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.