Belize, please!

We've kept you hanging long enough--here is a recap of the eight days we spent in the final country of the first leg of our world journey: Belize!

Over all, we had a terrific time there speaking English, caving, SCUBA diving, making new friends, and speaking more English; it's easy to see why Belize is a popular tourist destination.

Our first stop after crossing over from Guatemala was San Ignacio, a very pleasant town half an hour from the border. We had read and heard that Belize was significantly more expensive than the surrounding countries, so we were pleased to find a hotel room for just $12.50 US a night, complete with adorable bonus pomeranians! The signature excursion from San Ignacio is the "ATM tour"--no, not of the nearby cash machines, but of the Actun Tunichil Muknal caving system. You can see the mouth of the cave to our left below.
You enter the cave by swimming into it, being careful not to get the headlamp on your hard hat wet!

In the first portion of the cave, there's still some natural light, and you can see amazing rock formations. At the top of this picture you can see some incredible sheet stalagtites (silly me, I thought they only came in columns!). Underneath that, toward the right, is sparkly "flowstone," formed from water flowing over the rock over millenia. Very glittery in person. This one looks like a woman in a fancy dress with her back turned.

Further in: These stalagtites, in addition to looking eerily like chicken skin, can be "played" like a xylophone--you tap different ones in different places and get different tones echoing through the cave!
Here we are in front of the xylophone.
Even deeper inside the cave, we climbed up to a dry level to see a whole bunch of Mayan artifacts. Here I am making a scary face halfway up the climb.

There are various remnants of pottery and other objects in the dry area, but the craziest remains are the human ones, likely from ritual sacrifices. This full skeleton of a teenage girl was placed in a dancing pose probably close to 1,000 years ago, and has been naturally preserved by the conditions in the cave.

And here is the skull of another Mayan lucky enough to get sacrificed.
All in all, we spent about three hours in the cave; it was a wet and slightly cold experience, but beautiful and fascinating and one of my favorite excursions of our entire 6-month trip. If you ever go to Belize, I highly recommend you venture west to San Ignacio and do the ATM tour!

The next day, rain marred our canoeing trip a bit...but even rain doesn't keep the intrepid Belizean iguanas from coming out!When the rain did let up, Andy immediately stuck his head in a waterfall. (This may be the warmest shower we got in all of Belize.)
Our next stop in Belize was a tiny village called Maya Center. Three dirt paths, one bodega, one (overpriced) hotel, and that's pretty much the whole place. But it is the closest town to the world's only jaguar reserve, the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, and we figured that if we had any chance of spotting the elusive jaguar in our travels, this was it.

I feel it's only right to tell you immediately that we did NOT see a jaguar. In fact, we did not even see a mammal, despite spending the whole day and doing a night tour with a very knowledgeable guide. Ah, such is life.

We did see an awesome turkey at our hotel in Maya Center, though.
Andy also found some interesting fungi in the park.
Definitely the coolest wildlife specimen our group saw in the park was this butterfly being eaten by a gekko! Check out the upside-down butterfly on top in the mouth of the long green lizard on bottom...
The closest we came to seeing a jaguar were these prints in the mud. Our guide seemed excited and said that they were "very fresh" and that we'd "just missed one," but after he'd said that about three different specimens, I began to grow sceptical.

Meanwhile, Andy continued to take pictures of those less-elusive creatures, colorful mushrooms.
While our tour-mates returned to Maya Center for the night, Andy and I decided to rough it in an unelectrified cabin at the park HQ, thereby giving ourselves a little more time to see absolutely no big cats whatsoever.


We did an extra hike that turned out to be way longer than the map indicated, leaving us racing against the sunset to make it back to the cabin before total darkness fell. On the hike, we did see some pretty vistas, like this ferny area...

...and we found a nice white-backed lizard. (Maybe they should rename this place the Cockscomb Lizard and Insect Sanctuary?)

Speaking of insects, the worst thing about the wildlife reserve was the bugs. Repeatedly dousing ourselves in DEET did nothing to keep the mosquitoes and even more voracious botflies at bay, and we were scratching for a week after our visit. (Then, a few weeks later, back in the USA, I got an awesome botfly-related surprise...stay tuned for a blog post coming soon about that adventure!)

The best thing about going there were the new friends we made, Mandi and Tommy. We met them on the bus to Maya Center (we were the only four gringos intrepid enough to go stay there rather than take a package tour to the jaguar reserve from a more touristy beach town), banded together to hire a tour guide and collectively bargain for better prices at the usurious hotel, played hearts and euchre until late in the night, and just generally got on swimmingly together. We were very happy to learn that they were heading to the same sandy island (Caye Caulker) as we were next, so we met up with them again for two great meals and to dominate at trivia night! But I get ahead of myself.

So, after a dark and quiet night in the park, Andy and I walked the seven miles from Coxcomb Basin HQ to the bus stop in Maya Center. We could have paid for a taxi, but we were hoping that if we walked we might see some cool animals along the dirt road. FAIL. Ah well, at least it was exercise.

We then took a bus to Belize City, and from there got on the water taxi ferry boat to Caye Caulker, one of Belize's many islands along its barrier reef out in the Atlantic. History seemed to repeat itself when we found a beach cabin for just $12.50 that also came with its own bonus animal, this time a corner-dwelling lizard.
The cabin was mildly crappy (I know, I know, what do you expect for $12.50?) but the grounds did feature this nifty plant that made Andy look like a peacock when he posed with it.

Andy's and my main reason for going to Caye Caulker was to go SCUBA diving, which we had learned to do almost two years earlier but had not attempted since our qualifying dives. I was a little scared and made Andy do a refresher course and practice dive with me before we went out to the reef, but it was totally worth it because the diving was amazing.

We couldn't take pictures at such depths, but I can report that we saw a whole eel swimming (a rare sight as they're usually tucked into their holes and just poke their heads out), an enormous eagle ray, several nurse sharks, some huge lobsters, plenty of colorful fish and coral...and the highlight of my diving career thus far, a turtle taking a poop as it swam.

We also did some snorkeling right off the beach on Caye Caulker, and Andy got some great shots with the waterproof camera. Here is a lovely blue fish...
a nifty stripey one...

...and an enormous puffer or boxfish that Andy found hiding out under the pier. It took many dives, but he got a pretty good shot of the fish here!

On our last night on Caye Caulker, Andy and I teamed up with Mandi and Tommy to take the local pub quiz by storm. Forming Team "The Bicoastal Badasses"--our new friends are Californians--we won first prize, or 50 Belizean dollars off our bar tab. (Too bad our tab was only $14...Mandi and I just couldn't bring ourselves to order more than one round of "panty rippers," surely the most unappetizing name anyone could ever invent for the otherwise tasty tropical standby of Malibu-and-pineapple!)
The next morning, the weather on the island was perfect as we boarded the water taxi to return to Belize City.

And apparently, in Belize City, on the final day of our trip, we did nothing but eat, since I have no pictures of anything else to share here. You'll have to check back in for Andy's forthcoming food post!

Belize was a nice place to wrap up this leg of our travels. If you're thinking about going there, San Ignacio and Caye Caulker are terrific, and Belize City is worth a visit, not nearly as bad as most people make it out to be. I might skip the jaguar reserve, unless you really like lizards and being eaten alive by insects, but who knows...I guess you could get lucky and see a cat.

Or get even luckier and bring home an exotic, living souvenir or two in your scalp!

Say what?

Yeah, more on that in the next post. =)

Blue bread, fried fruits, and a side of cream: Foods of Guatemala and Honduras!

On our first night in Guatemala, we found a lady with a table on the street covered in pies. Jackpot! Andy got strawberry...
...and I got pineapple. I usually hate strawberry pie stuff, but I have to say that his was better. There is something weird about pineapple in pies. Also, I hate meringue, which was on top of the pies. Still, fun for a little more than $1 a slice.
A nearby vendor was selling fried bananas stuffed with some sort of sweet goo we could not identify. I thought maybe chocolate, but we were never able to really figure it out. It lives in Andy's tummy now.
The next morning, we visited a bakery that had fun-looking pastries. Unfortunately, they were dry, disgusting, and overly expensive.

This muffin was filled with strawberry jam, which made it the more edible of our two choices.
Here is Andy drinking some mosh, which is hot sweet milk with oats in it, very popular for breakfast (and tasty). Not necessarily a breakfast food, but enjoyed by Andy at breakfast as well was this suchita, a cornmeal dumpling stuffed with chicken that is like a tamale.
Speaking of chickens, here are some in the back of a pickup truck outside the marketplace. Ready to sell!
One of the most fun street snacks in Guatemala is the chocobanana, a frozen banana dipped in chocolate and sold for less than 50 cents. Why don't we have these in America?
On the day of our six-month wedding anniversary, we took a boat over to San Pedro to check out this other lakeside town. Wandering around, we just so happened to stumble upon a restaurant that has "Smokin Joe" from the southern United States come cook real smoked barbecue every Sunday at noon. It was Sunday at 12:15. We went in, he had two smokers going and bevy of delicious side dishes! For about $6, we got a half rack of ribs, potato salad, buttered corn, green beans, and garlic bread, and it was actually really good!! Happy anniversary to us!

That night, back in Panajachel, we got some hot chocolate on the street. Very nice, as it gets cold at night in the mountains of Guatemala. Also, it had rice in it, which was fun.
From the same street stand, a tostada, which is a crispy corn tortilla, here covered with guacamole, beans, tomato sauce, onions, and cheese.

From the stand down the street, we got some tacos. Check out the huge round taco-cooking aparatus, with different sections for the meat, onions, tortillas, and sauce/grease. The finished product: Messy but tasty.
This coconut jam actually came from Nicaragua, but we busted it open in Guatemala to eat on fresh corn tortillas from the local tortilleria. A tortilleria is a small shop that consists of a griddle and some ladies making about a zillion tortillas a minute on them and selling them really cheap.
Antigua's market brought us into contact with all sorts of new goodies, such as these giant blackberries. Biggest we had ever seen!
Also, blue corn tortillas! When's the last time you ate bread that was naturally this color?
Check out Andy's leisurely pose as he munches on some delicious spicy peanuts from the market. Don't work too hard now, honey.
Here I am on the square in Antigua with booty from my favorite bakery in Guatemala, Dona Luisa Xicotencatl. Amazing banana bread and homemade apple yogurt, among the best yogurts I had on our whole trip. Yum!!
A large coconut candy Andy found in the handicrafts market. Leave it to Andy to find sweets when we were supposed to be shopping for souvenirs...
Some little chicken-filled fried tacos from the market in Antigua. Made healthy by the fresh salad on top, of course.
Ooh, this was bad. It looked good, like a pile of glazed cherries or something, but it turned out to be some kind of gummy crabapples.
Even cheaper than the chocobanana: The chocopapaya! Not quite as good, though.
On to Honduras! We only spent one night there, but we found a great cheap restaurant in Copan called Comedor Mary. Andy got the "plato tipico," which included beef, beans, plantain, grilled veggies, and a little cup of cream. (Honduras and El Salvador are big on cream, for some reason.)
I ordered pupusas, which you can see mostly decimated in the upper righthand corner of the next pic. Pupusas are popular in Honduras as well as El Salvador (kinda like cream!). I got one filled with beans, one with beans and cheese, and one with chayote and cheese. Chayote is a squash kinda like zucchini, and that pupusa was especially amazing.

The pickled cabbage that came with the Honduran pupusas was a lovely purple color thanks to the beets it also contained. And it had chunks of carrot...turns out I love pickled carrot! High marks to this meal from me.
On the bus from Honduras up to Flores, our last stop in Guatemala, Andy bought a bag of fried fruit things. There were fried flattened bananas and there were these pineapple-filled doughy things. Way to turn fresh fruit into an unhealthy snack, Guatemala! (Tasty, though.)
Less tasty was this ice cream from the local parlor in Honduras. Bad fakey taste, crumbly texture, and not so cheap. Meh.
Andy found these tasty juice drinks in Flores: Mango-guava and strawberry-banana. At 20% real juice, these may have been the most natural drinks available in all of Central America.
And I finally tried the national brand of yogurt, Gaymont. I liked that the fruit-on-the-bottom cups were clear so you could see what you were getting, and that they came with a handy little spoon (well, I was torn on that, actually--liked the convenience, disliked the extra plastic waste). I did not like the taste, unfortunately...this was no Dona Luisa yogurt!
And that's what we ate in Guatemala and Honduras! Guatemala definitely had the best and cheapest tortillas we had had so far, probably because we were getting really close to Mexico. And oh man, that banana bread...

Almost home!

I know, we have fallen off the face of the earth a bit. Our excuse is that internet in Belize is insanely expensive and not so easy to find, so we haven't been able to blog from here at all. But rest assured, your Foods of Guatemala and all Belize posts will be up soon after we get back to the states...

Tomorrow!

Yup, we fly Belize City to Dallas tomorrow, spend the night in Dallas (looking like the airport floor at this point, silly expensive hotels), where we will hopefully also find some good BBQ...then on to Indy the next morning, just in time for a birthday Steak & Shake brunch. Not a bad way to start my 30s, I am hoping!

So, hope everyone is having a great holiday season, and hoping to see and talk to many of you soon. A lot of people have asked, so I will say that we think we'll be back in NY around December 28 or so, and should be there for at least a couple of weeks.