Our hotel was FANTASTIC. We stayed at the Belizean Shores. It was a nice little condo with kitchen. The pool was great and had beautiful views as it was right on the beach. We were also able to use the facilities next door as it was a sister property of our hotel. Their pools ware great--all of them. Above Jeremy and I are hanging out at the pool bar. We enjoyed a few pina coladas here (virgin of course).
This is the hot tub that connects to another pool. Check out that view. That is the beautiful blue ocean behind me.
In another pool, they had this great water slide. We had a good time going down the slide (man it whips you!), jumping off the rocks and just relaxing. Jeremy was brave and went down the slide head first. I tried it head first once and got lots of water up my nose.
One day we went on shore for an excursion. We flew off and on the island. This is the island airport and the airport's baggage claim. Let's just say that security was non-existent.
This is the view from the airplane as we flew in and out of San Pedro.
On our excursion we went cave tubing. We hiked up a trail for a mile and a half and then tubed down and river and through a large cave. They cave had a lot of stalactites and cave formations.
We even turned out our lights in the middle of the cave and experienced pure darkness. Jeremy decided to shoot a picture. In front of me you can see our tour guide, Mark. At the end of the cave, we continued to float down the river while it was pouring rain. It added to the experience and we enjoyed the whole thing.
Another part of the excursion was that we drove all the way to the Belizian border to see the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich.
Jeremy and I standing on the ruins.
At the top of the ruins, you could look out and see the country of Guatemala. It was only a few hundred yards behind us.
Back in the parking lot of the ruins, we came across some Holler Monkeys. Man they were loud. They were looking down at us wondering what on earth we were up to. I was wondering how on earth they managed to be so loud.
Jeremy and I love to scuba dive. When we heard of the diving in Belize, we knew it was our destination of choice. We did three days of diving. One day we went diving to the Blue Hole. It was a two and a half hour boat ride one way, but it was a beautiful dive. We went down 130 feet. We swam in and out of stalactites and stalagmites and we saw three bull sharks. One was 9 feet! What a great dive! Above is Jeremy and I just after we finished diving the blue hole. Behind us is the Blue Hole.
After diving the Blue Hole, we stopped and Half Moon Caye for lunch. We went on a hike to view the nesting grounds of some native birds. The hike was along the beach and was beautiful. We cam across a few hermit crabs. They were quite large!
The nesting grounds outlook.
While on our hike, we picked a coconut to take home with us. When we arrived back to the beach, our guides told us our coconut wasn't ripe (no wonder it was green). They peeled and cracked open a ripe one for us that we ate on the boat on the way back. We also kept a coconut to take home and show the boys. We picked up another coconut on our hotel beach and brought it home. (Here is some friendly advice if you decide to bring a coconut home from a tropical destination: Don't claim it in customs. What a pain--yet we ended up with both our coconuts and another piece of produce we bought in one of the markets on the island.) After lunch and hiking, we went out for two more dives near the blue hole. One dive was just like jumping into an aquarium. There were fish every where that followed us around the whole dive. It was amazing. We saw a couple of more sharks and sea turtles.
The diving was great! Here is Jeremy in front of some beautiful coral. Our water proof camera wasn't so water proof and most of our shots didn't turn out.
Here is me swimming along!
This is just one of the many nurse sharks we saw while diving. On one of the dives people feed the sharks and they swim right up to you and let you pet them. There was a big old black fish that kept looking at me wondering if I was going to feed it. I finally reached out and gave it a slimy pet. It left me alone after that.
We saw a lot of fish that were spectacular like this lion fish. I feel so bad our camera was so crumby. We won't be making a mistake like that again.Overall we had a great vacation. We even got hit by Hurricane Karl one morning. We stayed in and read books and took naps. I can't wait to go back to Belize. It was wonderful! What a great 15 year anniversary celebration.
This sounds/looks absolutely wonderful. I will have you book me my next vacation. :)
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