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!

Hi all!

We are in the process of getting ready for our trip to Belize!! We are excited to bring some new adventures to our blog as we experience them.

We will be spending some time on the mainland in the western part of the country in a town called San Ignacio. It’s in the western part close to the border of Guatemala. I’m drawing a blank on the hotel we are going to be staying at, I will provide a link and the name after we get there. So far we haven’t set a schedule for what we are going to do, we’re looking at seeing some Mayan ruins, tubing or canoeing in some caves and visiting the local market.

After our time on the mainland we are going to Caye (key) Caulker which I believe is a 45 minute boat ride off shore. We will be “Movin’ on up” and staying at Weezie’s. We will be doing a snorkeling trip out to the “Blue Hole”. I debated doing a dive there but from what I’ve seen inside the hole isn’t that interesting. It’s also a long day, we will have to leave at 5:30 in the morning. The company (Frenchie’s) that is taking us actually provides breakfast so that gets them points. We won’t be in a rush to get ready and get food before. I will be doing a couple two tank dive days, one day that Emily will come snorkeling with us.

It should be a fantastic 14 days, or at least 12 days in Belize since travel days are usually not fantastic. I will be using my sound deadening headphones. I will do a review on them. I tried Emily’s last trip for a short time and it was nice.

We are anticipating the possibility of a seaweed problem while there. Currently it’s pretty bad in Cancun Mexico and we will be just south of there. We do know it is in the water around Belize but how much it will affect our trip remains to be decided. It was hard to find information about it. Whenever we looked it up the positive travel stuff beat it out in the search engine.

Hopefully everyone is signed up for automatic email updates! We look forward to sharing our experience with you all! Hope you all are well and enjoy the posts!