Hiya!!

Another day in the life of a lonely traveller

I'm writing today's blog from my bed in my PRIVATE room for once. Since first joining this group I've been roomed-up every night with a Polish Canadian guy from Toronto.

I'm gonna take a second and explain a little bit about this guy.

When I first joined the group in Antigua this guy (Arthur) was presented to me as my roommie for this trip. It was a very traumatic meeting because on the first night I guess I forgot to lock the door to our room. Yes, totally my fault but he came at me that night with what I felt was a barrage of extremely insulting and offensive stuff that really put me off. Like, in the 30 seconds he spoke to me/gave me s*** he said things that made my head spin for the entire night and he nearly had me convince to just drop out and go home.

I have over the last week or so gotten to know him and i have now come to understand that he's actually an awesome dude. He's just a bit socially awkward at times. It's interesting because I think he sees me as being the complete opposite of him in that resect and I think he actually looks up to me because of it. Well I don't just think so, he kinda tells me all the time :P lol

He's older then me by a few years but all the same, I think I have certain skills that he wishes he had. As such, I have (yesterday actually, after more then a few drinks) taken the time to confront him about these things. We discussed this at length. Primarily, we talked about "tact".

Tact is something that I have myself have struggled with at times while working in call centers and in life generally, but it's like I explained to him. The trick is to use more words. Have people need understand where you're coming from so that you don't come off as being a d*** :) I also explained that timing is extremely important when you need to talk about something serious and that it's sometimes better to address issues later rather then in the heat of the moment. Simple stuff, right? Well, not so simple for some.

At the end of the day, He shook my hand and sincerely thanked me for talking to him. I was just glad to help him because he's good guy with a big heart!! But like is often case, needed someone to say something in a delicate way for him to accept and understand the power of his words.

Ok. Now that's out of the way... the cool s*** that happened today!!!

7am, our group got picked up and taken to a bus-station in order for us to catch a bus to head towards Belize city, which is a 2 hour bus ride from Cayo. From there we took a water taxi to the island of Caye Caulker!

This city is one of my personal favorites!! It's small (population 4000) and has it's fair share of bums, drunks and people hassling you in the streets but it's white sandy beach that spans the entire span of it's coast line with the coconut trees an palm trees and constant reggae music, more then make up for it's down falls. It's a great place for a honeymoon or vacation.

Even before arriving, I had planned to go deep sea fishing with another couple from Winnipeg. This couple btw is amazing and I will talk more about them more in future posts but since I already dedicated a large part of this post to someone else, I'll leave them for another day.

In any case, once we arrived in Caye Caulker we didn't hesitate to start looking for a local guide/fisherman. Sure enough we found somebody willing to take us out for decent price.

Deep sea fishing is something that I always wanted try but figured I would never be able to afford to do, so I was really pumped about this expedition!

We went out in this little fishing boat looking for Barracuda and whatever else might be willing to bite! Oh we all got nibbles... but Walter (a big time fisherman at home) actually caught a barracuda!! It was small'ish but had huge teeth! It was was exciting even if I wasn't the one that caught it.

He released it btw ;) Cuz God loves all animals, even fish lol I'll make sure to upload pictures of it!

Meanwhile, on my side, I was having issues with my reel! The crank was on the wrong side for me, so I asked the fisherman dude if it was ok to switch it sides. Well I guess I didn't do it right cuz the next time I went to cast my line the handle went flying into the ocean!! Funny, but totally not! The guide had just finished telling us that those rods were $400 each and if we lost them we had to pay to replace them!

At that moment when I realized that I had just flung this important piece of equipment into the ocean.. you could say that my immediate thought was panic! I did NOT want to buy this guy a new fishing reel!!

When we told the guide he looked so annoyed with me... I was feeling like s*** about the situation of course, so we were looking down to the ocean floor to see if we could see it at the bottom. Lucky for me the water here is extremely clear so it didn't take long before I finally spotted the handle!! There it was!! What luck! Even more lucky was that Walter's wife, Vern, actually had a snorkeling mask in her bag.

So I took it like a man. I put on the mask and dove in! And yeah... I actually got it!! I seriously wish I had a picture of my face when I came back up with it. I was soooo relieved! It was a moment of triumph for me ;)

We ended up fishing some more but didn't catch any more fish. Still though, it was blast.

It's those unexpected, unplanned events that make these types of adventure something that you'll remember for the rest of your life. This will be no exception for me.

That's all folks!! Tomorrow's another day.