Belize, February 2017
In February of 2017, Beau and I spent a little over a week in Belize.
Sitting on the Caribbean side of Central America, we chose this country for the healthy mix of history and beaches. We explored ancient Mayan ruins, floated a river with our airbnb hosts, ate a bunch of great food, and got bright red sunburns by the end of it.
Our first stop was San Ignacio. Super close to the border to Guatemala, this was our favorite spot. If we did this trip over, we would spend more time here for sure.
We took a bus to San Ignacio. We took a lot of buses. Thinking about it gives me back pain.
Our cute little cabana on the Macal river.
I swear we could hear dinosaurs…
We did end up floating this river with our hosts. We had to drive to a spot up the river and then we ended back here at our rental. We couldn’t all fit in the car with our tubes, so we had to hold them out the windows.
Near San Igancio is a site of an ancient Mayan temple, Xunantunich. These are the steps that take you from the visitor’s center up to the site itself.
Unlike other ancient civilizations, the Mayans are still around today. This Mayan local told us a bit about the geographical history of the area. Here he’s drawing out how the rivers flowed through here.
Not pictured is our trip to the ATM cave. They don’t allow cameras there but it’s worth the trip. It was pretty spooky to be a mile into a cave, hanging out with ancient Mayan sacrificial skeletons… but I would do it again.
On a Tuesday, we took a 4 hour bus and boat ride to Placencia. Where we stayed there was quite a drive back into town. Our hosts didn’t give great information on how to get into town, so we were tired, hungry, grumpy. On Wednesday we decided to walk to town and wait for a taxi to pass us. We walked longer than we though we’d have to, but our eventual taxi driver sold us some cheap, shitty weed so that perked us up.
When we got into town, we discovered that Belize takes a break on Wednesdays. How nice.
We rented some snorkel gear and looked at some sea grass.
We got lunch at a pretty cool spot.
Then we sat on the beach and watched the sunset.
Another bus ride followed by a boat ride landed us on Ambergris Caye. Our boat made a stop at Caye Caulker and the pier there was littered with frat boys. Ambergris Caye was an older crowd. We had plenty of good food there, but our last dinner spot was at their busiest restaurant and my fish tacos had cheddar cheese on them. Not exactly asking for much in terms of culture on that island.
But, it was cute and we jetted off from there to snorkel with sharks and manta rays at Shark Ray Alley.
Probably/definitely should have gotten tacos here instead.
Our last night in Belize. I remember wishing I could enjoy it more except we didn’t put on sunscreen for the boat ride back to the mainland so Beau and I were very, very sunburned.
