[Schumi]

I'm bored, it's story time.

Never been on a cruise, but I have a cruise story of a friend's to tell (as briefly mentioned in a previous thread one time- I think I just summed this up). This is known around here as the Belize story. I'll tell this from Matt's perspective because the first person narrative lends to it well. This is the story, from his mouth in his words:

"...So I went on a cruise when I was... eh I was around 17 with my parents. It was a holiday thing, we used to go on family vacations every year so we take this cruise. It started off pretty awesome, just island hopping for a few days. Eventually we wind up docking one night at 11PM in a port on the coast of Belize. The ship was just in port to get supplies, and was going to be leaving for an island the next morning at 7AM. Passengers weren't really heading off-ship. It was kinda hinted that that was frowed upon, whatever. My parents went to sleep at around 11 with this big day planned the next day and I run off and find some guys who wanna party, and we all get off the ship and head into town.

This town was a tourist town, there was a lot of people and we really wanted to just hit up some real gritty bars... like get away from the ****ing tourists you'know.. get **** hammered. So me and these 4 guys take a cab down south like 20 miles to some little town on the beach. We got there at midnight and proceeded to hit up all the bars. It was pretty much 4 straight hours of bar hopping, doing tequila shots, pitchers of margaritas, more tequila shots. I'd say I had nearly an entire bottle of tequila by the end of the night to myself. I spent over $100 on drinks, and these were cheap drinks.

We wander out to the shore at about 5 AM, two guys had already passed out on a park bench in town and we left them. We pass out cold. I wake up a few hours later and we're all still hammered, and me and another guy are trying to drag the others, who can barely walk, up to get a cab. We finally get a ride back to the port city. It was the ****tiest cab ride ever, two guys are piss drunk passed out, one guy's puking in the back, I'm feeling so sick and it is hot as hell. We roll up to the sorta town square and the guy stops. We don't know what he's saying and he didn't know to take us straight to the boat so we just give him some money and get out. I'll never forget the weird, serene feeling I had stepping out of that dusky cab. I get out, the sun is just beating down, I'm sweating like crazy and it smells like tequila, which makes me instantly vomit all over the street. The breeze is blowing, and in the breeze, echoing all over the city I hear: ERRRRRRN ERRRRRRN ERRRRRRN over and over. The ship is blowing its horn because they are looking for us. It's like 7:40 AM by now. Boat was supposed to leave at 7.

As we started walking through the town, still several blocks from port, we get picked up by the police. After being hauled into jail, I got cuffed to a desk. I had no clue what was going on. Police had been canvassing the port for an hour trying to find us. Finally my parents walk in with some crew official from the cruise ship and some state police. There was a lot of paperwork, I don't really remember because I had my head in a trash can most of the time. Finally we got our ID's back and they took us back to the boat, took the hand cuffs off, and let us go. The paperwork I was given was basically stating that I was not ever allowed to set foot back in Belize. At his point the Captain was major major pissed, sent us back to our quarters. I was released into the custody of my parents, and they were pretty pissed too, mainly just really embareassed.

Later that day the boat arrived at this island where my parents and I were going on a sorta jungle expedition that required mule riding and some climbing and hiking. I was so hungover that all I wanted to do was lay in the cabin but my parents forced him to go as punishment. This is the only time ever that a island jungle expedition was punishment. I was still puking. My day was pretty much the worst thing I've ever experienced, and mainly consisted of puking while hunched over on a mule, puking while crossing rope bridges, and puking while blocking everyone else who was waiting to cross said rope bridge. I was completely miserable all day.

It was an absolute crazy series of events. "

And that's how my neighbor Matt described to me why he's not allowed to go back to Belize.