Into The Jungle

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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 the gift shops at the water taxi station before walking back to the hotel. Our private van finally arrived and we were on our way at around 11.

After stopping in a very sketchy area of Belize City to get some cash and visit a grocery store, we drove into the interior of Belize to do some cave tubing at the Nohoch Ch'een Caves Branch Reserve. Up until this morning, we weren't even sure if we'd be able to go cave tubing. The unusually heavy rainfall that the area has been experiencing lately can sometimes mean that the water level is too high. However, this morning we were informed that luck was on our side and the cave tubing excursion was still on. We were all given our inner tubes, headlamps, and water shoes and had a quick lunch before beginning our trek into the jungle. Melanie decided to sit out this excursion and just sit around and read for a few hours. I guess sitting in an inner tube and relaxing down a river wasn't appealing to someone who was pregnant. The surrounding limestone landscape is riddled with holes which allows the river to flow from the jungles into various caves. However before entering the water, we had about a 45 minute trek through the jungle in order to get to our starting point. We finally arrived at our starting point and we were given the opportunity to jump in before starting our cave tubing adventure. Troy, Ken, Lalanti, and I climbed the rocks and jumped into the very refreshing river. With all of us now in our inner tubes, we rode the current and into our first cave. The current was a bit stronger than I had anticipated and I will admit that I was a bit nervous at first as we floated into the first cave into complete darkness. However after a few minutes in the darkness and unable to really seen anything besides the light from other people's headlamps, I really started enjoy it. I was taking a ton of photos of the limestone formations that we were able to see as well as of the others on my trip. I eventually got to a point where I tired of taking photos so I put my camera securely in my pocket in order to enjoy the rest of the ride down the river. There were several points along the ride where the water was a bit stagnant and you had to row yourself along in order to move. I must not have been doing a good job of it as our guide had to come and move me along a few times. All in all, it was a good ride down the river but it ended up being a lot more work with all the self rowing than I had anticipated. At the end, when I was going to take a group photo, I realized that my camera was not in my pocket. Then the sudden realization that it must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere along the river and was lost forever. It was very disappointing but what could you do? At least it was only the first day of the tour and I didn't lose too many photos other than those from the cave tubing.

We drove to the town of San Ignacio which was almost to the Guatemalan border. San Ignacio appeared to be a backpacker's mecca and is a good home base to partake in many adventure activities nearby. We stayed at Casa Blanca Guest House just off the main street, Burns Street. After settling in, Daniel gave us a brief orientation tour of the town before we went over to Mayawalk Tours in order to sign up for any optional excursion for tomorrow. We were served rum punch while deciding on whether we wanted to do the ATM tour or a trip to the Caracol ruins. The ATM tour involved some spelunking in tight caves. As a claustrophobe, this was definitely not an option. The Caracol option involved a 2 hour drive each way down a muddy road in a cramped jeep. This also didn't sound very appealing. In the end, Melanie, Troy, Oran, and myself just decided to explore the town on our own and check out some of the nearby ruins. Afterwards, we had dinner across the street at Flayva's Bar and Grill. It was at this dinner that we realized how much of a hassle it can be trying to eat with such a large group. It was not easy trying to decide on a place everyone can agree on but also the amount of time it takes for some of the smaller places to serve such a large group. Belizean service thus far has been really slow and with our large group, it took over an hour to get our dinner. After dinner, we all headed back to the hotel when I spotted Ken walking over to the Chinese restaurant across the street from the hotel. He walked in to have a few beers before calling it a night. Good thing I followed him, because I could use the same as well. Daniel also joined us and the 3 of us spent the next hour just shooting the breeze and getting to know each other a little more.

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Photos

Cave Tubing
About to jump in the river