22 | July | 2014 | Ambitious Pathfinder

I made it out of Miami – after another 2 hour delay (blame it on the lightning storm). Finally, when I landed in Belize City and I walked off the plane, it felt like putting yourself into a toasty oven and I thought to myself, “yup, I am in Belize.”

The Belize International airport is very small, quaint and mostly crowded with white foreign tourists/NGO workers/and travelers. Its layout consists of one main level, one small duty-free liquor store, and no high-tech gate to walk through – complete opposite of what Miami had to show. In fact, they are the polar opposite. It’s a strange feeling being surrounded by high fashion stores at one airport, then getting off at another airport that is smaller than Wal-Mart.

As I stepped outside I was greeted by my “In-country Representative” Kyle holding a Cuso International sign. We greeted and one of the first things he told me was, “today is really hot!” I was definitely in Belize.

However, I was not the only one who arrived that day. Another volunteer had arrived shortly after me. She was the lady whom I had met before in Ottawa through Cuso and is also my roommate. We quickly packed our luggage up into the truck and dashed towards downtown Belize City. On the way there I could not stop thinking of how badly I wanted to climb all the coconut trees I saw passing and open one up to drink! 🙂

Never have high expectations with your flight connections. As I have mentioned before, my flight would have taken me from Montreal to Dallas and then to Belize (July 15th), however that did not go as planned. I approached the counter for my first bag check. Handing my ticket to the American Airline representative, he double checked my flight and noticed that I was going to miss the plane from Dallas to Belize – only because the flight from Montreal was delayed by an hour.

Rule No.1, don’t panic! I quickly made a phone call to my placement coordinator and he gave me clear steps of what to do next. Now if you are travelling on a continuous flight and this happens to you, take my advice. So what I ended up doing was rushing over to anyone considered a manager or supervisor of that airline. I humbly explained my situation; I was alone in the city with nowhere to stay for the night. The lady who was managing at the time was so reasonable she assisted me in more than I expected. The airline is supposed to give you a hotel to stay overnight and possibly 1 meal voucher. Here is what I received: definitely got a room, 3 food vouchers (because it was an entire day wait) and an upgrade on the plane from economy to business class, plus the new flight route was taking me now to O’Hara Airport in Miami. Let’s just say that was freaking exciting. Never flew first class, and now I was going in style to Miami!