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Published: April 6th 2017
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Country #2 Belize
Hmmmm.. Maybe we stay in Mexico 4-6 weeks. After 9 weeks, we finally called it and left Mahahual on the 28
th of January. Next destination, Caye Caulker, Belize. We took the bus to Chetumal, shared a taxi with an icecream vendor and crossed the boarder by foot. We paid 500 Peso (US 25$) to leave Mexico and walked 2 km through the free zone, got the Belize stamp and found ourselves on the other side. No bus is leaving from here? Daaamn… maybe we should plan a little more. We took a taxi to Corozal and found a local bus to Belize City surprisingly fast.
Suddenly everyone around us spoke either English or Creole. This was a surprise...even knowing that Belize belongs to the British crown. We could definitely tell that we had crossed a border. In Belize, the currency is the Belize Dollar (1 US$ ~ 2 B$).
Three hours later we arrived in Belize City and caught a taxi to the dock of the water taxi association. The driver told us this would be the better company, the alternative „Ocean Ferry“ breaks down all the time. Well, this may be the case, but
later we found out that we paid US 25$ (roundtrip) instead of the US 15$ that all our other friends taking the „Ocean Ferry“ paid.
Finally, we arrived at the beautiful carribean island and backpacker destination Caye Caulker. Hostel Bella’s Backpackers would be home for the next week. Belize welcomed us with their traditional breakfast, Fry Jacks. Fry Jacks are fried bread, stuffed with beans, cheese, ham, chicken a/o eggs – not necessarily the healthiest food, but delicious.
Since Eva landed in Costa Rica, she has been talking about snorkeling in Belize, and now her dream came true. The beginning of the day tested our patience. The full day snorkelling tour should have started at 10 am, but it took the lady a total of 1.5 hours to find 5 fins in the right size.
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st stop: a little boat. It doesn’t sound fancy but quickly changed our mood. On the boat they dissected conch and threw the guts back in the ocean. Conch is this huge pink shell, with which you can hear the ocean. The guts attracted all kinds of fish, a giant turtle and at least 7 rays...floating around the boat we could swim
right through the cloud of animals.
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nd stop: a reef channel, with lots of fish and corals. Neil joined us, explained all species and gave us an impressive example of free diving.
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rd stop: a Shark Alley – Neil threw a bunch of fish in the water and a minute later we had a crowd of reef sharks around the boat! We had to grow some balls but then closed our eyes and jumped in the water..what we saw, wow! We could see just a ball of heads and tails. As soon as the fish guts were gone, the sharks swam away. We followed them when they all lined up and had about 30 sharks swimming in front of us. Sharks who were lying at the bottom joined as well, making the group even bigger. This moment gave us some serious goosepumps, an unforgettable moment!
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th stop: a colourless coral garden in cristal clear, turqous water and then, we went lobster hunting at Neils set up lobster traps. Antonia was really curious how this works, but did not want to get wet again so she tried to put only her head underwater. Eva could not resist and
Antonia went swimming again, grrrrr! So already in the water, she helped Neil pick up the lobsters he had killed as soon as they left the trap, he used a stick with a hook. 15 lobsters later we went back to shore and learned how to scale them and the three fish he caught. That night, we had the best meal of the whole journey - lobster ceviche and bbq lobster.
Why Antonia did not dive the famous blue hole? Well, mainly due to split opinions from former divers and whether it was worth the full US 260$...aaaand because she would have to go without Eva.
We stayed a few more nights and cooked barracuda, freshly caught by our new friends at Bella’s. We visited the seahorses and learned all about tropical plants from a hotel owner. After a week in a hammock Antonia was exited for a bed and we said goodbye to the laid back beach life. Jungle, here we come!
In San Ignacio, a jungle town close to the eastern boarder of Guatemela, we rented a huge house for three nights, cooked lots of food like our German Spaetzle, and learned how the Gringos
celebrate their „Superbowl“ – as the house was filled with 70% gringos ? Mitch’s friends Tina and Tyler had joined us in Belize. It rained the entire time we were there, so visiting the small, closeby ruins was our only activity.
We considered two weeks in Belize enough and packed the backpacks – It was time for Guatemala!
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