Blogs from Cayo District, Belize, Central America Caribbean - page 3

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so, we had 2 and a half days in Cayo (San ignacio). This is a small town fairly close to the Guatemalan border which we planned on using as a hub to explore the west side of Belize. The town is set around the Mopan river and twinned with Santa Elena on the other side. I had a good time there because of the people we met. It is the first time that I had really met other travellers in Belize. Other than this, we have been so isolated and haven't met many other travellers! The town is small and has a large market area. We arrived there to be greeted by some other Medics on their elective from Nottingham, (they may have been signed off a little early like us) but had also just qualified, ... read more


Day 4 of our adventures, we woke up in Belize! This place was probably the most adventurous due to the physical activities that we chose to take part in this day! We were going zip lining through the jungles and cave tubing! I was extremely nervous about the zip lining, but we'll get to that in a sec. We woke up and got ready for the day, packing our water shoes, bathing suits, and other gear for the excursion. We went to the lido deck for our morning breakfast buffet as usual, before meeting up with our excursion group. The ship didn't dock here, but anchored, so upon exiting the ship we had to take a small tender boat to shore. It was maybe a 15 minute ride and I was able to keep my nausea ... read more


This morning I had breakfast with most of the group at the same restaurant that we had dinner the night before. In true Belizean fashion, service was excrutiatingly slow. We all had to ask multiple times to place our order or to have coffee brought to us. Most of the group today ventured off to their day tours to the ATM caves or to Caracol. Oren and I stayed behind to slowly finish our breakfast and to meet up with Melanie and Troy later for our own adventures in the area. Before heading off for our exploration of the day, we checked out a few grocery stores in order to pick up some snacks. As in Belize City, we noticed that almost all of the grocery stores were owned by ethnic Chinese people. We would later ... read more
Fruit Vendor in San Ignacio
Wall Mural in San Ignacio
River Ferry to Xunantunich


After a surprisingly good sleep, Troy, Melanie, and I walked over to a bakery at the nearby Radisson Hotel for breakfast. Here we had our first taste of Johnny Cakes, which are little english muffin sized biscuits popular around the Caribbean. After breakfast, we met Kirsten and Tony, the 2 Australian sisters who missed last night's meeting. They had spent all day yesterday traveling by public bus from Mexico to Belize. Our private bus was delayed so we weren't able to leave at 10 as scheduled so to kill some time, a few of us decided to walk into town to find a store in order to buy some snacks. We received directions from the hotel staff and ventured into town. Being that it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed. We ended up settling on ... read more
Christmas Tree in Belize City
Cave Tubing
Cave Tubing


My first full day in Belize and I must admit I really do like it. The vibe of the country is quite strange; it has a Latin American feel to it, but with a British/Caribbean mix. I was a little disappointed that I could no longer practise trying to speak some Spanish as Belize's official language is English, the only country in Central America. The people of Belize do speak Spanish though, but obviously with me being English it was easier to communicate with my native language. I learnt that Belize was originally part of the British Empire and from 1862 to 1973, its name was British Honduras. It became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1981, retaining the British Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. It was weird having Belize currency too with a younger ... read more
Cave Tubing
Sleeping Accommodaton
SAM_2928


We were out of wifi range for a few days. It was kind of nice though. We are back in Caye Caulker now, but I will talk about our trip to San Ignacio or as the locals like to call it, Cayo. While we were there we visited the largest ruin in Belize called Caracol. The word Caracol means snail in Mayan. This is a fairly newly discovered ruin and only a small percentage has been uncovered. The city of Caracol defeated the city of Tikal to eventually become the most powerful Mayan empire of its time. On the way there, we stopped at a beautiful huge cave called Rio Frio. It's a dry cave and we had a few minutes to walk around and take photos. On the way back from the ruins we stopped ... read more
Cave Canoeing at Barton Creek
Keel Billed Toucan At the Belize Zoo
Jaguar at the Belize Zoo


De laatste Trekforce-geralateerde blog staat op het punt gelezen te worden.. Gisteren de laatste trainingdag gehad, vandaag laatste feedback en dan 3 dagen naar Caye Chaulker, een soort waddeneiland maar dan met meer bars en snorkelen, duiken en epic windsurfweer. Vanaf morgen tijd voor R&R! Maar voordat ik op de zaken vooruitloop; wat is er de afgelopen weken gebeurt? Lesgeven De afgelopen weken hebben bestaan uit lesgeven aan een nieuwe groep. Leuk om te zien hoe "groen" mensen Belize binnenkomen. En daardoor te zien hoe onze groep gegroeid is. We hebben de nieuwe groep alles over jungle-survival uitgelegd en zijn met ze de jungle in gegaan, naar de "beginnerscampground" aan het begin van het park. Verrassing was dat tijdens de eerste jungledag onze gids de jungle uit kwam lopen met een 2,2 meter lange Fer-de-Lance met ... read more
Hechten: ducttape op een slaapmatje
Landrover
Causeway


Eindelijk tijd om wat te schrijven. Vorige maand was druk, maar we zijn nu terug in de stad voor minstens 6 dagen. Good stuff. Voor iedereen die zich afvraagt wat het verhaal met mijn gezichtsbeharing is: scheren in de jungle is geen goed idee in verband met wondjes. Alles ontsteekt nogal makkelijk in dit klimaat en ontstekingen zijn naar. Dan over naar de Brulaap. De brulaap (howlermonkey) is een zwart beest dat in een kubus van 40 bij 40 cm past. Minus staart dat is. De brulaap leeft in groepen van ca. 10 apen, waarvan 1 het mannetje, dat uiteraard dominant is. Het mannetje houdt de rest van de groep op de hoogte van gevaar in de omgeving. Meestal is er niets aan de hand en dat geeft dit beest aan met om de 10 seconden ... read more
Mayatempel in Cahal Pech
Voetbalveld
Solonight 1


Om te beginnen een heel goed 2013 toegewenst! De wereld is niet vergaan ondanks het aflopen van de Mayakalender, iets waar men zich in Belize redelijk bewust van was. Na de vorige update 3 weken de jungle in geweest. Voor een dagje terug in de stad, dus een korte update deze keer. De rest van de tijd gaat op aan boodschappen doen en voorbereiding. Na Advanced Navigation 15 dagen projecten gedaan in Elijio Panti National Park. De locaties die we de vorige keer hebben bezocht waren aan een opknapbeurt toe, en dat is goed gelukt.Met de groep en een aantal locals hebben we een aantal palappas gebouwd, tuinschuurtjes belizian style zeg maar. Met al het aanwezige talent in de groep aan een stuk doorgewerkt. Op eerste kerst na dat is. Voor de britten is kerst HET ... read more


After our goodbye to our Soviet-Bloc friends, we caught an early morning bus to Belize City, then to San Ignacio, our stepping stone into the next country, Guatemala. The busses are very crowded and we ended up standing, which is not a big deal, but different than I'm used to. Also different is that there are both a driver and a ticket-taker on the bus, who collects cash and checks tickets on passengers. It seems like it would be a very easy system to steal from, in my opinion, since no real record exists of who got on the bus, who paid, how much they paid, where they got off, etc. But that's the devious criminal mastermind talking, let's get back to the adventurer. We learned that Belize has a zoo, which Eya found very exciting! ... read more
Moar Tapir!
Red Deer
Flock of Turtles




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