Needing a break from the Chicago winter, Erynn and I thought we'd head down to Belize for a few days. We also decided to bring Erynn's sister, Amy, down with us too. Erynn had been talking about Belize for a few years, and this trip was her and Amy's Christmas present. To get down there, I used up most of my frequent flier miles racked up from my days at Keithley Instruments. Erynn found a great resort just south of the town San Pedro on Ambergris Caye (pronounced "key"). The resort was our base while we did a few excursions throughout the week.
Here are Erynn and Amy the international jet setters on their mobile phones. We had a couple hour layover in Houston on the way down and we got into the Continental Presidents Club Lounge. Who says they're not spoiled? They enjoyed themselves so much we went to the club on the way home too.
We landed in Belize at Philip Goldson International Airport just outside of Belize City. The terminal for the airport is shown on the left. From there, we took a little Tropic Air puddle jumper over to the island. The Tropic air flight was only about 10 min long. The picture on the right shows Erynn and Amy on the tarmac in front of the plane we flew on.
And here are the sisters on the plane to the San Pedro landing strip.
Here are some of the pictures we took from the plane's window of some of the other Belizean Cayes. The coast of Belize is protected by the world's second largest barrier reef (2nd to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia). The reef extended for hundreds of miles and protects the coast and islands and is the main draw for snorkeling and diving. We don't dive, so our interest was mainly in the snorkling and good weather.
Erynn found this incredible resort just south of town called Xanadu Island Resort. The resort is a labor of love for a couple that took seven years to build it up. Consequently, it is very well maintained, and the service level was very high. As part of the package, we got free transfers to and from the airport (in actuality only about 3 minutes from the airport anyway) and a bunch of options for excursions from the island (more on those later). The photos are of the resort from the water.
While the owners were building the resort, they lived in a little caravan on site. They built a little hut over the caravan that then became the resort's office, which is shown on the left. The resort's pool is shown on the right. The pool was nice, but with the Caribbean about 150 feet away, I didn't spend much time there.
The setup of our room was pretty cool, and very family friendly. In fact, a number of the other guests brought their children. Our room had a kitchenette (shown on the left), a nice, large bedroom, and a pull-out bed. Amy took full advantage of the hammock that was on the porch.
Here is the view from our porch on the left, and the right picture shows the beach just through the trees.
Here are a couple shots of Erynn and I on the beach out in front of the resort.
Here's Erynn and Amy on the porch and in front of the resort's sign.
Now the trip wasn't all work. Erynn got to relax a bit, and I got to catch up on some leisure reading. Magically I think Erynn and Amy were so reflectively white that they affected the local climate.
The resort had a number of bicycles and kayaks that residents could use. Click here to see Amy's dream bike. Maybe she can trade in the bike we bought her for the pink one. Anyway, Erynn and I took out a kayak and had fun trying to catch some waves. It was a lot of fun.
And here I am trying to catch a wave.
San Pedro has some great restaurants. The food wasn't cheap (roughly equivalent to Chicago), but was really good and usually cooked to order. On the left is a picture of Erynn and Amy at Mango's where we ate the first night. Mango's is a typical tourist place right on the beach. George's Kitchen was one of the local places that had some amazing seafood. They'll even cook fish that you caught earlier in the day. Other places that we liked were Cannibals and Casa Picasso. Casa Picasso had amazing, and I mean amazing, deserts!
One day we took a ride around the town on some of the resort's complimentary bicycles, and I took a few pictures. These photos were taken on the beach north of town.
These statues were in a park on the beach. I don't think the girls were too happy with me making them pose for the pictures...
Diving and snorkeling are what the entire island's economy is based on. Here are some of the main docks in town where the boats are based.
As some of you know, I am going to work for John Deere after graduation. Since the island is so small, almost everyone gets around on bicycles and golf carts. However, the Coke is delivered with John Deere tractors and someone upgraded to a Deere Gator instead of a crappy golf cart.
The first trip that was included in our resort package was to Bacalar Chico National Park & Marine Reserve. The park comprises almost one third of the island and surrounding it is a marine reserve. The marine reserve has a couple sea turtle nesting sites and some amazing coral and reef formations. The picture shows Erynn and Amy in front of the park's ranger station (and where you pay the fee to enter the park).
Our guides for the trip were Mark and Josh of the Island Roots tour company. Mark was born and raised on the island and owned the company. He knew everything there was to know and was an amazing guide. Josh was then our bartender that night when ate at Cannibals. We like them a lot.
For lunch during the trip, they cooked some red snapper on the boat the was amazing. It was so good we got the recipe that you can see here. The meal actually set the standard for the rest of the trip. It was that good.
On the boat trip we swung by Iguana Island to see from roosting Rosette Spoonbill birds. Unfortunately, we didn't have the right camera equipment to get decent photos, but the birds were beautiful. To see another person's good photo of one of the birds click here. They were bright pink and are related to flamingos. The birds only nest in three places in Belize.
The national park gets its name from the Bacalar Chico, which is a canal that the Mayans dug 1500 years ago across the island. The canal improved their trade route with other tribes and now separates the island from the rest of the Yucatan Pennisula. We heard a number of people on the trip state that if the Mayans hadn't dug the canal, they'd be part of Mexico. The picture above shows us in the canal. Belize is on the right and Mexico is on the left. We had to hold Amy back from making a run for the Mexican border to her man Ceasar, which then became her nickname for the rest of the trip.
The trip took the whole day, and we almost circumnavigated the entire island. The whole island is about 30 miles long and only a couple miles wide at its widest point. On the trip we stopped twice to snorkel. The picture on the left shows Josh holding a starfish and conch. The right picture shows Erynn holding the same starfish.
Here are a couple random picture of coral formations and fish. We took a ton of underwater photos with a waterproof disposable camera, but the quality is poor so I don't waste a lot of space showing them. The picture on the left shows a couple baracuda. The coral on the rock in the right picture is a type of sea fan that was the most briliant color of purple in real life, but the photo shows it as a muddy brown color. The day was very sunny and we were in only about six feet deep. So even though there was tons of light, the pictures were crap.
If you have any suggestions on how to get better underwater photos email me with your suggestions.
For the last leg of the trip we went to Rocky Point, which is where the barrier reef actually hits the island. Just to the north and south of the point are the beaches where the sea turtles nest every year. Because of the point, you can't completely circumnavigate the island within the protection of the reef because land gets in the way. To get around the point you must go out into the open ocean through a small cut in the reef. When the surf is up, it is quite dangerous, which prompted the Mayans to dig the Bacalar Chico canal. Above are a few pictures of us on the point.
The second trip that was included in our resort package was a half-day snorkel trip to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Sharkray Alley. Our guide for the day was Jeffrey from the SEArious Adventures tour company.
Here are the girls on the boat to Hol Chan. You can see Erynn getting all kitted up in her very own snorkel gear. We got the snorkel gear in Hawai'i and it was one of the best investments we've made. We used the kit on this trip and in Cozumel. There's nothing worse than communal snorkel equipment. Neither our guide nor us brought along any food to entice the fish to come close, so we contemplated using Erynn as chum. The nickname stuck, and for the rest of the trip Erynn was referred to as "Chum".
Here is Amy holding some sort of sea slug. And when you put Erynn in charge of the camera, you get a shot with your head cut off. Unfortunately, this is the only photo of myself. I was there and had a great time.
Hol Chan is comprised of a couple huge coral walls. In between the walls it's about 30-40 feet deep, and the water is crystal clear so you can see everything. but as I mentioned before, many of the pictures of the coral don't convey the true beauty of what we saw. As the name suggests, Sharkray Alley is where one sees the nurse sharks and stingrays. Our guide Jeffrey actually caught a stingray in his arms and let us pet it. Since we were petting, we didn't get any pictures, but it was cool nonetheless. One of the other tour boats in Sharkray Alley threw out a white tube full of chum and Erynn snapped a few photos of the feeding fenzy that ensued. Thankfully, we didn't have to resort to using Erynn as chum.
The pictures show one of the nurse sharks feeding. Supposedly they are harmless, but we didn't test that theory. We got a couple pictures of stingrays, but they really didn't turn out well.
The left photo shows a school of fish sheltering under a coral formation. There were fish everywhere of all kinds imaginable. It was a pretty amazing day.
Here's another photo of Erynn underwater. The photo on the right is of Jeffrey, our guide, hand feeding a few blue fish. Earlier he was tearing off tiny hunks and throwing it above the water. When the chunk was just about to hit the surface one the silver fish to his left would fly up and catch it. You can see their huge eyes so they could see quite well.
The third (and last) trip that was included in our resort package included a boat ride to the mainland to go cave tubing in the Caves Branch River and a visit to the Belize Zoo. Our guide was Daniel (pronounced Don-yell) of the Tanisha Eco Tours company (which he owned). The picture on the left shows myself and Daniel on the boat to the mainland. The ride takes about 1 hour. It was pretty windy that day, and as you can see from the size of the outboards we were going fast and it bounced quite a bit. To keep the boat balanced for the journey, Daniel used me for ballast by shifting me to different places in the boat. The result was my nickname of "Ballast" for the remainder of the trip.
Once we hit the mainland, the boat travelled up the Belize River for a stretch. On the left you can see Erynn and Amy with the Mangroves that line the river in the background. As we floated up river, Daniel pointed out various animals included birds, iguanas and crocodiles. The right picture shows an iguana sunning himself in a tree. Since we didn't have a proper zoom lens, click here to see another person's better version.
When we docked the boat, we still had another hour drive to the cave tubing place. Here's our bus, and while we were waiting to take off, Erynn found time to document the plight of the Belizean chicken. You be happy to know that Belizean chickens fair much better than Mexican chickens. On the bus ride, it took both Erynn and Amy, who both suffer from tour bus narcolepsy, about ten minutes to fall soundly asleep.
One of the highlights of the trip was the cave tubing adventure at the Jaguar Paw Jungle Resort. The trip involved floating down two caves each a couple miles long on inner tubes. You can see Erynn and Amy are ready for the adventure. But first you have to hike up the mountain (about 30 minutes) to the top of the river. It was actually pretty leisurely, and the jungle we walked through was cool.
We had bought a few waterproof cameras in the States before we left, but we used them up on the previous day's snorkeling trips. Assuming we'd get wet during the tubing, we bought another waterproof camera locally. Unfortunately, there must have been something wrong with it since most of the pictures came out incredibly grainy. I took a whole roll during the tubing, but I've only posted the couple that sorta came out.
The put-in point is pretty dramatic. The river opens up into a huge cauldron that's about 50 feet deep. You climb down toward the water and you can either slide in about 3 feet or jump off a 10 foot cliff top get started. Erynn, Amy and I chose the cliff diving option. It's safe and excillerating. The photo on the left shows me jumping in. The photo on the right shows in our tubes drifting into the first cave. You'll notice the lights on our head since once we got inside it was quite dark.
Here are Erynn and Amy before they enter the darkness of the first cave. Once I was in the cave, I spun around and took a picture of the entrance.
There was a gap between the tunnels of about 200 hundred yards. Once in the middle, we pulled over to take some photos and have some fun. The left picture shows the inlet to the second cave. The right photo shows Erynn and Amy in front of the exit of the first tunnel.
As you can see from the two previous photos, there was a huge pile of rocks in between the caves. The rocks were polished from years underwater and deposited at this place from a couple recent floods. The upshot was they were absolutely perfect skipping stones. We eventually got into a skipping contest with the guides that eventually got heated enough that Amy decided to tackle Erynn in the middle of the river. Easy boys.
When we were done tubing, we all sat around waiting for lunch. As we were waiting, someone from the resort was walking around with a couple Coatis. One of which only had three legs and had to be helped by holding its tail. Afterwards we headed to the Belize Zoo where we found out that Coatis often get very mean when they become adults as pets. When they get this way people don't want them anymore and many end up dead or at the zoo. The entire zoo is filled with animals that are former pets, injured, or from other zoos. None of them are taken directly from the wild.
The Belize Zoo attempts to show off all of the main species of animals indiginous to Belize and to promote conservation. Erynn went a little nuts with the camera, but here are some of the better pictures she took.
One of the neatest things we saw were the two jaguars cuddling. You don't see that every day!
...and here we are at the zoo.
I just liked this photo. Support your local zoo.
On the boat ride back to the resort we saw an amazing sunset.
Here are the girls at the Tropic Air "terminal" in San Pedro waiting for our flight home. That day it was about 85 degrees in Belize and 19 degrees in Chicago.
As I mentioned, the food on the trip was generally amazing. However, our last snack in the country was at the Global Spice restaurant in the international airport terminal before our flight back to the States. From top to bottom, it was the worst dining experience of my life. The waitress and manager were rude, and the food was aweful. Erynn ordered shrimp ceviche and Amy ordered chips and salsa. Both dips consisted entirely of onions and no other vegetables at all. I got an American burger that was vegetarian. The waitress stood 2 feet away taking our order and ignored us. The manager walked away from me when I extended my hand with cash. The door says they take credit cards, but when you get to the counter they say they don't accept cards even though the card machine is sitting on the counter. It's hard to convey the horrid state of things. Usually I'm the one with low tolerance for poor service, but even the girls were appalled this time.
The upshot was that the experience in the airport restaurant was definately an anamoly. All three of us would return to Belize in a heartbeat if offered the chance, however, we'd avoid the airport food. We recomend you do the same.
© 2004-2005 Doug Rathburn
