Since this Blogging thing is all new to me, and since we are not continuously traveling, I will, from time-to-time, create a "flash-back" to recap some of the details of our recent travels.  Today, I have chosen to recap some of the things we experienced in Belize.

As I mentioned, this trip was a completely independent trip.  That means we did not have a tour guide or an itemized agenda that was created either by us or for us.  Once we landed in Belize City, we were on our own.  Evelyn had reserved a rental car with a budget type rental company, the idea being we would get a better price by having the reservation.  In the real world, we found it to be a little more restrictive than we expected.  We walked into the cubical (this office was barely 100 square feet in size) and proceeded to confirm our reservation.  We don't like traveling with too many credit cards, because losing them creates  more work to cancel.  In this case, we had chosen two cards to take with us and both of them were Visa cards.  The advantage of paying with our Visa card was that the supplemental insurance is covered by the card provider.  The nice lady was filling out the necessary paperwork and got to the part where she wanted us to pay for the insurance.  I informed her of the automatic insurance coverage provided by the card.  She promptly informed us of their company's policy of not accepting that as the insurance coverage, unless we were to use a Master Card (I am convinced they would have told us the opposite, if we had said we only had a Master Card).  The additional cost for the insurance would have been significant, for the twelve days we were there, so I told the lady we would like to consider it for a few minutes and left the office. 

This is the car we got from Avis.  Not great, but adequate.

Now this office was only one of many, including Hertz, Avis, Budget, Enterprise, and several others.  We decided to try Avis, walked into the office (again a tiny space), and told them what we were interested in doing.  The lady in this office was very accommodating.  Not only did she agree to accept the insurance from the automatic credit card coverage, but she gave us a slightly better price than what the "inexpensive" company was going to give us. 

Evelyn getting our of car for small ferry ride.  More on this later.

The other thing we found out we had to watch out for was the principle of poverty.  There was a large, very dark skinned, gentleman, who was overly anxious to try to carry our luggage for us.  Now I wasn't borne, yesterday.  First of all, Evelyn is an expert packer for traveling.  We travel only with carry-ons, even if we spend a month, somewhere.  That means we don't need a porter to carry a huge pile of luggage.  Secondly, we know when someone is looking for a tip and, while I don't have a problem with providing a gratuity for service, I am not going to let the "service provider" dictate the value of that service.  Belize has a currency that is 50% of the US Dollar.  The inhabitants buy their wares and needs based on that Belizian currency.  If you give them a tip of $1.00 U.S., you are giving them two Belizian Dollars. 

This gentleman was intimidating to my wife, which I don't like, at all.  I drew him outside the building on the pretense of looking at the car we would be getting (this was with the original company we had booked with).  He threw the bags into the back of the car he was suggesting we would be getting.  I offered him a $2 tip, which I thought was generous, considering we only had two carry-on bags.  He got real close, to talk to me confidentially, and said "I get $5.00 for this."  I could tell he was trying to make sure no one else heard that, so I did not respond the way he expected.  I pulled the bags back out of the car, walked back to the office (he followed, but did not enter the office with me, again).  I asked the lady in the office if the man, outside, worked for her.  She said he did not.  Not only did I not feel obligated to give him a tip, but I no longer felt the need to let him provide a service.  One truly has to be aware of what is taking place.  Poverty increases the ideas and systems by which one gets taken advantage of, but you don't have to give in to those kinds of manipulations.  More on this adventure to follow.