When traveling there are things that are outside your control and no amount of planning will keep you from the inevitable day where you are limited in what you can do. Today has been one such day. The weather was bad most of the day, it rained fairly significantly this morning and then pretty steadily in the afternoon. There were a few breaks when it stopped. Emily made it out to the bakery and we both walked down to the store for some dinner items this afternoon when it was coming to a stop. The roads looked like they were wet cement that was a little wet on top. People were still out, mostly locals on bikes and golf carts, the tourists were very limited on both. People ride pretty slow here so there wasn’t many with muddy rooster tails. A few though.

Emily is out on the dock getting some fresh air. It’s going to be dark soon so I opted to stay in, I have to use a lot of bug spray due to the mosquitoes affinity for me. I didn’t feel that the amount of time would be worth it.

We made the best of the day, we each spent some time reading and then we watched a movie, Central Intelligence. I thought it was funny with some action. Probably worth a watch if you like the Rock and Kevin Heart.

We are definitely ready for some excursions. The snorkeling and diving is supposed to be awesome. We tried not to schedule too much as we like some unstructured time to do what we want. Ocean swimming on our own doesn’t seem as possible as we’d like and there’s actually not a lot on the island to do besides party, eat and go back to the mainland for tours if you’re not going snorkeling or diving.

Since we’ve been here I’ve been offered what I assume is weed based on the smoking hand gestures that they use when they wave at me and and then make, a couple times. They don’t seem to offer Emily any. It sounds like Belize is working on legalizing it to some extent but the churches are fighting it.

There’s a lot of American type food options here, at restaurants and in the stores. There’s also a blend of Mexican, you see tacos, fajitas and nachos on menus a lot. Tonight we made spaghetti with Italian sausage. I think that Pasta and sauce is pretty common at the stores in Columbia and Costa Rica as well.

Wish us luck on being able to go snorkeling tomorrow! I’ve got my cameras charged up and ready. Hopefully we will get to see a lot of different sea life.

I had to buy a solution for my hair today. This morning we went to Frenchies Dive shop where we found out that our snorkel trip for tomorrow has been canceled. Apparently, there is some huge ocean swell coming in tomorrow and all boat trips are canceled. I booked a half day snorkel trip for us on Tuesday and Frenchies rescheduled our full day trip for Saturday so that will be okay. While we were out, I found a pretty headband to hold down my hair, so I don’t look quite so weird all the time. My hair is super curly here. I like the curls but not necessarily the Pigpen look.

Since we have another free day tomorrow, we are taking our bikes on a small ferry to second island that apparently used to be connected to the one we are on. There might be ocean swimming options there and it will be interesting to see a more vegetated part of the island.

Bill made delicious sausage, potatoes and onions for us for supper and we had a small cucumber, tomato salad with fresh grated cheese. It was really a good meal and we love being able to cook rather than eat out all the time. Eating out is fine once in a while, but it gets old and expensive. The grocery store is a short bike ride down the road, and I enjoy taking my bike and basket down to pick up whatever we need to finish out supper. The only downside was that the bakery was closed today so we didn’t get the chocolate donuts that we both wanted. Maybe tomorrow.

We swam for a while but I spent a lovely part of the day curled up on the sofa by the window reading my book. I was worried that we might be bored when I found out about the seaweed, but our apartment is really comfortable and the space is pretty and welcoming so that has made things much better. The apartment also has two floors, which has been great. Bill can keep the downstairs cool and I keep the upstairs warmer. I could live here without any trouble.

We are getting ready to watch a movie to finish out the day. Hopefully we’ll have more pictures soon.

It’s not super hot all the time, seem like in the afternoon it’s not as hot as in the morning. At least when we go to the pool it’s not hot. Up at Cahal Pech the sun was hot, the air was hot and the concrete was hot on your feet. Here it’s not bad. In the morning riding bikes it is warm and I get to sweating fairly well by the time we get back. Going to the pool it’s almost too cool to swim.

One of Weezie’s employees was telling us that the seaweed should be done in two to three months for a while. He said that this end of the island is calmer and not so loud as closer to the split. He said Weezie’s is completely booked.

For those that don’t know, the split is an area of Caye Caulker that came about in 1961 by Hurricane Hattie. She came through and split the island into two, the north and south. The split is a recreational area and there’s a bar and grill there. There is no bridge so the only way across is by ferry, they will take you and your bike across for $5BZ. We are going to go across tomorrow morning and check out the north side. it’s just a channel as for the north side, it’s less developed according to the employee at Weezie’s. We will tell you more tomorrow.

We are enjoying our time in Belize. It’s not as action packed as Costa Rica was. We really didn’t plan Costa Rica to be that way it just happened. It was still relaxing. We are happy about the amount of time we spent on the mainland, before the trip we debated how much time we should devote to each location. The four nights got us plenty of time to get a feel for the area and do the things we wanted to do. Emily would like to do some more things there but we could have done them if we had know more about the options before we came. The island is pretty laid back. We would probably be doing more beach stuff if it were up to us but the seaweed and lack of sandy beaches changes that. We did some research on the Caye Caulker before coming but they only highlighted what you want to see and the seaweed was hard to find anything about after hearing about it in Cancun Mexico. Belize is just south of there. The reef we will be snorkeling and diving pretty much starts there and goes south. Belize Barrier Reef is part of the Mesoamerican barrier reef system the second largest reef in the world. It is a living reef currently. I was told that some of the corals are getting bleached out. The bleaching is from the rising water temperatures, the seaweed is from nitrogen run off from the United States into the gulf and possibly oil spill clean up.

We are looking at our options for December’s trip and possibly what doesn’t make that one we will do for our next May June. This December will probably be a little shorter due to scheduling, I work Christmas this year and I won’t request someone else work for me. For those who are interested in traveling with us we will be back by the 23rd.

If you think that you would like to travel with us but you feel we are too busy or do things that you are not interested in doing, you can still come. We will have things that you could join us in or we could help point you in a direction to do something different. Emily and I don’t always do the same things. Step outside your comfort zone and travel! You get to experience so much new stuff. We will help you get to where we are going to be and after that you can do whatever you want. We will probably look at doing an easier location since we will have less time. Get your passport or make sure it’s current and join us somewhere exotic!! If you want to join us in the summer we have more flexibility and can go in May wait until sometime in June. Let us know if you are interested. If you haven’t ever traveled and you want to do something simple we can work with that.

You are also free to just meet up with us if you choose to go on your own.

I’m not sure if Emily will do a post today or not, we rode bikes, swam in the pool and relaxed. She drank tea and read in her sunny spot. We ate all of our meals in the apartment. we’re going to watch a movie tonight.

Our kitchen is small and not well equipped. We did pick up a cheese grater and a spatula today to help the situation. The pans could be a bit bigger but we are making it work. It has been the case in the past in Cartagena. We bought and left a few things. Some of the stuff is decent and probably provided by the resort. The cheaper stuff is the stuff people find they need and get locally. Some things are just nice to have even if they are cheap. It does still cost you money, you will still save in the long run on food. We probably didn’t spend $25 US for the whole day’s worth of food. I definitely enjoy cooking and eating without the wind and the wait. It doesn’t hurt that if I cook Emily does clean up! Not a bad deal.

So a new bit of travel information to consider when traveling do snorkeling and diving. They do cancel trips due to the swells being to big. Our trip tomorrow is canceled and rescheduled hopefully for Saturday. Tomorrow we explore the other side of the split. All this wind we are getting here that if it was cold and back home sounds a lot like a blizzard.

Tonight we are going to watch a movie. I have a few saved onto my phone that we can watch or save for on the plane when there isn’t free entertainment on the plane. We also can use the Amazon Prime, Disney+ or other subscriptions we have though either my phone or Emily’s iPad, I have an adapter that will connect to the power port and then to HDMI. I also brought a short HDMI. I also have a Roku that I can travel with for our subscriptions. It’s nice to have and none of it takes up much room. You also don’t have to worry about passwords since they’re already stored. I also use a VPN on my phone.

Be safe, be good or be good at it!

So, the weather does weird things to my hair. I’ve never had it go fuzzy exactly like this. I look like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoons. It’s really dusty here so, I’m even dirty like Pigpen. Every time I go outside, this is what happens, so it’s not like I had a hair malfunction just one time. It’s super windy here and between the humidity and the wind, this is the result.

We had a slow day today but still got some useful stuff done. This morning, we rented bicycles, and we’ll have them for the entire trip. I love having a bike to ride! It’s a very convenient way to get around. It’s flat here and the roads are decent for bikes. It has a basket on the front that you can put groceries and other useful stuff in. I like to bike ride, so I’ll make good use of this.

We also got groceries for the next few days. Bill has stocked up on ham, sausage, bacon and eggs and I got bread, cheese and fruit. We also found a nice bakery and I had a cinnamon roll for dessert after supper.

I found a new book so I spent part of the morning and part of the afternoon reading on the sofa by the window. We’ve had some very active days so it was nice to have some down time to sit and read a book by one of my favorite authors. This afternoon, we tried out the pool. It’s really nice, and there aren’t many people here so we had it mostly to ourselves.

For supper, we rode our bikes down to the street along the water. There are a bunch of promising restaurants down there, and I’m especially excited to try the falafel bar. I love falafels and you can’t get good ones in Iowa. I’ll be surprised if you can get good ones here. Israelis make the best ones, but I don’t think there is a large population of Israelis here. There’s also a pasta place that makes homemade pasta that looks good. Otherwise, I’m planning to eat as much seafood as possible since it should be fresh here, although it’s possible that restaurants import their seafood from Thailand like everyone else – who knows. We ate at a restaurant on the beach tonight and I had some pretty good fish and chips.

It’s super windy here. I think Bill said it’s 24 mph tonight and we may get some storms. Hurricane season is next month so maybe it’s windy in preparation for that.

Bill has a few pictures that he’ll probably post soon. We don’t have anything planned tomorrow either but we start our snorkeling and diving tours on Monday. We several booked for the coming week. Everyone we talk to says this is the most spectacular diving and snorkeling they’ve ever done so we are excited about that!

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!