Belize

Here goes stop #2, Belize. We booked a cave-tubing trip with some guy named David the week before our trip. Well, that turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. Belize was my favorite stop of the trip. One of the worst decisions we made was forgetting to buy an underwater disposable camera until we got off the ship in Belize. $18 for a crappy camera- you can see the quality of most of the pictures.

So our enthusiastic and hilarious guide David drove us an hour to the mountains to embark on our cave-tubing adventure. We carried all the gear for a 1/2 an hour hike to the cave entrance. Since we just had our group of 4 we passed a lot of the other tours. David told us about some of the vegetation we passed, but I wasn't listening that much. I just wanted to get to the caves. The Mayans thought these caves were an opening to the underworld and regularly performed rituals and sacrifices in them.

The entrance to hell. We all sat in our little tubes while David pulled us around to see the cool things. It was pitch black in the caves so we wore headlamps. There were bats flying around the ceiling and we saw a bunch of baby bats hanging at one point. The Mayans believed if unworthy people went in the caves- only priests and those being sacrificed were allowed in- that they would be turned into stone. David pointed out a lot of rock formations that looked like people.

After exiting the caves we got out and swam in the fresh spring-water river. It was the most refreshing water I have ever been in. I still can't get over it.

We swam for a while while a bunch of the other tour groups complained that they didn't get to do it. 

The setting was just breathtaking- in a fresh water river in the middle of the jungle. Nick noticed a good rock to jump off of so we did that for a while until a bunch of other people started doing it too. I did some sweet cannonballs that were a little painful, but totally worth it.

I really wish this could have been taken with a halfway decent camera. As we came around the bend there was just bright green lush jungle everywhere.

We ate a decent Belizean lunch. The empanadas were delicious, but the rice and beans didn't have much flavor. The cinnamon dusted watermelon was an interesting flavor, almost reminded me of Christmas.

On the way back to the ship David took us by the downtown LDS church. He reminisced about playing sports in the gym there as a kid.

 

We took a few pictures as we waited for our tender to go back to the ship.

 

If you are ever in Belize, look up David with cavetubingrus.com and book a tour with him!