It's the Jungle, Baby!

We have just come back to civilization here in Belize. Over the weekend we stayed in Cockscomb Wildlife Sanctuary in some rustic cabins there. We were in the middle of nowhere, twice removed. You know, the park is not really near anything, and then you go 8 miles into the park where there is no electricity and jungle everywhere! It was great! What a beautiful park...

We went on a couple of hikes. The best: a hike to a double waterfall that you could swim in! It was so beautiful, and even better that we got to cool off in the pools after sweating so much to get to it. The hike was pretty steep, but not very long, so that was good. The even better thing-there was not a soul around us on this hike. We enjoyed the waterfall and swimming around, all by ourselves! The jungle was so interesting to hike through, so many unknown plants and birds...and leafcutter ants!! I had never seen these ants before, but they are pretty fascinating. Millions of ants marching on a path with little pieces of leaves on their backs-and they literally make a trail all by themselves! You can watch them and see that they wear out a path in the middle of the jungle-now that must be hard to do...We spotted toucans, parrots, and a few other crazy looking ones that I have to look up.

I loved that park....We could've stayed longer, only if we brought more food...

More to see of Belize

So we finally left Caye Caulker yesterday morning. We had a great time in Caye Caulker, we really loved that island. It was so relaxing, and the water was amazing. A crazy windstorm sort of pushed us out of there. We were going to stay another night, but when we woke up to piles of sand in the room that had blown in under the door and through the window, we figured we would head out. We even had to use earplugs to fall asleep the night before, the wind gusts were so strong and loud!! It was pretty amazing, and even weirder that it didn't come with a rainstorm, just wind. So our plan yesterday was to get to Placencia, a beach town in the south of Belize. As we started on the buses yesterday, we got tired of the ride about half way there, so we stopped in this town called Dangriga, which is where we are now. The scenery was pretty, we drove through some hilly, green terrrain through tons of orange groves. You wouldn't believe how many people get on these school buses! Everyone is really packed in.

The information about this town of Dangriga made us think it was a pretty good size town with things to do, but we are finding that not so accurate. Now we have to regroup and decide where to go next. Our plan to head to Placencia may change, as we hear that lodgings will be tough to find this weekend because it is Easter, and tourists, as well as all the Belizeans will go there...I will let you know where we end up.

Holy crap, I've been under water for 10 minutes!

That's what I thought when I first went into the water with all my scuba gear on and was breathing through me regulator!!! Adrian and I are now official certified scuba divers!!! It's been great, and that's what I have doing the past few days (sorry if I didn't blog, but I was in the ocean!). It's been a little tiring, but amazing!! Today was our last two dives to become certified...The cool thing is, on all four of our dives we were out in the ocean, diving along Belize's famous reef...It's not like we were ever in a pool, so I think that was pretty cool. We had a great instructor, Pablo, from Belize Diving Services (go to them if you ever want to come here and dive), who taught us very well, and now I feel comfortable diving.

Just going along the reef here is so amazing...There are so many types of little fish, sea fans, anenomes, brain coral...It's so much to take in. Adrian and I have started inventing under water sign language to tell each other things. So far, we've only made signs for "fish", and for "pee", but we are just devising the system...It's great to dive with Adrian and see all the same things. Today we saw a few nurse sharks!!! I will try to find a picture of my favorite fish so far...He is blue, with a yellow tail, but he has florescent blue dots all over him-he's so bright!

About where we are: we are in Caye Caulker, another island off the coast of Belize. It's chill and relaxing here, and about 100x better than San Pedro on Amergris Caye. We've been here for 5 days already! We will try to do another dive on Sunday or Monday and then maybe we will move onto the rest of Belize. Time to go take a nap and recover from all the diving...More to come later.

Rain, Rain, go away...

Come again another day...Preferably when we are in a big city where not everything revolves around being outside!! Or at least a place where there is more to keep you busy on a rainy day...

La Isla Bonita?

It's Saturday here in Belize, and it's a petty crappy day! Our plan to go snorkeling has gone out the window...Last night there was a huge thunderstorm that came with a beautiful lightening show but torrential downpours. The rain only lasted for about 40 minutes, so then we sat on our porch playing cards drinking wine. But later that night the wind picked up again and made it a little hard to sleep. The wind as blowing so hard that our building was shaking! Maybe our building is not that sturdily built, it seems to be made of plywood, but when my bed is swaying with the wind, it is enough to keep me awake and scared we would be blown away. We weren't !

But, it's nice to have the time to wait out the weather! Yesterday afternoon we rented bikes to explore more of the island. We rode our bikes to the North side of the island, and we extremely surprised to see how undeveloped things still are here. The road is dirt, but it is horrible-with huge rocks and a ton of pot holes....Difficult riding on a bike, and now we understand why so many people spend $12,000 on a golfcart (Yes, that's right-$12,000! Insanity!)! We can see why the water taxi may be the way to go. There are small resorts along the way, but they are pretty far away from town. We found that we could ride along the beach instead of the road and that was much nicer. That side of the island had a ton of docks for boats, straddling small sections of swimmable beaches. I know Madonna has called this island "La Isla Bonita", but I'm not sure that I agree with her on that...Maybe that is based on the underwater scene. Scuba diving seems to be so much more than we expected, so we're not sure if we should do it or not. On one hand, Belize is supposed to be one of the greatest places in the world to dive, so maybe we should suck it up...

One country down, ? to go!

We are now in Belize!!! That's right, we have finally left Mexico to further explore. I'm am excited to be in Belize...More specifically, we are in San Pedro, on the island of Amergris Caye (pronounced "key"). Just as I got used to speaking Spanish, they speak English here! As we got in last night, we haven't seen much but are planning on renting bikes this afternoon to see a bit more of the island. It's tiny here but does have a lot of tourists. The roads are all dirt, with the exception of the main road in town, which was paved last year, making it easier for everyone...I will let you know more of the island after we explore today, but so far it seems lovely.

I was thinking on the way over here that it was a shame I had just gotten into the groove of finding some great Mexican food that I liked, like a torta (imagine a Mexican steak and cheese, with a twist), or licuados (smoothies), we are going into a new country with a whole new set of food to get used to. I have become obsessed with smoothies....They are so delicious, and are absolutely everywhere in Mexico. Hopefully I can still get smoothies wherever I go. I did crack up at myself last night. We stopped for one night in a bigger city called Chetumal, on the way to Belize. Right near our posada there was Domino's Pizza!! I knew that I had to have pizza for dinner....As much as I was enjoying most of the Mexican food, sometimes you just want a taste for something that you would get at home. It was delicious!!

That's all for now folks, I'm off to go explore the island. Oh, this is very important- HAPPY BIRTHDAY Trev & Tris!!! I hope you have a great birthday :)

Finally, a cenote!

So we are now in Tulum, Mexico. We came here quickly on our first loop of the Yucatan to see the ruins, but we wanted to come back to stay in the town. Today we took a tour of a cenote, well, three cenotes. It was called Dos Ojos. It was very cool, we got to swim around and snorkle in them (still using our snorkles!). A cenote is an underground cave that is filled with freshwater, and many of the cenotes are a mile or so deep and have a system of interconnected caves. We were able to snorkle from one cenote to another, with stalactites just above our heads. In some areas there was only a few inches of clearance so you had to be careful not to lift your head up and smash it into one of those crazy stalactites. We were given flashlights to use underwater to check out all the scenery, it was very cool. Weirdly enough, there was only one type of fish in the cenotes...We were wondering how it got there, and why weren't there any other fish in there? I must investigate this...Anyways, I will show some pictures soon.
After the cenotes, we went to the beach for a little while. It was amazing that you could see the Tulum ruins from miles down the beach! We should've just swam there last time, instead of paying an entrance fee ;(
And for dinner, BBQ at the hostel, called The Weary Traveller...It's such a good system, you buy a burger patty, or chicken, or fish, and then everyone grills their food however they would like it on this big communal grill. It comes with all these great veggies, salad, mashed potatoes, and 2 beers...All for 50 pesos (about $5). You can really load up on the food here! Which was perfect, since we didn't have lunch.
I just spent an hour or so chatting with an older lady from Italy who went on the cenote tour with us. She doesn't speak English, so it was encouraging that I was able to understand her and speak in Spanish with her, as she only knew Italian and Spanish, very little English. We had a nice chat and went for ice cream together...I'm learning!