Belize 2010_12

Well I'm sure you guessed that we didn't get up in time to get to SAGA at 9am to volunteer. We did wake to Karlene laughing and a deep raspy voice. Gino and her spent the whole night chatting away and then Karlene peddled him home before we were even out of bed. I left her a note that we went to volunteer under her purse. We had coffee this morning at Sail Away Cafe' and our barista looks exactly like the actor John Leguizamo. I couldn't think of the actors name so I asked him if he got that he looked like an actor, he blushed and said yes all the time. I then asked him what that actors name was and if he would take a picture with me. Not only does he make the best coffee's there, he is super nice too. Karlene never got my note but she did find us after all.

After coffee we rode our bikes to Estel's for breakfast and there was a boat out beyond the restaurant that looked like it had a story to tell with all the people and equipment aboard. Dad asked the waitress if she knew and apparently they are from another country and they come to Belize to fish and then sell the Belizians their fish, a bit ironic. It was about 12:45 and Karlene, Matt and myself took off to go see about volunteering at SAGA. Ingrid was there and super happy to see us. We signed in on the volunteer sheet and a girl took us to Fort Dog around the corner to walk the dogs. I asked her if she new what dogs hadn't been on a walk lately. I couldn't tell if she didn't speak much English or if she was just shy. She pointed to the dogs that we should walk first.

We took one at a time and went straight out to the beach. Matt timed us so we could get a walk in for all the dogs in that kennel. We walked south on the beach to J&G's hotel to see if they were there. They weren't but it was about 15 mins each way, a good half an hour/40 mins for each dog. We ended up walking 9 dogs and they were all calm when we got them back home, thats not to say they wanted to go back in their kennels. We felt really good about helping out and even more that some of the locals on the beach noticed that we were walking dogs for SAGA. We will definitely be going back. The last picture on this post is of a dog that had a skin problem that they were taking care of it. We all thought he was the cutest/ugliest dog we had ever seen and wondered what Kristah would do if we brought him home!

After volunteering we grabbed a beer at the closest beach bar BC's. Karlene found where we had written our names 2 years ago. A lot of the bars are the type that provide markers so you can scribble stuff on the walls, really fun to see when you go back and visit. We took off home and got ready to go to Playa Lounge. Karlene had been invited by Gino to come and see him play so us kids went into town. Gino wasn't by himself, he had another guy that played his drum and sax. They sat with us on their break and I realized that he was the guy that my dad told us about that they call Cuba, because he is from Cuba. I told him that I had heard good things about him from my dad and him and Gino started to laugh. He told me that he doesn't speak much English so Gino told him what I had said in Spanish. Cuba was really fun he let me practice my Spanish on him, that ended up being really horrible and I would have to turn to Matt for words that I knew I knew already!

It's funny that I was having a hard time speaking to Cuba because while walking the dogs I was talking to a little local kid, maybe 3 or 4 years old and doing really well. I guess Cuba intimidated me but thats just silly because he was super nice. O-well. After their set we said bye, Karlene hung out for a little bit and Matt and I went to Central Park for some shrimp burritos, yum. Karlene met up with us and we all rode home.