon. Pampered Paws was first to drop off the donation bucket and they had a print out of my ad already tapped to their front counter! Next stop was the newspaper Ambergris Daily just upstairs from Pampered Paws. I gave them my ad and they said they would put it online for free. We dropped of another bucket to The Lime and rode past the vendors in Central Park to see if they had some things I wanted to buy. By the time we got back to My Secret Deli the parents were there and had only been waiting 10 mins.We rode home via the beach in town for some more great video. When we got home we uploaded it, I know we have a lot of great video it's just going to take some time to put it all together. It was almost sunset and Matt though we could attach the GoPro to the top of the hobie and go for a sunset cruise. We all tipped it over and went out. We were excited to see if we got anything so as soon as we got home we uploaded it and we did but the sunset was blown out (overexposed).
We woke up to light rain so I started to go through the GoPro video to delete the awful stuff off of Karlene's computer. The power went out so we all helped dad get the boat onto the shallows so he could take a better look at the engine and we scraped the bottom. Dad couldn't do much with the tools he had so we called it good and left it there until high tide the next day. We all swam in the pool to wash off because the water in the pipes needs electricity to pump it through.We read books by the pool until we were all hungry and rode our bikes to the back street on the lagoon side where the Lazy Croc BBQ was. They didn't have power either so that just meant we could have anything that didn't need deep fat frying which was fine with us. Matt and I had the pulled pork sandwiches which were mouth watering and loaded. The rain came again and the cook pointed out a crock swimming through the lagoon. They don't feed them because they don't want their attention, they are just to look at. When we got home Madre' and I took our flag design up to Kathy to get her opinion. We all decided on a great design and I cut it out while Kathy made me a cocktail. We made plans to get together after dinner to play board games by lantern light. Madre' and I went back downstairs and we read some more by headlamp. Kathy called us up about an hour later and we all played Strategy. It was really fun and the lights came on in the middle of our second round. Very fun powerless day. 
LAST DAY IN PARADISE!!! So sad.
