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Traveling alone with kids can be smooth sailing

When we dropped anchor six miles off the coast of Belize without land in sight, I thought, "What the hell am I doing?" It wasn't my first cruise, or the kids' either, but it was our first cruise after the divorce as a family of three, not four, which left me sole purveyor of fun and official minister of cruise ship excursions.

It's a wonder that the weight of that alone did not pull me under.

I chose an exotic Western Caribbean cruise to help sear the memories of adventure into my children's brains and to label myself as taker of fabulous vacations.  In order to meet our Belizean tour guide on time and ride thirty minutes on a bumpy road to walk a mile in the mud to cave tube in the dark in cold and possibly snake-ridden water, to fulfill my destiny of going beyond my actual comfort zone and afford my children the luxury of an unparalleled experience in the Central American wilderness, they were going to have to wake up.  But -- they were belligerent, hiding their heads under the blankets and grunting at me. "No," they said in unison from separate beds. I had no one else to delegate this chore to. My son at age 12 was resolute "I'm not getting up," he said. My daughter was nine and just didn't move.

 

With my head in my hands I had to decide if I forced them to get up and risk spending the morning with cranky kids. I'd be cranky too if I had to scream to get them out of bed. If I let them sleep I'd have happier children and a different excursion, just later in the day.

 

After all -- it was their vacation too and we’d been awake past midnight. But even more – it was not a competition to – at all cost -- win “best vacation.”   The latter was the hardest part to remember.

I left the kids a note and locked the door. I headed straight for the Lido deck where I enjoyed coffee by a window and alone, reveled in a vacation from my vacation.  You see, my kids did not partake of the kids programs on board, which was not what I'd planned.  We were together all the time. Breakfast, swimming, lunch, limbo, shopping, snacking, playing cards, watching shows, dinner, watching more shows, listening to music, midnight snacking. In theory – and in retrospect -- it was fabulous. On a 110,000 ton cruise ship in real time -- it was claustrophobic.

"Get up," I said an hour later. "We're in Belize and you're not going to sleep all day.”

We met our newly appointed guide and boarded the bus for the Belize Zoo, in the heart of the rainforest.

I sat straight and peered out the bus window and listened intently to every word of our tour guide. My kids reached into their backpacks and took out their Game Boys. I remembered again that this was about them, and just like I wanted to look out the window, they wanted to have fun, and fun for them was the thrill of the electronic chase.

As we were walking along the paths at the zoo, looking at the animals, birds and reptiles native to Belize, I knew they looked strangely like the animals we'd seen in zoos in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Arizona and Ohio. Then we stopped on in front of the howler monkeys and the skies opened up. It was raining in the rain forest!

My kids looked at me like the munchkins in the Wizard of Oz upon seeing Dorothy for the first time. "It's raining!" they moaned. And it was. It was pouring and I couldn't have been more pleased. "We're in the rainforest," I replied, primed with the enthusiasm as if I'd ordered up the rain on purpose, for effect. They rolled their eyes and stomped their feet splashing away down the path not in play but in protest. I couldn't help but laugh, and followed them, "We're in the rainforest and it's raining, go figure," I said.

We ended up sporting brand new and very dry Belize Zoo tee shirts for the bus ride back to port as well as buying Pringles and ice cream sandwiches as a snack. My kids and I were rained on in the rainforest and no souvenir or stacked chip or Game Boy could take that away.