Belize!

Friday and it's cold, but sunny. Winter is trying to fight off spring for another day, but it will lose this battle. Six days from now we'll be on our connecting flight to a new destination - Belize.  Julie had talked about Belize this year; cave tubing, seeing Mayan ruins, hearing the howler monkeys and simply seeing something different. It was supposed to be our last full family trip, but our sons have jobs and vacation time comes at a premium so 9 days away wasn't in the cards. With delays in a few significant deals, state hockey tournaments and national hockey tournaments, it almost didn't happen at all.  Finally, with a couple of big things clearing I decided to look for possibilities.  Flights were easy - accommodations - not so much. After scouring sites, emailing, chatting and calling, it was apparent that planning a trip two weeks out was, well, poor planning. Ready to give up I called a travel agent with Adventure Life and after convincing her that I really was looking for a trip in 2016, not 2017, she accepted the challenge with the caveat that I shouldn't expect too much. Several days later, through her hard work and probably some dumb luck, we had an adventure pieced together.

85 and sunny. The simple forecast that seems to prevail in Belize this time of year.  Bug juice, 98% DEET - check. Tevas, quick dry shorts, swim suits, flashlights. It's the organizing phase of trip planning now. It's all about figuring out what to bring without looking like the Howells from Gilligan's Island. Do we need shots? Great, the girl's passports are expired. Photos, government applications, seventeen forms of official ids to prove the girls that look just like us do indeed belong to us. Who is going to feed Reg, Reginald when in proper company, our six-year old goldfish that seems to survive despite the chaos in our family. Dogs, cats, lizard - all critters who can't cook for themselves or flush a toilet. That's where the boys come in - it's nice to have them around in our absence to handle some of those sundries. 

These six days will disappear all too quickly and we will be on our 5:05 am flight before we know it. Wait, 5:05 am, that means we need to get to the airport at 3:00 am.  Who will get up then....boys!  

It was a flashback to growing up.  Getting up early, trudging the six blocks from home, putting on the wet swim suit that I wished I had hung to dry and jumping into the city-budget friendly 75 degree pool for swim lessons. 40 years later, it's putting on a cold wet suit, listening to the excited yelps from Karina across the hall as the wet neoprene hit her back and getting ready to jump into day two of SCUBA lessons. McKenzie, Karina and I had just passed the academic portion of the program only a few minutes before and were preparing to learn the final water skills required to become a certified open water diver.  With our confined water portion completed, in 10 days we will switch venues from the chlorine ridden public pool in Waconia to the warm tropical waters of Belize, where we do four dives in the Caribbean ocean to show our skills and explore the second largest barrier reef in the world.  

It's been interesting preparing for this trip. Julie is madly finishing up McKenzie's team scrapbook and building the awesome decoupage wooden letter gifts for the girls, preparing to host Bunko on Tuesday and just get organized to leave in far too few days.  Shoe shopping for jungle ready hiking shoes, picking out tropical wear for 90 degree humid environments and figuring out what to (not) bring will consume every minute of time we have.  

The trip is the easy part - it's the preparation that's the true adventure.  At least the old saying that "preparation beats smart" is working in our favor!

 

It's four hours until we leave for the airport at a bleary eyed 2:45 am for our 5:05 flight and everything is basically under control. That's after an afternoon of semi-controlled chaos which included dropping the van off at the body shop to repair the hail damage from last summer, shoe shopping for the girls, looking for rain coats, Ike coming over and poking my with a TDAP booster, reviewing the medical travel kit he put together for us, packing and generally trying to take what we need and nothing more.  Fortunately, we're ready. Time for a little sleep and an alarm that will come all too soon.  Tomorrow the adventure begins.

Long security lines, late start, no Starbucks, but we are on the plane! Girls are getting their pillows ready to go. Time to fly! Day 1 had officially begun.

Well, we are officially in Belize and it is officially hot! Yesterday was 41 degrees (105.8 F) and it felt like it. We arrived, did the zoo and made it to Pooks where we quickly checked in and then hooked through the jungle and tubed the Roaring River, which was a life saver for Karina. The food is amazing and served family style. This morning the howler monkeys showed up and wowed everyone with their "howling". We canoed the Macal river this morning, where we saw iguanas, bats, all kinds of birds and the "Jesus Christ" lizard which put a walking on water show for us. We are eating at a local place and then off to see Mayan ruins. First shot at wifi, do it ed time for a fast update. All for more.

Saturday, April 2nd - ATM cave. Relief, the heat has broken. Instead of 110, it's a refreshing 95 today with some broken clouds. It was a long night with two troops of howler monkeys discussing the politics of the monkey world all night long. Luckily for us, we had one group in the tree right above our cabanas. If you've never heard a howler, think the t-rex portion of jurassic park. In which they used recordings of the howlers for the dino sounds! Needless to say, there wasn't a lot of sleep to be had. The alarm went off at 6 for an early breakfast followed by a 15 minute trip to the start of the ATM cave trail. We organized our helmets and started the 45 minute hike to the entrance of the cave. We had three river crossings and hiked along a nice path the whole way. When we got to the little picnic area at the cave mouth, we shed all gear except for helmets and lights. The way into the cave surprised all of us. You stood at the top of a little 5 foot waterfall and dive into a deep pool of water that was pouring from the cave. It was cool water, glowing a brilliant blue green. We swam about 100 feet and climbed out of the water. Over the next hour, we wound along the cave, squeezing through tight spots into large chambers filled with all kinds of interesting formations. The cave we were in went 4 to 5 miles.back and after we had been hiking for some time, our guide, Lenny, said tbis is all the further back we go, only caver go beyond. We all thought that meant that it was the turn around point,.but instead he said, "now we climb." So off we wnt, up a pretty precarious slope into a chamber that was beyond comprehension. Vast not only in length but in height it was a massive chamber. We wore only socks ro protect.the site, which was scattered with Mayan pottery used in sacrifices. As we got further back, we saw several calcium covered human skeletons, also sacraficed. As we got near the rear chamber, we climbed a ladder, squeezed through a tight space and saw the final chamber with a perfectly preserved skeleton. Quite amazing. Since our camp was the closest, we were the first group and had the cave to ourselves. On the way back out, we started to see the flickers of light from other groups heading into the main cavern. We worked our way back out taking several detours through smaller side passages with names like the toilet bowl. After we came out, we swam for a while in a beautiful pool at the cave entrance. After a pack lunch and a short drive, we were back at base. Even thought tbe temperature was cooler, it was still in the 90s and very thick. It was an afternoon of naps and an evening of tarantula and scorpion hunting.

After our last night in the jungle, fortunately a mostly quiet one thanks to the howler monkeys only deciding to sing twice for us, we loaded up the van for a morning of cave tubing and then a trip to Belize City to meet our transfer to St. George's Caye. What started as a grey rainy morning turned out to be a beautiful day at the coast. It was only a 20 minute boat ride out to the caye, courtesy of 500 horsepower worth of Yamaha engines. Then to the resort to be treated right at the dock buy Jahnelle, who's greeting included four cold rum ponchos, sans rum. mom and dad got the top off our drinks and our tour of the bar with some Belizean rum. After a quick tour of the island and moving into our Cabanas, the suits came out in the masks and snorkels when on. the water was bathtub warm, and not very deep but we still managed to see you School of Tarpon, hundreds of other smaller fish, probably snappe,some rays and even a four-foot moray eel! We had a wonderful dinner of little pizza appetizers, soup, conch steak and frozen key lime pie. It was served family-style at a long table on the porch of the restaurant. After dinner the flashlights came out and we hunted hermit crabs and ghost crabs and generally chased anything that moved around the grounds. Tomorrow morning we do two of our training Dives and then return back to the resort where I'm guessing Karina will start opening the three or four coconuts that she's gathered.

With the first light, one of the most wonderful things is to hear (no howler monkeys) the birds waking up for the day, singing their Caribbean song. After about 15 minutes, however, everything got quiet except for the occasional drip of rain, which turned into a steady hard rain by breakfast. The girls and I were scheduked at 8:00 at the dive shop where we reviewed our referral paperwork, got our equipment and headed the the dive boat. Julie sent us off and we beaded east into the aqua blue ocean. One advantage of St. George's Caye is that it is only a 5 minute ride to the reef. Karina been nervous all morning, apprehensive of what lie abead. The rain had let up and the wind picked up, so it was pretty rough with rollers about 4-5 feet. McKenzie and I were first in followed by Karina and Jose, our dive instructor. It was a little chaotic at tbe surface with all three of us at tbe descent rope ar the same time, but ine we got off tbe surface, everyone spread out and the first dive began. We descended to 40 feet, wbicb was our max planned for tbe day. We spent about 50 minutes exploring the reef, practicing skills and getting comfortable with our new weightlessness. The girls were awesome, showing their stuff, demonstrating what the had learned in tbe pool with ease. We saw all kinds of reef fish, eels and the ever present invasive Lionfish. Two of our boatmates were of hunting these unwelcome visitors with 6 foot soears. After our air got to the "time to ascend" level, we hard 8 back to the surface, where we flopped aboard or five boat with a little help from "Ripped Russell", a guy sporting as McKenzie noted,"an amazing 8-pack." After a short rest aboard with some water and fruit, it was time for dive two. McKenzie and I were first in and started down, when a burp went awry for me, lodging a chunk of watermelon squarely at the back of my throat. A quick duck to the surface was in order, where I expelled the pesky chunk of fruit and headed back down for another 50 minuets of Belize underwater heaven. After we returned to the resort, we had a delicious lunch of shrimp chimichangas and then spent tbe afternoon fisbing off tbe docks, paddle boarding, kayaking and zwimmkng. It rained on and off and was cloudy all day, which was pretty fortunate for us, keeping us out of the hot sun. Now we are sitting down for dinner, a wind down and an early bedtime in preparation for tomorrow's final qualification dives.

It's hard to belive this could be our last day on the island. Time flies, especially when it is spent with family in a place like this. We set up a half day fishing trip and our local guide, Claude, met us at 730 sharp. We took off from the dock with our first mission - locate the sardines we needed as bait. We chose to hunt red tailed snapper over trolling for barracuda since the latter only allowed two to fish and the action would be better. It wasn't five minutes before we saw pelicans dive bombing the water, a sure sign of baitfish. With some awesome cast net skills, Claude soon had us armed. It was a short ride to the fishing spot where we were joined by several local boats. Julie wasted no time boating the first fish, and it was nonstop for three hours after that. Claude and i baited hooks as fast as we could and fished in between and when the girls took breaks. A group the day before had brought home 30 fish and the girls were determined to beat that number. Well, that wasn't a problem, since we brought home over 90 fish! That will be enough blackened snapper for all the guests, the staff and Claude took home a load for his family too. The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming, snorkeling and shelling. Julie and i paddled a kayak to a sandbar several miles offshore, something we will feel tomorrow I'm sure. Now it's time to kick back, relax and enjoy our final Belizean night before heading home to the tundra.