The Journey - Wednesday, December 15

MRLB (Liberia, Costa Rica) => MZBZ (Belize City, Belize) - Leg Complete - 2.9 hours

After a later arrival on Wednesday to Belize City and a long day fishing on Thursday, I am a bit behind on my reporting, so this is the Wednesday report written on the leg Friday from Belize City to Cozumel. . .

My wake up Wednesday morning consisted of getting ready quickly in order to check my email for any response from Rudy regarding our landing permission. I logged into my email to find an empty inbox. Time to try another phone call. . .great. I worked with the front desk to place the call, which went through on the first try. What a relief! Upon talking with the operator at Belize City International, I was connected directly to Rudy, who after placing me on hold for about 15 minutes came back with fantastic information, our permit number. Well, I guess things were going to start working after all. Little did I know (well maybe I had some idea!) what we were in for at Liberia airport.

A quick breakfast and the hour long taxi ride and we arrived at the airport. We walked up the operations office to begin the paperwork process. Once again, my Spanish was about to be tested to its limits. The initial part of the process went surprisingly smoothly. Working with the lady at the desk, we were able to secure our bill for landing and parking fees, which we promptly paid. Then it was on to immigration to clear out of the country. Not quite understanding everything that was being said to me, I asked one of the operations personnel to walk with us to the appropriate stations (a trick I had started using in Huatulco).

Walking downstairs we were pointed to the immigration desk and told (again through limited language and much pointing) that our helper, the man I had asked to come with us, would be waiting on the other side. Just as he departed our presence, we walked up to the desk, where we attempted to show what we thought was the appropriate departure paperwork. It was then that we were met by the confused looks that we have become so accustomed to on this trip. Being turned away, we started looking for our helper, who was nowhere to be found.

Walking around confused piqued the interest of a few airport officials that were milling about and when one approached us, again the game of 'get us out of here' charades began. I guess we were somewhat lucky in that the person we were playing this game with was the also person we needed to be talking to in order to obtain the additional required paperwork for immigration. Another 15 minutes of pointing and we discovered that the office upstairs had not issued us a required departure document. After filling this out and a couple other pieces of paperwork, we were told that our departure would now be ok. Turning around to try the immigration desk once again, we were met by our original helper who, with a shrug of the shoulders, asked, "Where have you guys been?" Showing him the additional paperwork must have jogged his memory of all the required documents, of course. We took our paperwork to the immigration desk and were happily allowed to depart for the ramp. Another obstacle complete.

Now, being met on the other side of the security checkpoint by our helper, we began to walk to file the flight plan. Apparently that was to be on the second floor of the control tower. Looking at each other Jerry and I said, "Gee, I'm glad we have this guy with us, 'cause there is no way we would've figured this out on our own!" We took the elevator to the second floor and were met by three people in a small office. There we were handed the flight plan form to fill out, which I did. Upon handing it back to the operations staff, we were asked for yet another piece of paperwork that we didn't have. After 5 more minutes of body language and me trying to show every piece of wrong paper to them, we discovered that our helper had left this other important sheet in his office. Strike two. After a quick call to confirm the papers location, we were again allowed to depart with our official paperwork. Now, on to the fueler.

We were welcomed at the fuel shack by a younger man who was to fuel the plane. We were happy to discover that he spoke broken English. He described to us that we had to prepay for fuel, and if the actual amount of fuel dispersed into the airplane was different than what we estimated, he would adjust the charges on the credit card. After taking care of that, he offered us a ride in his fuel truck to the airplane, which we gladly accepted, as it would've been a very long walk. There, we confirmed with our helper that we were "listo" (ready). Shaking his hand and breathing a sigh of relief, we hopped into the fuel truck and headed to the plane.

A preflight, a fuel top off and another bathroom break and our hour and a half paperwork nightmare was complete. "Boy, was that terrible," I thought as we lifted off over the beautiful Costa Rican countryside.

If the paperwork within all of these countries is a nightmare, the flying makes it all worth it. We once again enjoyed a perfect flight over Nicaragua and Honduras where we not only enjoyed beautiful views of lakes, mountains, volcanoes and Central American cities, but also perfect flight controlling from all of the tower and approach controllers along the way. The flight was perfect and the landing in Belize equal to it. We taxied the airplane to park, preparing to attack another international arrival.

. . .continued on the second leg of Friday's flight, just west of Cancun, Mexico. . .

We were met at the aircraft by a customs official and Rudy. Immediately upon our deplaning, Rudy collected all of the necessary paperwork and went to work while we tidied everything up. By the time we were done, so was he, and we hopped on the luggage cart with him for a quick ride to the terminal. This is where it got good (actually not sarcastic this time). Time from arriving to the immigration desk, to clearing customs, to sitting in our taxi on the way to the hotel: 3 minutes. Granted we hadn't seen the bill for what this type of service cost, but we already knew that it was worth it. I wish I had more to write about here, but for once, I'm happy I don't!

Our driver, George, who works for Action Belize, the company that set up our hotel and excursion, took us to the hotel and got us checked. He informed us that anything we needed and anywhere we wanted go, was up to him to take care of and that we could call him anytime 24/7. We sent George on his way, knowing that we would see him again at 7 the next morning to take us fishing, and got settled in, happy to be in another country and shocked at the ease of the final part of the day. Now it was time to get some rest to be up early Thursday and ready to do some Belizean river fishing.

-Marc