I took a one week adventure to the country of Belize. Y'all, hold on for the ride.
When we first arrived, the men looked at the girls like they have never seen a woman with blonde hair before, which is understandable, but instantly made us uncomfortable. We met our tour guide and he was awesome. He took us to a local restaurant nearby while we waited to travel to our first hotel of the trip.
The first hotel we came to was brand new. When we first opened our rooms up, one room down from us screamed as they saw bed bugs scurry to hide from the light. That made my roommates and I flip our mattresses a few times. This hotel, however, had wonderful food and we had a lot of fun doing our first few sight-seeing activities.
The second hotel we traveled to halfway through the week was in the depths of the jungle. This hotel was set up in a way that there were little "huts" around the main "hut" which held the dining area.
The first night I remember hearing a blood-curdling scream from one of our chaperones. We asked later at dinner what had happened and the chaperone told us that a scorpion sought refuge in one of their suitcases and poked it's head out while they were unpacking.
The second thing to happen was that while we were out doing our daily activities, our dirty underwear had been tampered with. My roommate and I knew this because we had put our dirty underwear in a separate part of our suitcases so that it wasn't around the clean clothes (because gross).
Well, when we get home that night, I went to repack my bag since we were going to be leaving in the morning, and my dirty underwear was laying all over my clean clothes and a few of them were missing. The only people with keys to the room that we knew of were us and house cleaning.
The third hotel was the worst of all. It was located on an island off of Belize and you can only reach the island by boat. The hotel we were staying at was off of the beach and had an open structure to it.
Anyone could walk right into the hotel and go swimming in the pool or knock on our hotel door. The hotel doors themselves were unsafe. The locks on them were only the lock on the handle, the one you can pick with a bobby pin.
The morning we were supposed to leave, we all had to be awake by 5 a.m. At 4:30 in the morning, my roommate and I woke up to loud banging on our door. At first, we thought it was an intruder so of course I grab a knife.
However, it was another guy from our trip who was staying a couple doors down. We open the door and he says "guys, we were just robbed!"
Freaking the hell out because our room would have been next, he tells us that he got up to use the bathroom and noticed another guy's clothes were all over the bathroom floor, which he thought was weird.
He left the bathroom and saw a large man standing at the door which was cracked wide open. The guy ran off. Clothes, phones, ID's, credit cards and money had all been stolen.
The entire group was in panic mode and anxious and let me tell you Belize police do not move fast, AT ALL. We tracked down the room of the thieves that had been staying in while we were there.
Turns out, the men had broken in the day/night before and stole clothes, wore them to the beach and just left them in the room.
A guy staying in the room that was ransacked had his military I.D stolen, which got the United States Embassy in Belize involved. Thankfully all of our passports were locked up and parents were called and quickly canceled all phone lines and credit card accounts.
The whole ordeal made us nearly miss our flight, but we were so happy to land in Atlanta.
Now even though Belize is a beautiful country, the experiences that the group and I had were not pleasant. We complained so much about the trip that the tour company cancelled all further bookings.
Now when I plan to go out of country, I will research and keep in mind that it's better to be safe than sorry.