UnBELIZEable

Given the exactly one week break between Graduation and the start of my never-ending Engineering career, choices of where to travel were limited the US, Mexico, or closely neighboring countries. Having being to the Carribbean before, we were looking for a place with a bit more culture, and possibly even a bit of nature! Based on flight prices and other logisitics, we settled on Belize. Belize has magnificent rainforests, Mayan ruins, and it is home to the second largest barrier reef in the world!

We flew into Belize City and were instantly overwhelemed by the humidty and heat. Pants are really not pratical ever in Belize. We took a converted school bus to the inland town of San Igancio, and arrived at our first stay, the Midas Resort.

The Resort is tucked right on the edge of town and looks like it almost in a rainforest. Our room was gorgeous and Dylan even saw a Toucan right by the pool.

The next day, we took a tour of the ATM cave. This involved a bumpy ride over a dirt road through fields and jungle, a 30 minute rainforest hike, and then a couple of hours of swimming, climbing and wading a 1/2 mile into a beautiful cave system. The cave was littered with calcified Mayan pots and skeletons, including the "Crystal Maiden" whose full skeleton can be seen, forever preserved where she fell. Unfortunately we couldn't bring the camera because a week before, a tourist dropped his camera on a skull, which broke out a large section of the bone!

During our jungle walk, our guide kept in front of us with a large stick for scaring off snakes. He informed us that the famed deadly Coral snake was spotted here just last week, and also to look out for another common poisonous snake. We asked him what color it would be and he said "Camoflouge...Like, it would look just like that stick right there...or that one right there..." It was one of those moments where you can't focus too closely on the possible consequences of what you're doing, but just keep going..

Another day we took an early morning tour and hike around the Crested Caracara nature reserve. Dylan saw about 89235 new birds and we saw cute leaf cutter ant highways. Our guide helpfully stomped on the ground right above their nests so we could see the soldier ants (4x the size of the worker ants) go into soldier-swarm mode. Another one of those moments..

That afternoon we visited the Xunantinch (Zoo-NAN-ta-NICH? I think) Mayan ruins. They were beautiful, but a bit TOO preserved. Luckily, we were almost the only ones there and were able to enjoy the view (and earn scorching sunburns) in peace.

We went out to a local bar down the street from our hotel as well, where the bar tender asked us "You guys tryna' get high?" And apparently high means drunk in Belize, FYI. We got caught in a torrential downpour and awesome thunderstorm on the walk back, which lasted throughout the night.

For the second half of the trip, we went to the laid-back backpacker island of Caye Caulker. Waiting for a water taxi, we were accosted by the Prince, who makes his living telling tourists nonsensical but slightly informative and entertaining stories about Belizean history and the namesake of the national Belikin beer. Beware.

On Caye Caulker, we stayed at Barefoot Beach, a brightly colored small hotel a few minutes walk from the main shops area. Depsite the name, I would not recommend walking around barefoot since the beaches are small, gritty, and algea-y. There were nice docks with hammocks and chairs to lay on though, and we found a good spot to swim on the north of the island.

On Caye Caulker, we rented (extremely poorly maintained) bikes and just relaxed. We ate fresh lobster and fish, tasty pizza from an old expat who serves up free shots and Gwen Stefani beats, and saw a satisfactory number of adorable island puppies.

Our main activity was an all day diving trip to the Great Blue Hole, and a couple of other sites. The Blue Hole is best viewed from the sky, but the dive was interesting and we were able to descend to over 100 feet (definitely my deepest dive so far!). At lower depths, experienced divers can even see stalagtites. On the other dives we saw plently of fish, lobster, super creepy Moray eels, and even a turtle. We also stopped at an island reserve for lunch and saw a nesting colony of thousands of sea birds from a raised platform.

Belize was the perfect short trip for us. It is the most expensive place in Central America but the cheapest in the Caribbean (it is technically in CA but has tons of Carribbean influences-a mix of Creole, Mestizo, Mayan and even Mennonite/Amish culture). It is a short and flexible plane ride from the US and offers a mix of rainforest and beach environments. Its not perfect, and some of the poverty in Belize City especially is shocking, but I would definitely recommend to any traveler looking for an adventure but nothing too crazy.

Bahama Mama

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Back in December, 2011 Dylan and I went on our first trip together to the Bahamas. We chose to go there because it was the furthest I could get for free on the amount of frequent flyer miles I had. And it also looked fairly nice of course!

HIGH FIVE!

For our first few days, we stayed at the Towne Hotel in downtown Nassau. Nassau looks like a city that was spruced up about 30 years ago for the growing cruise ship industry, and then never received the promised volume of tourist dollars. Many shop fronts are faded, closed, or halfway burnt and left to rot. Some areas were decent, but the most exciting thing we could find to do was to get drinks at the ubiquitous Senor Frogs restaurant. 

We tried going to a local grocery store during our first day, but the further we got inland, the more locals stopped to tell us we were in the wrong area. Despite this ominous warning, nothing seemed too dangerous. But after being served our conch fritters and fries through a bullet proof glass window, being buzzed into the gated grocery store, and ducking our heads to avoid the barbed wire extending out into the sidewalks, we decided to head back to the beach.

4 weeks old!

The next day we took a boat trip out to Blue Lagoon Island to swim with the dolphins. We took the first boat out and last boat back so we could enjoy the whole day on the very pretty beach. It wasn’t tourist season, so we had most of the island to ourselves. The dolphin encounter was a lot of fun, and we even got to see a baby dolphin! Can’t really top that.

The next hotel we stayed in is called the Comfort Inn Suites, and it is located on Paradise Island, over the bridge from Nassau, and a short walk from the Atlantis Resort.


We were able to stay here for around $100 a night, which includes free day-passes to the Atlantis pools and aquarium (which can cost about $100 alone!). We spent a lot of time at Atlantis; the aquariums and slides were amazing.

Our last hotel was the Wyndham Resort. While calling it a resort is a bit of a stretch, the view from our balcony was like a postcard, and we were able to use the nearby Sheraton’s pools in addition to our own. At this point, we had been in about a dozen different pools, and we were beginning to notice that we hadn’t found a single hot tub! There were hot tub shaped pools, sure, but not one was HOT, or even close. Atlantis has at least 10 different tube rides and slides but not a single hot tub. And though it was hot in the Bahamas, it definitely was not hot enough to render hot tubs useless.

Finally, we had some luck. We snuck into the Sandals resort to wander around the crazy expensive villas and the nicely groomed beach when we finally found it! A real hot tub. Unfortunately, it appeared that a foam noodle or something similar had disintegrated into the tub. A bazillion tiny foam flecks stuck to every inch of our skin. But it was hot!

To finish our trip, we took a couple of day trips. We rode a catamaran to a nearby island and stopped on the way for some gorgeous snorkeling opportunities, including a swim above a group of reef sharks. I got bit. Not by a shark, but by an aggressive Yellowtail Snapper, who succeeded in getting me to drop the bag of fish food we were given. Later that night, I succeeded in eating a Yellowtail Snapper for dinner. We were also served a free mixture of 95% punch, 5% rum, the so-called “Bahama Mama.” Definitely tasty, but you could get drunker at communion.

        

Lessons learned: Fish are mean, birds are nice, and petting a random shark at Atlantis is very easy to do.

For our last trip out, we managed to find a diving company that would take us both out, though Dylan was certified and I was not. I was given a quick lesson on the boat ride out, and was given a guided tour. Taking my first breath underwater was very intimidating, but definitely worth the view. We saw tons of fish, and even a small (BABY?) sea turtle.

One of the most interesting parts of the trip was seeing first-hand the interesting mix that is Bahamian culture. We attended a free taping of a Bahamian game show that was being filmed in the auditorium of the Wyndham. It was a completely local crowd, not catering to tourists at all. The questions asked of the contestants were a mix of US pop trivia and Bahamian history questions. I’ve always wanted to go to a game show taping, and this did not disappoint!

Colonel Flamingo keeps the troops in line