I can’t believe it, but on Thursday we hit the 30 day mark.  If you are not a resident of Belize and you stay longer than 30 days, you have to go to immigration and pay a fee and get your passport stamped.  Just as you might imagine, it’s not a fun process.  I was reminded a little bit of a trip to the DMV.  After we finally found it with a teeny tiny sign up on the second floor:

Then we had to find the way up there:

It’s a three step process.  First you speak to a person (DMV personality) who glares at you for staying 30 days and paying for the privilege.  Then she asks if the children are in school and, if so, where are their student visas.  Gulp.  You don’t actually have to have a student visa, particularly if you are only staying four months.  I knew this already, but they just ask these questions to make you nervous and be stressed.  After that person reluctantly decides you deserve to stay another 30 days and feed their economy with US $$$, she sends you down to another office to pay the fee.  At that office, the cashier glares at you when you hand them $100 bill for payment of the $100 fee.  She is mad that it is a US $100 bill instead of $200 in Belize dollars.  This makes zero sense since every single shop, vendor, bank, etc. uses US dollars interchangeably with Belizean.  Ah yes, this is the venue of no sense.  She walks around the office making a show of disapproval and acts like she is getting some sort of authorization to take my evil Ben Franklin, when I can clearly see that she doesn’t talk to anyone.  She comes back, prints out four pages, stamps them, hands them to me and tells me to go back to the immigration office with the pages.  I take them back and that woman, who acts like she has never seen me before, takes the four pages and fills them in, by hand, in duplicate (two per page, eight total).  She carefully tears each page in half and gives me half.  She keeps half.  She stamps and gives us our passports back.  I ask if we need to keep the pages in the passports.  “No.  Those are just receipts of payment.  You are due back October 20.”   Oh goody, can’t wait to see you again, mam.

I should mention that in each step, there is a long line of joyful people being raked over the same coals.  This is the only place in Belize that I have encountered anyone who is less than 100% friendly and welcoming.  Sooo looking forward to Oct 20.

On a cheerful note, we left the immigration office and went to the kids sailing lesson.  This is Iris getting the feel for handling an Optimist boat.  Isn’t it cute?

Every day, we drive past the Croc Pond, but we have yet to see a crocodile.  Until today!  Sam spotted one, but we couldn’t get it to come any closer for a photo.  Selfish croc.  He must have once worked for immigration.  That thing that looks like a stick in the water is our croc.