Christmas in Belize - Inland Adventures

Happy New Year and a belated Merry Christmas!  This year Jon and I decided we should finally take a real vacation and started talking to Jon's brother and his wife (Steven and Lauren) about going on an exotic trip together for Christmas.  After tossing around a few different destinations, Lauren suggested Belize and we decided it was perfect.  Despite leaving halfway through the month, I was adamant about still decorating our house for Christmas, and I loved the result!  In fact, I've talked myself into leaving everything out for another week because I figured we're owed it, seeing how we were out of the country for part of the holidays. We finally purchased a 7.5 foot pre-lit tree to replace the cheap 6-footer we had from our college days, and I bought all new ornaments as well.  My mantle has a few of my many picture books that my mom has given me over the years (Nutcracker and Night Before Christmas), and I made the stockings myself last year.  We were very busy in the weeks leading up to our vacation, getting work wrapped up, buying gifts for family, and completing service projects.  By the time we got to Belize, we were more than ready for a break.  However, the relaxing part of our vacation didn't start until four days in, and we spend the week before Christmas on some once-in-a-lifetime adventures!

Our spectacular Christmas tree!

My pretty mantle

The day after we got home I narrated our whole trip to my mom, using pictures and a map.  The map was so helpful that I thought I would include one here for your reference, since if you're anything like me you're not very familiar with Central American geography.

For our budget's sake as well as convenience, we decided to drive to San Francisco and fly out of there with Steven and Lauren. After spending Saturday, Dec 17 driving, we flew out for Belize at midnight on Sunday, taking a red-eye to Atlanta and then continuing on to Belize City.  We got into Belize city around 1:00 pm, grabbed a rental car, and drove about two hours west to San Ignacio, where we spent the next four nights.  San Ignacio is a great little town, a little touristy, but not too much so, and we stayed in nice resort.  After checking in to the hotel we grabbed some food at a local dive, including the best nachos I think any of us had ever eaten, and then crashed for the rest of the day.  Red-eye flights are pretty terrible, and we were glad to catch up on our sleep and take it easy.  The next morning we slept in and then headed south down a dirt road (about 2 hours) called the Pine Ridge Road to the Rio on Frio Pools.  This was a set of five pools separated by small cascading waterfalls set in the middle of the forest/jungle.  I was expecting more dense jungle/rain forest before we got to Belize, and was shocked to find ourselves in a forest with as many pine trees as deciduous trees.  It was breathtaking though, and one of my favorite destinations of the whole vacation.  We got to hike up the pools and the water was shallow enough to wade out into the middle of the pools.  I was a little more curious than the others and spent a good amount of time exploring the pools and hopping from rock to rock, and absolutely loved it.  We had the pools all to ourselves, and it felt like a little piece of paradise, hidden away in the middle of the forest.

View from a look-out that catches most of the pools

Us in the middle of the pools, looking the opposite direction than the previous picture

 Just a little ways up from the pools was the Rio on Frio Cave, an enormous cave that was awe-inspiring.  While you can typically walk through the cave end to end (it has two openings), we only spent about 5 minutes there.  Why, you ask?  Let's just say there were two men in camo with large automatic machine guns in their laps hanging out near the entrance of the cave, and we thought it prudent not to linger.  More than likely they were there for a very good reason, but we figured it wasn't worth taking any chances in the middle of the forest in a foreign country.  Though a little scary at the time, it made for a good joke for the rest of the vacation, as we often referred to our "near-death experience" with military personnel "brandishing" their weapons. 

Rio on Frio Cave from the inside

At the entrance to the cave (The military dudes were in front of us at a picnic table about 100 feet away)

 The next day we crossed the border into Guatemala and went to Tikal, the largest collection of Mayan ruins in the world.  After getting to the park, we had to trek about 30 minutes through dense jungle before all of a sudden you turn a corner and, boom! There's a huge ancient temple right in front of you.  Because of time we only saw 4 of the 6 temples along with several other small buildings/ruins, but it was absolutely amazing.  I kept thinking, can you imagine being an explorer and just happening upon this ancient city?  The temple in the second picture is only excavated on the front, and as we were walking around it we were amazed to see how the jungle absolutely consumed the whole side of the temple, making it impossible to distinguish it from another jungle mountain-side unless you look up and see the top.  Though I've never been to any other ruins, Steven and Lauren said they were the coolest ruins they've ever seen, and it was definitely an incredible sight.

One of our rare group shots of the vacation, in front of the main complex at Tikal

Steven and Lauren climbed to the top of the last temple we saw and captured this birds-eye shot of the whole site.  Crazy how you just see the tops of the temples peeking up, with no other clue of a whole city lying below

Jon in front of a cool tree near the entrance of Tikal

  So our last day inland we decided to go cave tubing! Belize has a large cave system that has a river running through it, and you can book a tour that will take you tubing through the caves with nothing but a rubber tube, life vest and head lamp.  When we got to our tour guide's outpost we were a little surprised when they loaded up all of the tour participants on a flat-bed trailer with the tubes and life vests, and then pulled us through orange orchards and jungle with a heavy duty tractor for about 45 minutes before we got to the entrance of the cave.  Our tractor actually got stuck in the mud a couple hundred yards before we were supposed to stop, and after trying to get it out for several minutes, our guides gave up and sent the driver to walk back for help.  Kind of a funny diversion, but something you have to deal with you're out in the jungle, I suppose.  We hopped in the river and spent the next three hours or so floating/paddling through this river cave system, going through 5 caves total.  Most of the time the water was very slow-moving and we had to use our arms to paddle along, but there were a few rapid currents that were fun.  The coolest part was seeing all of the stalactites and formations in the caves as we went through, and just knowing that you were underneath a mountain!  Halfway through the river opened up on the jungle and we stopped on a little beach for lunch where we fed the fish tortillas, then hiked through the trees for about 15 minutes before we met up with the river again and the next cave. It was really fun, and again, one of those things you only do once in your life.

Lauren and Steven on the trailer on the way to the cave

After getting off the trailer, before getting in the river - ready for adventure!

In front of the cave on the beach during lunch

A further-away view so that you can see the cave opening behind us

Each of our day excursions while we were inland took anywhere from an hour to three hours to get to the actual site, so we spent a lot of time in our trusty rental Jeep (which we may or may not have beat up pretty good, especially on the dirt road the first day).  It got dark around 6:00 pm which limited the amount of things we did during the day, but we were very happy with our pace, as most of our excursions were pretty active.  We ate at some great restaurants (except for the terrible fish we had at the most expensive, most highly recommended place in San Ignacio - figures) and slept surprising well considering how finicky I am with beds for my back.  Since our hotel had wi-fi we even got to watch two BYU basketball games online that week before Christmas, which was the cherry to our awesome stay inland.  On Friday morning we slept in, ate breakfast at Mr. Greedy's Pizza (yeah, I know it sounds like a weird place for breakfast but it was amazing), drove back to Belize City, and hopped on a ferry to continue the second half of our vacation on Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast of Belize.  Since our vacation was split in two halves, I'm going to split my blog post in two as well.  I know these are long, but my blog is my journal as much as anything else, and I want to capture as much of the memory as possible.  Plus, I figure I'm making up for a year's worth of blogging.  So check back tomorrow, as this adventure is

TO BE CONTINUED...