Belize with the Boss.

After almost 8 weeks in Guatemala, I was ready to move on into Belize in search of warmer weather and new adventures. Coincidentally, while I was planning my trip awhile back, my friend and former boss Mark found out that I would be in Belize around the same time as he would be there with his girlfriend Jen visiting her family, and we said that we would try to meet up. I had already experience the warmth and hospitality of Guatemala, so in restrospect I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when Jen (who I had never met) and her parents (who neither I, nor Mark until a few days earlier had ever met), invited me to stay at their house while I was visiting. Once again, Central American hospitality wins. As soon as I met up with Mark and Jen, I was informed that the whole week had been planned full of activities, and I was pretty stoked. Letting me pretty much crash their vacation, over the next ten days I did everything from partying on a boat off the cayes of Belize, to almost getting mauled by a jaguar when I got too close to a cage (sort of like that woman on YouTube with the polar bear - getting close to dangerous animals is more tempting than you would think once they're right in front of you...).

On the afternoon that I arrived into town, we headed out to the Mayan ruins close to the Guatemalan border. Having just visited Tikal, I didn't think that it would be all that impressive, but once we arrived I definitely was. Although the site itself was much smaller than Tikal, there was hardly anyone there, and the main pyramid rose pretty high up over the jungle canopy. Again, we were treated to the strangely scary sounds of howler monkeys in the distance, and I wish I could have gotten a picture of Mark's face the first time that he heard them. I still don't think he believed me when I told him it was a monkey. Then again, I thought they were wild boars the first time I heard them, so it's all good...




I was particularly excited about the next day's excursion when I found out that we were going to the zoo. For those of you that know of my school related travels, I tend to end up seeing zoos whenever I leave the country, from San Diego to Singapore, and many years earlier in Switzerland. That being said, adding Belize to my list sounded good to me. The zoo itself was small but way more intimate than any other I had ever been to (not in the beastiality sense of intimate, just for clarification). You could get really close to the animals, and they were pretty mellow, so they posed for cool pictures. My favorite animal may have been the mountain hippo, whose name was April.




Pat, you have made name-drop appearances in this blog. This is another one:



This pig actually stuck his nose against my camera, making for one of my favorite pictures of my trip.




We saw a lot of cool stuff at the zoo, and on our way out, Jen's dad asked me if I wanted a drink from the car. Parched after a hot day of walking around, I quite excitedly said yes. I was handed a shot of tequila. At this point, I realized that I really loved Belize.

Mark didn't get enough wildlife at the zoo, so he harrassed the chickens at Jen's house upon our return.

The next day, we made our way to a place called Cave's Branch to do some cave tubing, which sounded really extreme and dangerous at the time, but ended up consisting of us floated through a cave on inner tubes. Nonetheless, it was quite fun. On our hike through the jungle to get to the mouth of the cave, our guide pointed out all sorts of funny trees that can be used to heal you in various ways. One of them had bark that you could grind up and eat if you were bitten by a fer de lance, and would give you an extra two hours to live. Perfect. During one of the stos where he was talking about medicinal trees, Mark and Jen ended up standing in the way of some fire ants. Not so perfect. Such is life in the jungle.

Once we made our way through a few bat-ridden caves, we finally got to the mouth of the cave were the tubing experience began. We were told by the guide that there would be some "pretty fast" rapids, so I was excited... We might as well have been going down that "Lazy River" ride at Canada's Wonderland. At one point he told us there was a waterfall coming up, and I envisioned one of those movies where the raft realizes its about to go over a set of 6 foot tall falls into jagged rocks below, but it ended up being a very creek-like set of rocks over which a stream was flowing. They tend to over-sell things in Belize apparently.





More Belize adventures coming up, stay tuned...