When getting off the plane in Belize I was hit with a humid ocean breeze that reminded me of Hawaii. But when I looked at the diversity around me Belize looked more like Kenya. I determined that if you threw Hawaii and Kenya, into some kind of world altering, bottle you would get Belize.
We were met at the airport by a driver who was taking us to our hotel ACROSS the country. Ok, that isn't as bad as it sounds seeing that the country is only like 80 km across. We were staying in San ignacio, Belize, which is a small town close to the border of Guatemala, at Crystal Paradise. And it wasn't really "in town" but instead up a bumpy road into the jungle.
We soon learned after arriving that we were deep in "birder" country. Birders are people who basically going looking for birds and do so at very early hours. I guess you could say: birds are to Belize what mammals are to Kenya.
We went to church on Sunday. The lady at the resort was able to find us an LDS service in English. Which I guess wasn't as hard as we thought. Seeing that Belize was a colony or commonwealth of England until 1981. English is still the language that Belizians are taught at school. But the languages used in the country vary from 29 dialects of Mayan to Spanish, English and Creole. Like I said, very diverse.
Church was in a small wooden building and we met some really nice new friends. We were suprised to see many foriegners have come to live in the country to help the people here.
After chruch we went horseback riding through the village of Cristo Ray to a waterfall. It was too cold that day but the waterfall was gorgeous. My horse, named Thunder, only took off at an almost uncontrollable running gallop once. At which time I shouted out " HOW DO I STOP?" Our horse guide Eduardo instructed me to pull tight on the rein. So this is how that works. Nice!
One of our favorite, and more relaxing, things that we did was called "cave tubing." It is like how is sounds: you get in an innertube and float through a cave. Way fun! That was preceded by our high flying act on the ziplines in the jungle. Seven ziplines (and lots of stairs) took us through a twenty minute ride through the tops of the jungle. Amazing!
So far I have about 12 mosquito bites. This is the jungle. A few scrapes and bruises and a run in with a Kill Bill (Keel Bill) Toucan, the national bird. The bird encounter had the whole family breaking out in the tune from "The Enchanted Tiki Room" at Disneyland. Meanwhile our cave tubing experience had singing the "Pirates of the Caribbean" theme song throughout it.
Even while out on my adventures I have not completely been able to leave Disneyland behind :)
