Don't Stop Belizing!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this is a little late coming, but I guess I wanted to brag a little bit about our Thanksgiving vacation to Belize.

We put fertility treatments on hold and took a precious two week vacation that was long overdue. I have been bugging Ryan for the last year to travel or go backpacking but apartment managing makes it tough (nearly impossible) to go anywhere.

We met up with my sister Erin, her husband Dave, and my mom and step-dad Richard in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. San Pedro is small...very small...verging on tiny. So it was a little funny when we got off the boat to find taxis lined up offering to drive us 2 blocks to the airport, hotel, or store. I'm not so lazy that I can't walk a little. At first it was annoying, but then I started to feel sorry for them...awful actually. I don't know if any of you suffer from this, but I have this unnatural sense of guilt when I feel others are struggling. I could probably go broke from panhandlers, tipping waiters, etc. We spent the next few days scuba diving, hitting the karoke bar and stuffing our faces with lobster quesadillas, tortillas and coconut shakes.

Sunrise

Catching a few more z's before hopping on the dive boat

I love Ricky's hat

Sharks, RN!

The Blue Hole

Notice all the coconut shakes?

I forgot the name of this game, but essentially if the chicken poops on your number you win!
If you shake the chicken and blow on it's bum helps make it poop...so they say.

Our next stop was San Ignacio to visit the ATM cave where ancient Mayan offered food and human sacrifices. Then it started to rain. And rain. According to the locals it was a mild rain, but to this Utah native it was a downpour! All of the rain made it too dangerous to go into the cave since it is a "wet" cave where you have to swim in many spots. Boo! We hedged our bets hoping that the rain would stop within the next few days so we could venture into the cave. While the rest of my family took a bus across the border to Tikal (Guatemala), Ryan and I visited a near-ish dry cave with Mayan artifacts. We were hoping to do some cave tubing, but those caves were flooded too. Instead we headed to a cenote for a swim (Ryan) in the roiling brown water.

Mmmm! Termites taste like carrots!

The rain didn't stop, so we all pitched in and rented a car which cost about the same as all of us paying for bus fare and would give us more freedom. We drove nearly all the way back to Belize City to go zip-lining. It was so much fun flying through the trees. I wish L.A. offered zip-lining as a form of alternate transportation.

Rio Frio Cave

Rio on Pools

The rain lightened, but it didn't stop. We took the car for another day and drove to some waterfalls, swam at Rio on Pools (my favorite), and hiked through Rio on Frio cave. The rain had pretty much stopped, but my family was scheduled to leave the next day and it looked like we wouldn't be able to see the caves. Boo! As luck would have it one of the tour operators did a special 6am tour into the caves just for us! The water was still high so we had to do a lot of swimming. The cave was better than I remembered.

The Crystal Maiden

We made it out of the caves with time to spare to have lunch before saying our good-byes. Ryan and I headed back to San Ignacio and visited the Iguana zoo. Some locals have a taste for iguana eggs and meat and the population has suffered. This zoo breads them and introduces them into the wild.



The following day we took the bus to Placencia, a small beach town on a peninsula in the south. We did a couple more dives and spent Thanksgiving and the rest of our trip lounging around on the beach, eating loads of tortillas, gellato and lobster. Our dive master took us lobster fishing and cooked us up tasty curry lobster quesadillas. Mmmm...