Did a trip to Belize with Island Expedition (Feb. 2024)
The trip consisted of 3 pieces: Bocawina (rainforest), Glover's Reef (water activities), San Ignacio (Mayan ruins). Direct flight from Calgary to Belize City, then a hop to Dangriga on a small plane.
Met some of the people in my first group. We did some activities together: hiking, waterfall rapelling (scary!) , cave tubing (relaxing), visited a cacao farm (cacao cures almost everything), night walk (saw a fer de lance snake), and some good meals. I skipped the zip lining.
Here is a link to a video of me rappeling down a waterfall.
Do i look nervous beforehand?
And here is a link to a short video of Bocawina. Crank up the audio and try to figure out what we heard every morning.
cave tubing. Pretty simple -- float gently in a group through a cave system.
Glover's Reef
6 of us continured on to a small island and were joined by 2 more. Mostly Americans, and mostly we were an older group. There were about 2 activities per day, including: kayaking, snorkeling (most days), short hikes, fishing with hand lines (I caught a barracuda), kayak sailing, night walk and lots of good meals, and happy hour.
Great guides and mostly good weather. Lots of fish, conches everywhere, frigate birds, (brown) pelicans, hermit crabs, nurse sharks, eagle rays, a moon jellyfish, etc. Cabanas were comfortable.
That's my barracuda! Caught it on a hand line trolling. Just as i was hauling it into the boat, it spit out the hook. And fell into the boat. Mad.
Cooked up for our supper along with some other smaller fish we caught.
The guides speared a couple of lobsters and a lionfish which we had for snacks and supper. Conches were abundant and we had conche fritters a couple of times. Lots of hermit crabs too but too cute to eat. On the night walk we saw octupuses, and lots of urchins -- watch where you step!
The group split up and everyone left but me. I was joined by 17 new people (mostly Canadians, and lots of medical doctors). As an experienced tourist, I was promoted to pseudo-guide and gave advice to help the newcomers. Most of the activities were similar to the previous week but i was able to do the kayak sailing (and didn't tip).
We saw many magnificent frigatebirds -- they are amazing and can soar for several days without landing, by sleeping in flight. I fact checked our guide on this (not everything he told us was strictly speaking true). He was truthful or at least consistent with wikipedia: frigatebird
San Ignacio
After a wet ride back to Dangriga and a long drive, made it to San Ignacio for a couple of days. One large Mayan ruin, a canoe trip through a cave (Mayans liked caves), and a smaller Mayan ruin (Cahal Pech -- City of ticks).
That's a quick overview of the trip(s). Lots more stories and pictures.
Here are 2 links to albums of photos:
phone pics and
underwater camera