Photos (130): http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3555126007/a=38054161/
Extended
Photos (271):
http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3555110007/a=38054161/
Since this was a longer trip, I put together two different albums. The first one is the cliff notes version; with 130 "best-of" photos. If you like photos more, and want to see more of the land and sea, then use the second link - the Extended Photos version - which as 271 photos (and it includes all the ones from the first link and more...)
Since it's a longer trip, I'll also just go over our main activities and a few observations. If you are going out to Belize, feel free to contact me for more info. I took lots of notes (and photos.)
Friday 2/12:
Marty, Doug and I flew into Belize City and took a taxi to the water taxi. Made the last water taxi of the day, and took it out to Caye Caulker. We had been told that Caye Caulker was more low-key and a better cultural experience; that Ambergis Caye was more touristy and built up. Caye Caulker was a cool atmosphere, with dirt roads and a variety of accommodations and food. We compared a few hotels and ended up at Marilyn's, near the Split. It was quite simple, and inexpensive; which was what we were looking for.
Saturday 2/13:
We looked around town; which is mainly three streets. The first one is the most touristy; which still isn't what I would consider that touristy. Things got more local on second and third street. We lined up a snorkel trip to Hol Chan and Shark/Ray Alley through Frenchie's. Frenchie's did a great job of lining up a trip for just the three of us; and while it wasn't as plush as some of the snorkeling companies - we did have a lot of choice about where we went, when we went, and for how long.
The snorkeling was good, lots of aquatic life. I would rather have dove it, as I'm all into photos (surprise, surprise.) It's harder to take good pictures while snorkeling. When we got back, we looked around at the restaurants we wanted to try; and picked one for dinner. Many times, dinner started late; at least 6 or even 7 at many places (they weren't even open before that.) Around sunset, Doug spotted a long-nosed batfish; which is a really interesting looking fish, that has fins that it uses to kind of walk on. A great find by Doug, as they are pretty rare.
Sunday 2/14:
We headed out with Frenchies out to dive Turneffe. Visibility was pretty good, and we saw a decent amount of aquatic life. It was the end of lobster season, so we had Lobster for dinner at Jolly Rogers. Great food, and quite a social place. Chatted with folks; many were from Canada.
Monday 2/15:
We again headed out with Frenchies, this time out to the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole dive is a deep dive; I got down to around 150' - so it's quite short. (Around 8 minutes from surface, down to the dive, and then back up to the safety stop.) Marty and Doug felt a bit of Nitrogen Narcosis. My camera stopped working from the pressure. (The housing I have is only rated to 100'. Thankfully, it didn't leak, but around 120', the pressure inside the housing was so great that it pulled all the buttons in, and froze up the camera. I was a little bummed, as I spent time messing with it, trying to fix it, instead of looking around. I'll just have to go back.)
I really liked the Blue Hole dive; mainly because of all the geologic significance. I thought it was a pretty cool dive too; and wished we could do a mixed gas dive and explore it further. Marty and Doug could take it or leave the dive; so we had mixed feelings there. The next two dives were pretty good too; with lots of aquatic life. Marty was really good at finding things. Definitely a great day diving; the best one we did. We spent one of the surface intervals on Half Moon Caye as well, and saw the Magnificent Frigate bird's mating ritual, as well as the Red-Footed Booby birds that nest there. Spied an iguana up in the tree as well.
Shipwrecks in this area are ships that didn't see the reef, and ran up aground on it. There's a few that are decaying from the elements. This is a bit different than most of the other shipwrecks I've encountered (and dove), which usually hit rocks and sink, or have sunk during/due to a storm (as was common in Michigan...)
Tuesday 2/16:
We hired a guide, Carlos, to drive us to San Ignacio; and we would stop at several places on the way. We first stopped for Cave Tubing at Caves Branch Caves. I'd say it was just okay. We had another guide for the caves, Rudy, who was good; and we did the first cave section that not many folks do. There was some decent formations, but nothing that special. Kind of unique to do it in an inner tube though. The second section was much better, in terms of formations. However, we ran into the hordes of tourists from a cruise ship. Kind of detracted from the experience for me.
We then went to St. Herman's cave, and peeked around there a little. Without a guide, you aren't supposed to go all that far in. Unfortunately, the stop is right as the cave looked like it was starting to get good. Might be worth returning there in the future. We went over to the inland Blue Hole. This was a pretty neat swim hole, but not really much else. A little bit of a nature trail, but I don't know if I'd say it's worth the trip out (unless you want to just cool down and relax at the swimming hole.) Marty and I took turns diving down and looking into the cave/cenote entrance. We then hiked the Hummingbird Loop trail, which was good exercise, but really only had some jungle views. For the amount of elevation gain it had, I was hoping for a good overlook.
Made it to San Ignacio, and found a room there. Went around and checked on trips for the next day; and booked ours. Looked around the town a bit, and sampled some of the local fare.
Wednesday 2/17:
Woke up early, and headed out to Caracol; which is Belize's largest ruin. The drivers in Belize don't really pay attention to any traffic laws; ignoring lines, signs, etc. Drove through the Mountain Pine Ridge, which looked somewhat similar to Colorado terrain. They had just gotten through a bad pine beetle infestation, and the forest was re-growing. Nice to see that there's life afterwards, as Colorado is being hit pretty hard in places by pine beetles. We had to join a military escort on the way; which I think was mainly a formality now (it was necessary before.)
Belize seems to push guides quite a bit (likely to help the economy), and so we had another guide, Edward, for Caracol. Edward was good as well, and turns out, he's a caver too. I'd definitely look him up for some off-the-beaten-path adventures next time. Caracol was pretty good; with a decent information center. Many of the ruins were still unexcavated, or partially excavated; which was different. Kind of neat in a way. It was a fairly small site, with only about 50 or so structures that had been excavated (though there are an estimated 36,000 structures that once made up Caracol.) Caana, the largest structure, was still pretty impressive - and you could see above the forest canopy to the mountains, from the top.
As an added bonus, we stopped at Rio Frio caves; which was more like a long tunnel than a cave - but it did have some cool formations. Including some that looked like travertine pools. The second bonus stop was at Rio on Pools; another cool swimming hole. It was a little chilly, so we had the place to ourselves (Edward said it gets packed in the hot summer months.) Not everyone went in, but Marty and I swam around and explored the pools a bit.
Thursday 2/18:
We lined up an early tour of the ATM cave; which turned out to be awesome. We paid a little more for a 'custom tour', but all of us felt it was well worth it. It was just the three of us, and two guides; Martin and Hugo. It was great, like having the place to ourselves. We got to go to places that other tours don't go to (which required some tight passageways) and saw some cool artifacts; including the only cave stella ever found.
There were all kinds of great formations in the cave, along with many artifacts; mostly pottery. There were also 16 skeletal remains; we would see many of them. The grand finale was a full calcified skeleton of a female - likely an offering. An amazing experience. Highly recommended; especially Martin from Mayawalk tours.
After the ATM trip, we headed out to Guatemala, and got a hotel in Tikal. Tikal is Guatemala's biggest ruin. We went over to Temple IV (the highest one) to watch the sunset. We had to give the guard an 'offering' to go on the good side of the ruin, which had the sunset views. There was a big group of students from California there; what a cool school trip.
Friday 2/19:
There were all kinds of jungle sounds through the night. The three hotels in Tikal definitely are right in the middle of the jungle. We had another guide lined up who took us through Tikal, and it was pretty informational. That was only for part of the day. We heard it takes several days to see Tikal, but it's not really that big. We were able to see all of it in most of a day, and still have some time left over for some gift shopping before our ride back to San Ignacio. Overall, it's a neat ruin to see. There are a lot more structures than in Caracol; and a variety of excavated, partially excavated and unexcavated sites. Definitely much different than the Mexican ruins such as Tulum and Chichen Itza.
Amazing that they built these huge structures, mostly by brute force (and engineering), but they didn't use a wheel. I don't know if it's worth the time, hassle and expense to see if you aren't going to have time to see more in Guatemala though (none of the three of us thought so.) If it's a short trip to Belize, I'd just go with Caracol... Plenty of time? Then venture in, but check out other great places in Guatemal like Flores, some of the smaller ruins, etc. It was pretty cool staying at a hotel right in the park of Tikal (but more pricey too.)
We made our way back to San Ignacio for the night, and sampled more of the local fare.
Saturday 2/20:
We leisurely woke up, and relaxed a bit. This was the first day we weren't getting up early for something, which was nice. Had time to get some souvenir/gift shopping in. We took the crowded, local bus back to Belize City. Dodged a few taxi drivers trying to get us to pay exorbitant fees, and took the water taxi back over to Caye Caulker.
Sunday 2/21:
It was really hot out. Definitely the hottest of our days here. We booked a snorkel trip out to the local reef. It wasn't all that great, with much of it being very shallow (so not a lot of large aquatic life.) It was cheap though, and definitely nice to spend the day in the water rather than in the hot sun. They fed the stingrays at one of the stops, and we were able to be in the water with the stingrays swimming all around us; which was definitely cool.
When we got back to Caye Caulker, it was still warm out so Marty and I went and snorkeled from the Split to the North island of Caye Caulker - and saw some cool things; including a huge stingray, barracuda, lobsters, a seahorse, and lots of upside-down jellyfish. We swam around until we started to get stung by the jellyfish; and then headed back to our hotel.
Relaxed and watched a great sunset; which was a great way to end our trip.
Monday 2/22:
Had to wake up fairly early, to catch the water taxi back to Belize City. From there, was a taxi to the airport, waiting in long lines, and the usual fun travel experiences. Overall, it was a great trip; Marty, Doug and I travelled well together. Belize was my 75th country; and the relatively unexpected added bonus excursion to Guatemala made my 76th. While I'm still not to excited about airports and air travel, I was definitely feeling the urge for more exploration there. I'd recommend Belize as a great travel destination, and hope to get back there.
Hope you enjoy the
pics!
A.J.
Photos (130): http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3555126007/a=38054161/
Extended Photos (271): http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3555110007/a=38054161/
Group Room (multiple albums): http://ajoutdoors.snapfish.com/snapfish