Belize

We arrived to Belize and immediately took a water taxi to the island of Ambergris Caye to a town called San Pedro. They packed us in like sardines on the water taxi and the boat splashed everyone a lot (especially this poor little girl in the back corner who was soaked!). We arrived to the island and immediately checked into our condo that Britt and Cory had found for us.

San Pedro was much different from Grand Cayman. Grand Cayman prides itself on being just like the U.S. with drinkable water, great accommodations, etc... San Pedro, on the other hand, is definitely a Central American country. There was a lot of poverty and no regulations whatsoever. Boats zoomed all around the docks and the entire island which made it hard to snorkel without high chances of getting impailed by a boat. However, there were neat things to be found off the shore of San Pedro like Conch Shells, so we just assigned one person to be the lookout for boats at all times while anyone was snorkeling.

A little octopus

Belize is a neat country in the fact that their official language is English and they accept U.S. dollars everywhere. Belizians all speak English and Spanish which makes it a perfect place to work on learning Spanish.

Our first whole day in San Pedro we went snorkeling and found conch shells with hermit crabs still living in them! Britt and Cory went on a snorkeling trip where they saw sharks, stingrays, and a plethera of fish. Unfortunately, our under-water camera was on the wrong setting for them so all their pictures were blurry! While they were on their tour, Brett and I walked all over the town, toured a little museum, read books, and took a nap on the beach under the palm trees. Most relaxing day ever. We ate at our favorite food booth called "Erika's Fast Food" and loved it so much we ate their every single night we were on the island! These booths are open from 7pm-6am. It was really strange there because all the kids on the island would be out playing at or past midnight to really late hours. (Probably because it was too hot and humid during the day?) That first night we were there was a popular festival and the music was booming until wee hours of the morning.

The next day, the island was barren because everyone had gone back to the mainland after the completion of the festival. We wandered the market, snorkeled more, swam around our dock, and went to see the crocodiles a sundown. It was a good 3 mile walk to the crocs and then we all walked back up the beach to the serene sound of the waves.Notice the crocodile in the background with no fence in between us!

And then we come to our sick day. Our great local food got the best of Brett who spent the day in between the bed and the bathroom. I stayed with him and just read out by the pool most of the day. Britt and Cory carried through with our original plan for the day and rented bikes. They rode up and saw the northern part of the island.

We took the water taxi back to the mainland of Belize where our tour guide picked us up and took us cave tubing. My very favorite part of Belize. We hiked up through the jungle and tubed down the river through several mile long caves! It got pitch black so we wore head lights. When we came out of the last cave it was pouring rain. Let me run that by you one more time. We were floating down a turquoise blue river, in the warm pouring rain, in the middle of a jungle. I was in heaven. At the end of the river, there was rope swing that we played on for a while. Best day ever!
Our tour guide took us to our next destination, which was the Trek Stop. Our lodging for the next two days... little huts in the jungle. We chose these huts because they were super cheap, and they were within walking distance of the Mayan ruins called Xunantunich. That evening we were all tired so we just stayed around our huts, ate dinner there, and played darts and scrabble.
We went to Xunantunich the next morning. This was Brett's favorite part of the trip. The ruins were large and since we were in Central America there are no ropes that don't allow you to climb up to the top as there would be in the U.S. Therefore, we climbed all over them and the views of the ever-extending jungle were spectacular. There were guards armed with machine guns all over the ruins and we asked some of them why because we couldn't figure it out. Apparently, there are bandits from nearby Guatemala that cross the border and come to the ruins to rob all the tourists. All the locals told us to not cross the border because it was too dangerous. This was unfortunate because the famous Mayan ruins of Tecal were not very far across the border in Guatemala.We played frisbee golf on the only official frisbee golf course in Belize, which just happened to be at the Trek Stop. It rained, what's new when you're in the jungle? So we had a few very muddy games, but had a blast.Rain drenched, mud covered, and thoroughly worn out we took the public bus back to the airport and flew out the next morning homeward bound and pleased with another successful vacation.