30 Day Extension

Even in Paradise a little rain must fall. We have our passports back now, we ran out of pages and had to get new ones. They say if you get to looking like your passport picture you need to go home. If that is so I’m worried, they’re bad or maybe we are just that old. We got them back just before we had to go back to get an extension to stay here in Belize.(ever 30 days ) When we got there they had to re-enter our passports in their computers and it took so long I thought something was wrong. On the way over it was stormy and on the way back it rained. We are here in Placencia on the other side of the lagoon and the town where customs is at we had to take the Hokey Pokey ferry across to go to immigration. The ferry system here is just long home built boats with out boards motors. In the US I don’t think the Coast Guard would allow these boats to work and I’m sure not with 23 people aboard.

Full Boat Load

It’s not cheap but nothing is cheap here in Belize. Gas here is past $6 US a gallon. You buy a ticket and try to get on before the boat fills up. What is fair can get a little fussy down here, you may buy a ticket and wait and if you don’t push and get a seat you my find you are waiting again for the next one.

They use the tickets over and over.

You can take a taxi but this will cost you the best part of a hundred US and most of the day because it’s a long way around by road and remember it’s every 30 days and you can only do 90 days and you have to leave with your boat or have it imported. When we got there we paid to stay another 30 days but we are planing to go back to Guatemala in the next 2 weeks and fly back to the US for a month. Just too much of a hassle if we are a day late leaving here or a lot more hassle if we stay in the US a day or two too long and don’t get back here to get the extension on our boat. Remember every 30 days. On the way back when it stared to rain hard a worker pulled out a long peace of plastic sheeting and everyone did what they could to stay dry.

“Use this plastic. It will be okay.”

Remember it’s hard to stay wet here, if the sun comes out you will be dry in a few minutes and every one here lives that way here. Get soaking wet and need to go shopping just walk around for a few minutes or just go shopping no one will notice.

Where Do You live?

When you dream of traveling at least, we as in Pam and I never thought about what it would cost to just check in and out of these countries with us living on an tight budget and a sailboat. Load your boat with groceries and just go they say. It doesn’t work that way. All these countries want money when you come in and when you leave. Other problems like your drivers license expiring or how to send money to another country down here if you owe someone money or they need money and they have gone on some where was never anything to think about. We are trying to make a plan to go back to the US soon to take care of some of our problems down here. One is our drivers licenses. I got my restricted licenses as a kid living on a farm in south Carolina at 14 and I want to keep them. Our licenses, both of us, are from Alabama and we have not lived there in years. We have had these problems for years now. Living on a boat then traveling away from our boat to work in Nuclear power plants all over the US many years ago was our first experience with “where do you live?” It’s like where do you live and you say we have a boat in North Carolina but we have been living in a motel for 6 week in Virginia working this outage. When it’s over then we will go back there to our boat for a few weeks and maybe we will work and outage in Texas. The people doing your clearances would say “you’re homeless” you have to live some where and if you think that is hard try registering to vote traveling around like this. The police don’t like you saying, I live on a boat and it’s in the Caribbean if we are up in the US riding our motorcycle some where. Had it to happen, cop saying the boats you live on is not at this address. It’s not even in this country any more and me saying we have a passport. The cop saying what address do you use for that? Me saying we uses a mail service in Southport North Carolina our home port. Him saying you can not live in a personal mail box even if you’re there. You need a physical address. Now that we have been traveling so strong over the last few years we have run out of pages on our passport and we need to get and extinction to stay here in Belize soon. We have sent our passports off through the US Embassy here to the US to get new ones but we are running out of time here. By the way that cost money too payed to the US government. We are hopping to take our boat back to Guatemala soon and leave it at our slip we have there then take a bus cross country cross Guatemala to Guatemala City, fly to New Orleans in the US, get our old motorcycle at a friends house and ride it back to Kansas. There we hope to establish an address at our son’s house there because if we by a house there and keep on traveling like we do we want be there to get our mail unless “we are there”. In the last few years we have been out there in Kansas a month or so a year but now with an address there we can get a hunting licenses and maybe even register to vote. How Pam and I, if we get an address in Kansas will get more respect if some cops says “where do you live?” and we say on our boat and he says where is the boat we can just say, uses our Kansas address. For all that read our blog to see what it’s like where we are, not just to hear how we get by. It’s hot here now in Belize but this week it has rained a lot. The temperature near the century mark all the time but this week it was rainy and near 80 one day, people here had on jackets and it’s 80 degrees. If we make our ride across to Kansas the sun will be hot and I have had trouble with my hands riding in the sun for hours before so I guess we will be wearing cover up clothes and gloves, hot or not. If we get caught by the cops and they say we are doing something,we will know if we are ask “where do you live?” We my say something they want to hear to get by them but home is our boat where ever it is but again it is fun to take a motorcycle ride sometimes. 3700 miles the last time, sleeping where we could. Maybe taking a long bus ride in a 3^rd world country that can always be a little adventure. Maybe take or go help some one get their boat somewhere but like I said “Home is being on our boat. Where ever our boat may be.”

“HOME”

No Blog?

Internet problems??? Will try to post over week-end.

Tim & Pam