Teen Tour . . .

---

Today’s port is Belize and I had 4 teens sign up for the Club O2 tour. Cave Tubing was again fantastic. Such a great tour. I’m lucky to be able to have gone at all and spoiled completely by getting to do if for a second time.

I love the half hour hike through the rainforest. So much to look at. Our guide this time pointed out a lot of the different types of trees and plants which was interesting. The rainforests never cease to amaze me. I love getting to experience them again and again in so many different countries.

The actual cave tubing portion of the tour is so wonderfully relaxing. To just lie back on your tube and let the rive carry you through the cave, then beneath the trees of the jungle - it’s too good to be true.

Going through the cave feels like a grand adventure. I feel like I’m an explorer, or at least I can imagine what it must have been like for a person to discover such a marvelous site. One section of the cave makes me think of the 6th Harry Potter books when Harry & Dumbledore go by boat into a cave . . . There’s a sense of magic, of mystery, of darkness, of the unknown in there.

And there are just countless things to look at in the cave - rock formations, the walls, the smooth stones at the bottom of the river, glimpses of the jungle outside the cave walls.

For awhile, our bus group got really spread apart in two halves, so much so that one half could not see the other. And I was between the two. I could hear voices and in the distance behind me see some lights of people’s headlights. But I was virtually alone in the cave. At first it was calm and relaxing. Later, when the river current picked up and I was being spun around and I was occasionally brushing the rock bottom of the river and I couldn’t see anything - it was scary! My heart started racing and I was struggling to gain a sense of direction. But the excitement of that moment was fun.

It was great to be able to have a digital camera with me now that I have the waterproof one. Thought it’s so dark in the cave that many pictures just don’t come out. Though that makes me stop living through the lens so much and live in the moment more. I always think of the blue morfo butterfly in Costa Rica to remember that lesson it taught me.

We’re changing our cruise run soon. This is our last Panama/Costa Rica/Belize run. Next cruise is our final St. Maarten/St. Lucia/St. Kitts run. We have a random 4 day cruise to Grand Turk and Nassau, then 2 days of relocation to our new home port of Tampa. Then we begin 7 day cruises of Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Costa Maya and Belize. I’m happy to have one constant port this entire time. I’m really happy that constant is Belize. It’s such a fantastic country. And there’s so much more I want to see here.

---