While we were on the mainland there were a lot of taxis that were luxury vehicles (Mercedes, Lexus, Acura) that had dealership stickers from along the east coast of the United States. Most were in need of new shocks, they weren’t very cushioned on the bumps and they had a lot of excess travel on the return. Some here tint all their windows including the front windshield.

The wind here is strong! It’s nice to have the breeze when you are out in the heat but it can take a toll on you.

It’s all hard pack sand / dirt roads here. Anywhere theres stores there’s a lot of bottle caps on the roads. While you see a lot of people here with no shoes, I recommend shoes or a tetanus shot, probably both.

Our apartment/ suite doesn’t have much of a view, on one side an open lot that could use some tending and we overlook the restaurant. The other side has no windows to look at the other resort across the ally way. It is very nice though, kinda up scale feeling. It’s not in the thick of things, which is probably nicer during the high season if you like it a little quieter.

Renting a golf cart is $125 BZ $62.50 USD a day! Some people are spending crazy money. Bikes are $10 BZ a day and $50 BZ for the week. the island / Caye isn’t that big.

The pool here is narrow and long, it’s nice if you want to do laps. We went down for a bit this afternoon, I didn’t take my phone so I will have to get a picture tomorrow. It’s partially shaded so that’s a plus as well.

Outside the smell is still strong from the seaweed but I don’t notice it inside. I’m not sure how long or if you get used to it outside too. I know people get used to some pretty strong odors. I have been in a lot of homes in my job and there are people out there do not seem to notice the smell of old urine Human or otherwise inside their home that I can smell outside the door.

We got a couple of bicycles today to facilitate our movements on the island. It’s nice that they decrease the time it takes to get places and is still a bit of exercise. This morning we rode around a little and then stopped off at the bakery and grocery store. While I recommend trying the local foods when you travel, being able to cook your own food helps cut costs and has a comfort factor. It’s also fun to shop places where they have different kinds of food. Sometimes it’s the same as back home, sometimes the brands are different and sometimes the food is not anything like what you see at the local grocery store. They do cow’s foot soup here, our driver yesterday said it was his favorite. I like to try the different types of sausages you find in different countries. They are usually pretty safe when it comes to food. Not much but the spices change, occasionally the meat, but if you don’t like them that much mustard and/ or BBQ sauce will make them edible. They’re usually good though. Kitchens are also a plus because you will have a fridge for cold drinks and a way to make hot water for tea and coffee. Emily and I don’t always get up at the same time so it’s nice to sit and drink coffee or tea quietly without having to leave the room. It slows things down in the morning.

The Rainbow Grill and Bar is hands down the fastest food we’ve gotten so far. It was good too. It’s right on the ocean, there wasn’t much of a seaweed smell, it seems to be in pockets that move around. It probably gets dispersed with the winds, today sustained winds of 22-24 mph. The forecast is showing a lot of chances for rain next week. We are getting close to the rainy/ hurricane season here. Starts in June. It’s also lobster season next month.

We rode our bikes down for dinner and we looked around a little, we made it down to the split area. It’s really not that far on bikes. When you ride east you get to feel the wind resistance. The island isn’t very wide so it’s usually only a couple blocks before you have to turn. I think there is only about five blocks wide maybe six. The roads here are not well marked and a lot of them dead end. Especially east west.

It’s on the noisy side here. Things bang a lot. The wind must be blowing things around, trees rustling strongly and scraping noises.

Good morning folks! I’ve gone through my videos from yesterday and have some shots I grabbed for your enjoyment. The quality is probably iffy since it’s from the old camera. I’m leaving the filtered lens on the new GoPro for now. I may switch since we plan on doing more snorkeling than I will be diving.

A little advice, bug spray is great when it’s on and hasn’t been rinsed off in the water or from sweating. When you have lost your protect or a sneaky mosquito has infiltrated your domicile and gets a free meal make sure you have some hydrocortisone cream! The mosquitoes love me at home and abroad, I seem to be delicious everywhere.

Nice relaxing morning

Today I did see a sign to not put Toilet Paper in the toilet here. I was going to mention that I hadn’t in my post today. I like to give our readers a bit of a heads up on what to expect when traveling somewhere new. That issues is something that takes a little getting used to. We didn’t utilize many options so. I’m not sure how common it is here, always try and pay attention though when using facilities in foreign countries to avoid any embarrassment.

Our travel habits and practices (thanks Emily, I was drawing a blank) have been evolving since I have been Traveling with Emily. One of the things that we decided to do was make choices that help the locals more than big corporations, it seems that one of our other practices is helpful in that. We don’t use big travel companies that plan and set everything up for you in advance, while I suspect it’s true across the spectrum those companies take in some cases 40% right off the top for your excursions. The more local you get when scheduling your excursions the more the guide gets. A lot of them subcontract with resorts and smaller local tour companies. Sometimes you can get burned going with the local guy so you should go with your comfort level as you move away from the guy on the street selling you an excursion. You should be fairly safe going through your resort if the one you have chosen is decent. Remember when booking excursions ask what is and isn’t included. Find out what you should and shouldn’t bring with you. Think about having good water shoes and a dry bag if you are going near water.

Cave tubing was fun, the water here is so clear and cool. I will try and do those pictures in the morning. A whole day trip, in a canoe or kayak would be more comfortable than the tubes. I barely got wet while in the tube. Some people like floating in a tube, I don’t. It was interesting to see little round holes in the ceiling from the bats and water. When the water was high and something like a log would pole the ceiling the water would make an indentation that the bats later used to roost in. The bat urine is acidic and deteriorates the limestone and every time they fly out their wings carve a little more out until it’s perfectly round and sized to their wings. They also use their feces to line the hole to stop the water from filtering through. We had lunch at the restaurant the guide Dion was in cahoots with. Food was good and not overly expensive. Dion was an excellent guide, request him if you stay at Cahal Pech for all your excursions.

Rules of the road here are pretty lax, not a lot of speed limit signs. The cops will pass you while doing 70 miles an hour and you can then jump in behind them and keep on going. You do get slowed down though as every now and again they have speed humps that are good sized.

Water taxi was kind of a long ordeal. It definitely made it feel like a travel day. The drive wasn’t bad especially with the stop for our excursion. You have to get tickets, sit and wait, get in line (do so early so you can sit up front and on the side they recommend, today the left), then wait on line for a long time and then ride the boat for what they say is about 45 minutes. It seems longer because every time you see land after you’ve been going for a while they go around it. Golf cart taxis are easy as they wait for you.

We made it to the Caye, the seaweed stinks. A lot. It also doesn’t look good or like we will get a lot of risky do whatever we want snorkeling from shore. We do have stuff set up so that will be good and we can add some probably since it is the low season. I figure we will get used to the smell and all our stuff will smell like it by the time we leave here. Too bad for the people on the plane home! We should be good and immune to it by then.

The place we are staying at has excellent air conditioning! Very nice place, not very centrally located thou. We are a couple blocks from a grocery store so that’s good and we have a kitchen. I’m really looking forward to not having to eat out and wait on slow kitchen staff, I swear the restaurant at Cahal Pech did a lot of one plate at a time cooking. There was a lot of people pre-ordering their food for scheduled times.

Belize City looks like it’s growing and becoming more prosperous. A lot nicer buildings than along the trip from San Ignacio. It will be overly touristy before long. I’m thinking the same about Caye Caulker, from the little I have seen so far there is growth taking place, it will be the next Cancun or something. They both have the seaweed.

Hello All: This may be a short post. We had a long day and I’m running out of energy. We left our hotel in San Ignacio this morning and took an hour drive to do a cave tubing trip. It was pretty fun but shorter than I expected. We had to hike for about half an hour carrying our tubes on a path through the woods, then the float trip took about the same amount of time. The river was beautiful! The entrance to the cave had deep blue, super clear water and we dove off a boulder into it. That was probably my favorite part. We floated through a cave with some interesting formations and saw some adorable little bats roosting upside down on the ceiling. I don’t love floating in a tube. I’d rather be on a paddle board. If I were going to do the trip over again, I’d leave the tube behind and just hike and swim the trail. Our guide offers half day and all day trips that include spelunking and swimming in a cenote, which would be awesome. If we’d had an extra day in San Ignatio, I might have done the half day trip.

We ate lunch at the tour place then our driver drove like a crazy person to get us to the water taxi for the 3pm trip. Traffic rules either don’t exist here or are not followed, even by the police. It was nice to make the taxi though, so I won’t complain.

The water taxi ride was hot and long, and we made it to Caye Caulker sweaty and tired. There are no cars here so we got a golf cart taxi to take us to our hotel. Our apartment is really nice, which is good because we may spend a lot of time here. The beaches are covered in sargassum seaweed. It’s thick and smells like crab legs that someone left overnight in the garbage. The whole island smells bad. There definitely won’t be any swimming off the beach. We have some snorkel and diving tours booked and there is a pool so hopefully we will have enough to do.

I found some pictures that other people had posted online of the ATM cave that we did yesterday so I’m going to post those. I think Bill has some pictures of our float trip today.

Howdy folks! Today we don’t have many pictures from our caving experience. I did grab a few of some farming activities here and a Teakwood farm. The fields are old orange groves they removed all the trees and scraped them down and will plant corn or beans on. The dirt looks hard and lacking nutrients. According to the guide he said it’s beautiful dirt when the rains come next month.

The pictures yesterday you may have seen some smoke in the background, that smoke is part of the haze here from the slash and burn farming. They do just that then plant as quickly as possible before the rains come and the jungle takes back over.

Our guide from today is supposed to be sending me some pictures of the caves, if he does I will post them.

Now for the reviews. We have decided that the Monday to Friday being located here in San Ignacio was just the right amount of time for a town like this for us. It is fairly good sized with the twin city as part of the area. It is just spread out when it comes to walking here. There is the little area by the market but after that everything seems randomly placed. Our restaurant last night was a couple blocks up and then down from the main drag and there wasn’t much else around to indicate there was a good restaurant there. That means you will be walking a lot with minimal payoff. You may find good stuff or you may forget where you saw good stuff. On one hand it’s nice because it’s not super touristy and on the other an nice centralized area would be nice for more touristy stuff. The other thing we noticed is that it’s poor here more so than expected. The poor probably won’t change much but tourism will change how some of it looks in the future. Our guide today did say that the tourist industry can be a good place for a job “if done right”. I find that to be a positive. There is stuff to do and if you were wanting to maybe do the drinking with locals finding a place closer to the market would be advisable, also if you don’t want to walk down the hill or pay for taxis. Taxi rides are $5 USD each way. If you are going to just be jumping off from San Ignacio for excursions in this area it doesn’t matter where you stay.

Cahal Pech Village Resort was a good option overall for us, it was a good price and things are clean. I will complain about the cabana as it does not do well with the A/C and today upon our return from the cave tour we found the cleaning ladies left the sliding door open a crack and the bathroom door open that had the shower window open so all the dehumidification was lost we had developed over the last few days. A note about the sliding door, it is not the door they lock to keep people out, there is a side door that the room key opens. It does open to a screen porch. We didn’t have any problems during our stay so far but I would probably stay in the main building if I was to come here again if anyone else wants to come. I could do without the music they play at the bar, it’s not a big area but they have the volume of a dance club and you can hear it in the cabanas as well as the building. They do turn it off or down around 9pm.

The staff are friendly but they are not as attentive in the restaurant as a decent restaurant back in the states. We got our own water refills most the time, you have to ask for table salt and pepper. Servers don’t refill tables besides their own which is inefficient and a simple way to make customers feel tended to. They are laid back here but at times it seems too much. Remember when traveling that other cultures do things a little different. They don’t rush you out here but sometimes I want my bill so I can settle up and leave. The food has been okay overall but nothing special. Prices are cheap for some stuff but then not any cheaper than back home with less volume and quality. For dinner you are looking at $15-20 and a small breakfast is $9 for and average. Lunch $10-15. Now if you want rice and beans all the time, which the local way you can go cheaper. Some of your tours come with lunch so take that all into consideration when deciding on meal plans or all inclusive offerings.

I do want to make mention of some differences I have noticed that you should take into account when traveling and going to ruins or sacred sights. Here we are climbing all over stuff and touching things wearing whatever. I will say that it’s good and bad. These things will only last so long doing that with a lackadaisical attitude. The injuries will put a damper on that sooner or later. Also dress codes in different places is something to think about, here I’m wearing shorts, in Peru they want men to be respectful and wear long pants. I was lucky in Peru as I had my Columbia pants with the zip off and on legs. I don’t think that it was all the sights but I do believe Machi Picchu was.

I tried out the Neutrogena Beach sunscreen today in the pool after we got back. It smells nice, it’s a little greasy going on though not as bad as the Coppertone. Once in the water I didn’t notice anymore and it wasn’t when I got out.

I’m also trying some RealTree Fishing Guide shirts, the bright blue one I wore the other day and a gray one. I have to say they are excellent for this type of weather. They are lightweight and they dry fast. They are a good match with the above mentioned pants. I think that Columbia has some guide shirts as well, I may have to try them and finish out my hot weather travel wardrobe. Anything that cuts weight going in the bag is a plus and they still look good after being packed.

I’m mostly ready for our move to the ocean. I have my bag pack I just need to round up personal stuff in the morning after breakfast. The tubing trip will be a nice end to the jungle experience. I know this is the low season and it’s hot before the rains come next month, this is a good time to be here. They do get a party crowd from the way it sounds during the high season. If you’re going to come, the last two weeks of May is when you want to be here.

Be good or at least good at it!

Emily

We had a really awesome day! This morning at 8am, we left for a tour of the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave. We were not allowed to take pictures although our guide said he would send Bill pictures this evening. Maybe we’ll get some that way.

We had a half hour hike on a trail through the woods to get to the cave. There were little lizards all over the place. The cave has a river running through it, so we had to swim through pretty frosty water to enter the cave. A little over half of the trip was spent exploring the cave through the river. Sometimes it was ankle deep and sometimes chest deep.

The cave was amazing! There were all kinds of different rock formations. Some of them looked like folds of fabric on the cave ceiling. Lots of them sparkled. We saw a bat.

The most fun part of the cave was the amount of marginally dangerous climbing they let us do. The rocks were slippery, but we climbed over boulders, through small cracks in the walls and high up into the cave. It was a fairly technical/physical climb where a fall could have at least meant a trip to the ER. On our way out of the cave, our guide took us through very narrow passages where you had to position your neck to slide through the narrowest parts. No tour company in the US would ever let people do the kind of climb we did today. At one point, they had roped a sketchy metal ladder to the side of a rock wall and had us climb up that. The feeling here seems to be that if you choose to go spelunking and climb up a boulder and something bad happens, you made a choice and that’s on you. Americans have turned lawsuits into a pastime so now we don’t get to do anything fun. Plus, there are a lot of stupid people who do stupid things and ruin everything for everyone else.

The Maya used the upper chambers of the cave as ritual sites. They believed that caves were openings to the underworld so they used caves to take a lot of drugs and make offerings to some unfriendly gods. We saw lots of pottery that had been used in offerings and the remains of people who had been sacrificed. Archeologists have also found blood-letting tools but we didn’t see any of those.

You can’t take pictures in the cave because at least three different times tourists have dropped cameras on artifacts they were photographing and broken things. One of the skulls had two big holes in it from cameras that had been dropped. After the third time, relevant authorities banned all cameras from the cave. Now they kick you out if you get caught smuggling in glasses with a camera attached or any other clandestine device.

We had an hour drive to the cave, which gave us time to see a lot of Mennonite farms. Mennonites have recently colonized large parts of Central America and are using the land for industrial agriculture. I just read a NatGeo article recently about this phenomenon in Guatemala. The Mennonites wear traditional clothing, drive buggies with horses but use tractors, combines and chemicals produced by Monsanto for farming. That seems contradictory. There are tensions between the Mennonites and local populations for a number of reasons.

After we got back, Bill went swimming and I laid on the bed doing absolutely nothing, which was really nice. We’ve had early mornings, at least for me, and I’m sore from all the climbing I’ve been doing. It has cooled off this evening so I’m on the screened deck with a cup of tea and some chocolate while I do this blog post.

Tomorrow morning we are doing a cave tubing tour then heading to our second destination at Caye Caulker. We’ve done everything we wanted to do in the San Ignacio area so I’m looking forward to the next location on the beach.

Hopefully Bill will get some pictures of our cave adventure!

Today is a beautiful Sunny day in Belize! We started out with a tour of Xunantunich. Yesterday I forgot to link my title to my a specific reference in my blog, so that item has been covered here for today and I will mention that yesterday’s leg day was all the climbing we did at Cahal Pech with the steep steps, today was a bit more. I can say going down the hill hits my calf muscles a bit different than I’m used to.

The views from Xunantunich (lady or maiden of the rock) were fantastic, you can see Guatemala from the top. It’s only a short walk from the ruins themselves. The border is patrolled though. Our guide said the Xunantunich is a more recent name, the Mayans called something else according to the guide but I don’t remember what and the internet tells me that they don’t know what it was. Our guide had some weak jokes and maybe his divine mountain story was made up. The internet can’t be wrong??

We had a small group, 6 of us plus the guide. They spaced us out from other groups so we got alone time on the different structures. By the time we were finishing a group caught up with us. It could have been due to an extended time on the sacrificial structure where Emily got to have a good conversation with a couple we met, the lady was native to France. She was not the only one having good conversation, the video blogger we met yesterday was chatting with a gal in our group. It was her first trip out of the states. She was enjoying the trip and it didn’t sound like she was having much difficulty. I think everyone that can travel to another country should. You can learn so much about the world and gives you a new perspective on people in general. You meet so many people, travelers who are willing to share tips and experiences with you and locals who seem to always know so much about their country and they will tell you about it with great pride.

We had to take a ferry across a small river and it was hand cranked, I’m not sure why the haven’t built a small bridge there as the clearance would be the same as the cables for the ferry. All I could think about going across was if they’ve ever had a “Mizzura boat ride” as Josey would say.

This morning I tried out a new sunscreen from Neutrogena. We love the regular Ultra Sheer 70 spf. That stuff will keep you from getting fried on vacation! Today I tried the Sheer Zinc 50spf, I did not burn so that’s a positive. I didn’t care for the white residue it left on me. I applied it and rubbed it in and it still became white in places. I leaned my elbows on my shorts while I was talking to our driver and it left prints on my shorts. It will probably be okay for being in the water but otherwise I will probably skip buying this one again. I do have two others that I will try out from Neutrogena. One is a beach protection and the other is mineral ultra sheer. Both are also 50spf. I don’t burn as easy as some and thought I would try a lower spf. I know so far the beach is going to be greasy, I don’t think as bad as the Coppertone sticks though, which is probably helpful in the water. Zinc sunscreen also seems to make the sweat bead up more and not evaporate as fast.

If anyone is thinking about traveling coming up and haven’t gotten your Hynes Eagle 44 liter bag, last I looked they were out of stock. For those who like to cart your bag especially when standing in line, this trip Emily is using an add on wheeled cart she got for hers. I usually leave mine on my back but it’s a good sized bag and when you’re standing in Customs for extended time it’s nice for her to take it off as it probably weighs 1/3 to 1/2 her body weight.

Since I am on bags I will add a shoutout to my LocTote Industrial Bag Co. bag. Our cabana does not have a safe for our passports and what not. I’m using the bag since it is designed to decrease theft. I used it for my personal bag along with my carry on, I wish I had gotten the bigger size. I believe mine is the smallest they offered and seems nice for carrying around to the beach and such as Emily does with a similar bag. It’s not a good size for a personal bag for the , headphones, plane as I packed a few snacks, my GoPro and my liquids bag and it was full! In the room I locked it to the bed frame. While it’s not super secure as a pair of bolt cutters would get it and if someone wants to take the time and effort to remove the bed and tear apart the frame to get it, they will have it. It still is nice to have a place to keep stuff a bit safer.

Our afternoon we spent in the pool and lounging. We had talked about going to the chocolate factory and we tried to walk there but the map wasn’t real clear. I had to take screenshots of it because it seems US Cellular is unable to provide me with service here in town with a tower next to the hotel, they were however able to whilst we were a mile from Guatemala at Xunantunich. Somehow I misses a street and we ended up downtown. It worked out okay as I decided I was really hungry and early supper was a good thing. We got sent to a restaurant a couple blocks off the main drag by a tour place guy who was trying to get us to do some tours. Erva’s on 4th st. It was a very nice place. They had open air and A/C seating. We both ate food common in Belize, I had a creole dish with seafood and Emily had a coconut shrimp dish. Very pleased with the food, it was recommended by who I assume was the owner and chef.

I was full after dinner but I still felt like a little ice cream. We both got a little chocolate ice cream in a cup. It was okay, there were crystals in it, but in this heat you should expect it.

We rode in a sketchy taxi back to the hotel. I was surprised that he made it, he didn’t take the most direct route up the hill. He came up a longer but a little less steep route, it was still $5 USD /$10 BZE. The money conversion here is super easy as it’s 2 of theirs for 1 of ours. They all take dollars and give you change in their currency.

Tomorrow we are going to do a tour that isn’t going to allow cameras, I will guess that it is due to the sacred nature of the caves and it being the final resting place for persons who were sacrificed.

Hello All! I had a slightly rough start to our vacation but things are going much better now. Our travel day really wiped me out and I felt a little sick all day. Yesterday, I had really good day until afternoon when I developed a migraine while swimming. I felt it starting and should have taken medicine but I was swimming and hoped it wouldn’t get worse. I should have taken medicine because I ended up incapacitated for the rest of the evening.

I’m much better today and we have done some really fun stuff. Yesterday we went to the Cahal Pech ruins, which are right by our hotel. There are no rules or security there so you can wander around and climb on stuff all you want. I felt like we needed some Indiana Jones music. I thought about having Bill take a picture of me swinging from a vine, but it wouldn’t be quite the same as using a whip to escape from villains after you’ve stolen an artifact.

After the ruins, we ate lunch and went for a walk downtown. Our hotel is on a hill and it’s quite a trek in the heat to get downtown. It is scorching hot here! Fortunately, there are taxis to bring you back up the hill. We went to a small market and stopped at a few shops. We also identified some restaurants where we might eat supper tonight. There is supposed to be really good fruit here so I brought a mango and some kiwi at the market, but the mango was sour. I can get sour mangos in the US so that was disappointing.

This morning, we took a tour to Mayan ruins at Xunantunich. They are the closest large ruins to where we are and it was a great trip! We climbed to the top of some huge temples and found bats roosting in one of them. The views were spectacular and we were only a 10 minute walk from Guatemala. No one was guarding anything so it would have been easy to cross over. Our guide kept picking leaves from aromatic plants. There was an all spice tree, wild cilantro, lemon grass and several other things that are used in traditional medicine and cooking here. I met a woman from France who married an American and now lives in Denver. We spoke a bit of French but her English is much better than my French.

There are almost no safety apparatus on the ruins here. No rails, guard ropes, nothing. The United States would never let people climb on the ruins we explored today and yesterday. It’s wild! Apparently the Belizean government did limit how far people could climb a couple years ago after three people fell off a temple and ended up with severe fractures, but everything is back open now, still with no safety rails. It would be a lawsuit paradise in the US. It’s just survival of the fittest here.

We spent some time in the pool this afternoon then walked to town. We wanted to tour a chocolate factory but couldn’t fine it so we ate an early dinner at a nice restaurant where we got creole food. Bill’s was spicy and better than mine but I had really good fresh vegetables so I won’t complain about it. We got ice cream for dessert.

Tomorrow we’ve book what sounds like an awesome cave tour where we get to swim through the cave and see Mayan artifacts. We’ve talked to people who did it and they said it was awesome so we are pretty excited about it. That will take up most of our day.

Pictures are below. Hope all of you are doing well!

Hello everyone from Belize!! Our first full day in San Ignacio at the Cahal Pech resort https://www.cahalpech.com

Our resort is on a hill overlooking the city, technically two, they call them the twin towns. The other is Santa Elena. We are what I would call a cabin with a thatched roof. It reminds me of a cabin that I stayed in with my family a couple of times when I was a kid up in Clear Lake, Iowa. The inside is actually finished though. It’s rustic but the doors are better than our hotel in Costa Rica. The A/C is not that great though. By evening it’s having a hard time keeping the vaulted ceiling of that cooled. It does cool off after a while again though. We debated seeing about a room in the actual hotel building as it would probably cool better.

It is hot here, temperatures in the afternoon are going to be around 100 and there is a bit of humidity. This morning it felt reminiscent of Cartagena. This is the off season here for tourists so things are not super busy. Next month the hurricane season starts, as does lobster season.

There is a lot of interesting electrical work on the property, they have run a bunch of lanterns along the sidewalks with just romex sometimes buried sometimes not with connections that are just twisted and taped, no wire nuts, no boxes at junctions and no conduit. The plumbing has some issues, when you shower after a while the sink starts to bubble and then the shower drains really slow. They do seem to be doing some work around the building so I don’t know if these things will be improved as well.

The resort is clean, the staff are friendly we have a nice patio that is screened in with chairs and a hammock. The room has a decent couch. There is hot and cold running water which doesn’t always happen in warm climates. Cool water for evening shower and warm in the morning seems to work. To Emily’s disapproval there is no way to heat water for tea. There is a tv, though we haven’t tried it. There is a ceiling fan but Emily’s little travel fan is a better option I think, you can get air moving where you want it so think about packing one on your next trip if you don’t already.

Today we started off with breakfast at the restaurant here at the hotel. It wasn’t bad. We have also had two evening meals and they were okay as well. It’s not a fancy place, it’s open air like a lot of restaurants in the area. They could use some fans for when there isn’t a breeze and the bar could turn down the bass and volume on the music they play. I think they are trying to create a fun atmosphere around the bar and pool but the rest of the place doesn’t have that vibe. The restaurant is called the Cooling Rack and if you ask me it comes off as a place that would fit in a small town square with fake ivy that needs dusted on the shelving unit by the cash register where they sell some local woman’s jams or baked goods. They do have a few interesting things on the menu like the chocolate balsamic pork chops I tried last night. They would have been better if they used some Iowa chops, for those not from Iowa, Iowa chops are around half to three quarters of an inch thick. Most the meat here is not thick cut, though outside of the states it rarely is, we tend to serve and eat large portions compared to other places. They did serve two though, a single thicker one would probably be juicier.

After breakfast we went down the road a short ways and visited the Cahal Pech Mayan Ruins. We were unsupervised, you pay your ten dollars and they let you just go roam around and climb whatever you feel like. No safety signs, no real rules were given to us other than where the restrooms were located. They only workers in the area were the groundskeepers. They are not very big when it comes to ruins, but they are big enough for a good leg workout climbing to the top of them.

We talked to a couple from California where were on break from college, he’s in an MBA program and she’s in law school. We offered to take a picture of a gal from Belize and a male companion from Memphis Tennessee. There was only one other couple there but they just said hello in passing. It’s always interesting to meet people when on vacation. The guy from California gave us good reviews for our planned trip on Thursday.

After the ruins we walked down (like a 13% grade, I checked it with the level on my phone) to the Cozy restaurant and bar. The food wasn’t bad there. We stopped because we were hungry and I needed some food. I ordered a Cuban but I got a chicken club. The place was interesting because the open areas had wood slats around the bottom of the railing then above was all chain link fence. We sat and wondered about if we should have tried the place across the street where they were cooking on half a 55 gallon drum on the sidewalk, it seemed popular with the guys in white uniform shirts, maybe police or security guards.

The other topic for conversation was “what part of visiting a country makes you feel like you actually seen that country?” It was also framed as what activity do you have to do or what do you have to see to not leave disappointed. When we went to Jamaica we really didn’t see Jamaica, we seen the resort for the most part and passed through the rest.

We sort of decided that we really need to be able to get out and walk around and see local people going about their business. It is otherwise a really hard question to answer easily. What are your thoughts, feel free to comment or email one of us. Do you need to visit every town, go to every scenic area, do you need to spend a certain amount of time there or is there an activity that you have to do?

After lunch and pondering the big life questions we finished our walk down the hill, it was not all 13%, and went downtown to a few shops and then to the market. The shops were standard tourist money vacuums. Since it’s the slow season it wasn’t very busy. The market was full of fresh fruits and vegetables. There were a few tourist places and several clothing vendors. Our driver yesterday said that on Saturday it’s really busy everyone who has something to sell shows up and it’s like a flea market.

We took a cab back up the hill to the hotel and went swimming for a while. Emily developed a headache, she won’t be posting tonight and wanted me to let you know. She says it’s not too bad but the iPad screen wasn’t helping.

While in the pool we met an Air Force veteran who is semi retired he said. He is currently traveling the world doing a travel video blog on his YouTube channel Morbley Travels. I chatted with him for a while about blogging and sharing travel with people. I watched a few of his videos including one he did about Caye Caulker snorkeling. I think we may be going to the same place next week.

I don’t have a lot of pictures yet. Emily took more today than I did. I’m going to go around and get some of the hotel tomorrow afternoon. Cahal means place Pech mean ticks by the way. So Cahal Pech is the place of ticks!

Our first flight took us from St. Louis (our normal) to Ft. Worth-Dallas, we arrived a little early. They put us in the last row where jet fuel exhaust smell is strong. Things went very smoothly getting to the airport and to our gate. We used the American Airlines app to check in Sunday night after getting to the hotel. We had our boarding passes before we got to the airport so there was no lines for us at the ticket counter and we have TSA Pre-check so we breezed through to our gate. We also had to use the VeriFLY app to put out Covid information in before we could get our passes. It takes your vaccination status or negative test results so you don’t have that to deal with at the ticket counter and you can get electronic boarding passes.

Speaking of apps, we will try and use the Homeland Security approved app for our Customs Border Control entry process on our return to the United States. I used an older version coming back from Peru and it worked slick, I have high hopes for it again. The app is Mobile Passport Control. It would be nice if foreign countries had this type of app.,

Dallas airport was a bit of an experience, The tram/train deal was down so we had a 20 minute walk to our gate. We made our flight with plenty of time but I wouldn’t have wanted to be someone with a close connection time. The moving sidewalks were also not working in areas.

Our flight had some turbulence shortly before getting to Belize. A few big ones!! Overall not bad for a travel day. Customs and Covid stuff made it take an hour to get out of the airport and they didn’t even look at all of the paperwork Emily had printed off. Our driver was worried and called the resort just to check if there was a change of plans.

Our driver Ian, was a nice fella, father of three boys. He told is that some places pay better than others but it still doesn’t seem like enough to cover cost of living. He had a lot of good information for us but right now I’m drawing a blank. I haven’t eaten much since breakfast. We have made it to the resort. I have WiFi now, my phone is not connecting, that’s for later, now time for food!