As you can see from the photo, it was rather hazy when we docked in Belize, near Belize City. The haze eventually wore off, but it was a hot and very humid day.
Belize City is not a deep water port. Large ships need to dock about 2 miles from the city. The trip, via tender, was about 20 minutes. The city and the port are not memorable in a good way. But in this case we went ashore to go on an expedition to tour some limestone caves and walk a few suspension bridges. The bus trip to the site was nearly 90 minutes and included passage over a very unsafe-looking bridge spanning a river. Both Marlene and I thought it very possible that we could all end up in the river. But the bridge held and we got there safely.
I rented a locker for our backpack and also rented a waterproof pouch for my phone and bought some insect repellant. The pouch and the repellant became a point of contention between Marlene and me. She thought I was being a spendthrift. I thought I was being careful. And the repellant was recommended by the guide on the bus, while Marlene was dozing. As it turns out the repellant wasn’t needed and the pouch was only marginally useful. Still, I felt they were prudent expenditures.
The tour began with a walk through the jungle. Our guide was very knowledgeable and pointed out many interesting trees and insects. He found a small dead tarantula on a log. Marlene, not sure that it was dead, asked me to touch it. I declined. So, every adventurous, she touched it. And it scampered away. Not so dead after all. She screamed, which made the other 6 people in the tour group laugh.
Part of the tour involved a hike through a large limestone cavern which was very dark. We lit the way with the lamps on our helmets. I was surprised to see that the zipline (which we could have taken on a different excursion) was very long and ended deep in this cavern. A very impressive zipline.
The final portion of the tour was via inner tube – the guide strapped 8 inner tubes together and we all floated down the river through another large cavern. This was not only beautiful but was wonderfully refreshing after a hot walk through the jungle.
We finished the excursion with a not-very-interesting baked chicken and rice-and-beans lunch. But the view was nice.
Dinner was again (and somewhat surprisingly) elegant. Cruises rarely have an elegant night on a port day.
We went to the casino both before and after dinner and I did much better, winning $130. Still down $240.
We went to a show – “80s to the Max” – after dinner. It was pretty good, but my photos weren’t. Then we went to the late R-rated comedy show. The comedian was Steve Wilkins. He was very raw and very funny.
A laptop death in the family
My laptop died 4 days ago. It was working fine, with about half the battery time remaining. I closed the top and put it on the charger. An hour later I took it off the charger and tried to start it. Nothing. Put it back on the charger but the light indicating that it was charging did not go on. Dead.
Took it to a local computer repair shop. They diagnosed it as a bad motherboard. Did I experience a power surge they asked. No, nothing. It just died.
They gave me a part number. I ordered a new motherboard. The good news: it costs less than $60 (I expected it would be about $150). The bad news: it won’t arrive for a week, minimum.
A week without a laptop? It is like a week without water for me. Some people can’t live without a cell phone. I can’t live without a laptop.
So how am I posting this? I bought another laptop. It wasn’t my plan. I was in Costco to get large quantities of foodstuffs and saw a laptop – with touchscreen – for under $400. I decided that it would not be a bad idea to have a backup laptop. It is a good idea in general and I was not 100% confident that my old one could be resurrected.
The pleasant surprise was how easy it was to get up and running with a new laptop. Much easier than the last time, several years ago. While this “automatic backup to the cloud” stuff can be annoying – and the idea of having my sensitive information on some server farm somewhere makes me nervous – it surely does make switching to a new laptop easy. Within an hour of opening the new laptop’s box I was up and running, with passwords, emails and many files recovered. I had to reinstall some software, like Thunderbird, my email client, but even that was pretty easy.
So this is a post that I wrote on my new laptop. I am back in business.