Trips, Pics, and Tales

Just a quick getaway. Sometimes that’s what we need isn’t it? As a person who loves to travel, a four day weekend screams to me "plan a trip!"  Some people look at a long weekend as a time to catch up on things around the house, or maybe a time to just hang out at home and relax. Not me. The first thing I do is start checking airfares and bouncing from one website to the next to see where we can go and how many days more than those four days Keith can take off from work. Fourth of July, 2008 we did just that. A spontaneous trip to Jamaica. We’d been there once before and it was ok. We really didn’t do much or see much and our hotel at that time was just ok. But this time I’d become a travel junkie. And the internet had become available to obsessively plan trips! I could check out every hotel on the island if I wanted to! Jamaica became our choice because of the short, no connection flight as well as great prices for the holiday weekend. We wanted to stay at an all incl

The end of a vacation is always bittersweet. The end of this vacation to Belize was particularly hard for me. I’d really enjoyed Belize. Even more than I’d thought I would. I enjoy travelling, I love vacations, but this one was perfect! From beginning to end.  I knew in the planning stage that Belize had everything we were looking for in a great vacation – it had the ruins, it had the beach, it had the snorkeling. We could relax or we could go on great excursions. We did it all, and yet we were totally relaxed. It was perfect to start our vacation in San Ignacaio and end in Ambergris Caye.   But for the actual vacation to meet our expectations - now how often does that happen?  This one did! Not only did we get to do some spectacular things, like going to Tikal and the ATM cave. We got to see amazing reefs while snorkeling and I got to scuba for the first time. We met wonderful people and stayed at chaming lodges. We ate great food and had perfect weather. There was more... For

Our last night…part of our package at Portofino in Belize included a Sunset Cruise, but it had been cancelled twice now. Once because there was no sign of a sunset happening. It had rained and when it cleared up it was cloudy. And the second time there weren’t enough people to schedule the trip. Tonight they’d take us one way or another. So, it was cloudy and apparently only one other couple was booked for the cruise. Excellent! Every excursion we went on was either just Keith and I, or with only one other couple. This was one of the benefits of travelling during low season! We went back into town on the water taxi and found out our sunset cruise would be on a beautiful catamaran! Nice! There was no sunset to speak of, it was a cloudy night, but it was still a great evening out on the sea. One of the guides told us all about the history of Ambergris Caye and Belize on the way out. We had some rum punch, listened to music and just hung out and relaxed. We sailed out to Hol Ch

Snorkeling had been great…but all it was doing was making me want more! Ecologic Divers offers a course called Discover Scuba Diving or DSD for short. Today would be the day. We were going to go all in. Of all the trips we’d taken to the Caribbean and to Mexico we’d never tried to scuba, but something about Belize and the reefs here was just screaming to me! It was time to SCUBA! DSD is a mini course in Scuba diving. It’s not a certification course, but it would count towards certification. And you can use that course for up to two weeks of diving I believe. So, back to the dive shop and I was relieved that Charlie was once again our instructor. By this, our third trip with him, I was quite comfortable with him and felt we knew each other fairly well. We filled out a bunch of paperwork and watched a training video. We got our equipment and spent a good amount of time learning all about it, how to use the equipment, how to put it on, what the gauges meant - it was a thorough lesson.

Ambergris Caye…it’s an interesting place to be! As I mentioned in some previous posts, we chose a resort to the north of the town of San Pedro. Portofino is only accessible by water taxi and it’s about a fifteen minute boat ride to get there. But when you get into the heart of the island the pace of life picks up. It’s still a sleepy island town by all means. But there’s much more hustle and bustle! The first thing we noticed was the primary means of transportation are golf carts. There’s a few taxi vans, but most people are driving golf carts. This is certainly unique! There’s a certain charm about this for sure. Our main reasons for going into town were to get to the dive shops, but that only brought us to the docks…to eat lunch and dinner once or twice and the obligatory souvenir shopping. We didn’t get a chance to really see any of the other hotels in the area. In my obsessive research before the trip, there were quite a few that looked nice, but now that I was there I

Mexico Rocks! We had an afternoon snorkel trip out to the reef area called Mexico Rocks. This site is close to Portofino. We actually could have taken the kayaks at the resort and gone out on our own. Several people staying there did this. However our package included the guided snorkel trip, so that’s what we decided to do. Charlie from Ecologic Divers picked us up on the Portofino dock and off we went! He was the guide we had for our Hol Chan, Shark Ray Alley tour so he was familiar with us and we were comfortable with him. Again, we were the only two on the trip so once again, personalized tour! Mexico Rocks is different from the previous snorkel site in that it’s filled with smaller fish. The reef is more colorful and the fish are much more colorful. Here you don’t see the rays, eels, barracudas and sharks but you see hundreds of varieties of the small, beautiful tropical reef fish.  I don't have too many pictures of the fish though...those little guys move fast!  I

Imagine opening your eyes and seeing this.... Imagine that! I woke up early one morning and pulled back the cotton curtains to see if the sun had risen up above the sea yet, and this was what greeted me. I just had to grab my camera! I went out on our porch and sat there just in awe of the beauty of the place we were. How lucky we were to be here! How lucky to experience such beauty! I snapped a picture with my cell phone to send home to the kids. I wished they were here to share this moment with me. There were so many parts of this adventure that they would love, and yet so many parts that would be enjoyed so much more in a few more years. The timing just wasn’t quite right yet. I enjoyed this amazing sunrise alone…I didn’t wake up K yet. He wouldn’t quite appreciate the beauty of it the way I did. He was sound asleep still. He’d enjoy it in a picture. For me, my day was already perfect.

It has been years since we’ve snorkeled. Well, really snorkeled anyway. From the beginning of my research on Belize, the fact that the second largest barrier reef is right off the coast has grabbed my attention! I was so looking forward to snorkeling there! One site that also kept popping up in my research was Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley. To snorkel where there were sharks and sting rays! This vacation was becoming quite the adventure! Portofino uses Ecologic Divers and they were a wonderful dive outfit. They seemed to be highly conscious of the environment and they absolutely were not ones who chased after the rays to pick them up and pet them for that “picture moment”. Our guide was very respectful that we were in the marine world sharing it with them and not the other way around. Our first stop on our first snorkel trip was at Hol Chan, and our guide was Charlie. Little did we know how well we’d get to know him during the next few days! It was just my husband and I on this

This was it.  This was the place for me!  I thought I would miss the jungle.  The zillion stars in the sky at night.  The music of the cicadas as soon as the sun set.  The giant bamboo trees.  Sure, I missed it until I woke up and stepped out of our little thatched roof cottage and my toes hit the sand.  This would be a relax and do nothing day.  Could this vacation get any better?  It seems we planned the perfect combination of busy days, travel days and activity days.  Today was a relaxation day.  Although to me, even the activity days were more relaxing than any day not on vacation! We walked, barefooted as everyone seemed to be most of the time, up the steps to our outdoor dining for breakfast.  Portofino is a small resort so there were never too many people around at one time.  Also, people leaving for the day or for the morning on their excursions would eat earlier - not that we slept in.  It was a bit hot in the room, even with the air conditioner.  The rooms here are air cond