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40th Birthday Surprise Trip for our husbands to Belize with friends!

40th Birthday Surprise Trip for our husbands to Belize with friends!

Old Jun 10th, 2011, 05:14 AM
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40th Birthday Surprise Trip for our husbands to Belize with friends!

Belize was just wonderful! One of our best and memorable trips ever. I am so sorry it took me forever to write here, and finally am doing that. I know some of you were waitng.
Xavier and Hector have been best friends since 9th grade and we, Sarah and Marilyn, have organized and planned this trip together for them. It was a fun nine-month planning project for us! We have travelled extensively together but it was our first time to do a surprise trip and we pulled it off!

The birthday guys were totally surprised! The best part was that they DIDN'T know where we were going and we pulled off the surprise! Three friends surprised our husbands at IAH, and they were just stunned. It was so fun.


The IAH airport and the flight crew helped us conceal the destination from our guys (and our husbands are deaf, so we had them turn off their hearing aids to ensure they wouldn't recognize any words or announcements!)
We appreciated their help so much to make this a successful surprise for our husbands Xavier and Hector!

The guys kept trying to figure out where the destination was by looking out the window. Mexico? We all just smiled and said just wait until we land.

Ironically, how they found out once we landed on the runaway in Belize was that Hector's cell phone vibrated, he looked at it and it was a text from Sprint saying, "Welcome to Belize!" He then said "BELIZE!!!????" Then Xavier checked his messages. The guys were just surprised! They were very excited. We got off the plane, and walked into the small, easy to navigate airport and went through customs smoothly. We then went on our small plane to fly over the gorgeous water to Ambergis Cay, which lasted about half hour. Hector sat up in the front with the pilot (and Xavier had his turn on the way back) It was awesome- (The resort we stayed arranged the inter-island flights -Tropics Air-for us and it was very reasonable fee)

Here's the website link:

http://www.tropicair.com/

Arrived at Ambergis Cay. We found our resort rep standing by the door with the golf carts close by. The guys still had no IDEA we were staying at the Victoria House. We ladies walked our husbands over to our rep, and then announced we were going to the Victoria House. Hector's face showed surprise and recognition right away as one of our friends had honeymooned there in the past and Xavier was grinning. The guys were just like, what's next?!! We all clambored on the golf carts and rode from town into the Victoria House-- great fun ride and we all chatted excitedly, taking in sights.

Victoria House loomed in, and we were very excited because we had another surprise in the front lobby-- another couple waiting to surprise Xavier and Hector! I walked in first, to scout where they were and they were sitting on the sofa in the lobby, drinking and winking at us. They wanted to see if the guys would recognize them. One of the hotel reps rushed out with drinks on the tray, and we all were handed one. The cold drink was perfect, I forgot the name of it...and Xavier turned around and gasped. He raised his arm to them, gawking. Everyone cheered. They hugged and the guys said it was a wonderful day of surprises and thanked us.

The resort...the grounds...the rooms...oh my!!!! It was just lovely. Words cannot describe it. We couples with our birthday husbands rented the villa with the thatched roof and it was just perfect for us. Three other couples had their own rooms. The Balinese decor was just stunning and while elegant yet simple. Very relaxing and peaceful. The outdoor showers! The huge kitchen and the living room for all of our friends to hang every day. It was priceless. I highly recommend the Victoria House.

http://www.victoria-house.com/

Will continue with the rest of the week...be back!
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Old Jun 10th, 2011, 05:37 AM
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Bit of background here...as I couldn't find the edit tool here for the report-
Xavier and I live in Minnesota while Marilyn and Hector lives in Texas, and our friends joined us from New York, Minnesota and Texas. So it was a great group-- nine people and it was the perfect size for us. It was a lot of fun to plan the surprise via emails (using secret email addresses!) and to chat through the videophone.

Report on Day Two: Cavetubing and zipling with Reggie from RegTours to be coming soon!
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Old Jun 10th, 2011, 07:00 AM
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What a great story! I would LOVE to surprise my husband sometime with a trip but I get so excited it would be tough to keep the secret. Thanks for posting!
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Old Jun 13th, 2011, 11:51 AM
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I hope my wife reads this report! :-0
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Old Jan 9th, 2012, 08:13 AM
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We woke up at 5 am to get ready to hit the docks to have an adventure day! Victoria House gave us a ride into town to the dock where we took the 7am express boat ride to Belize City. The name of the boat ride was San Pedro-Belize Express Water Taxi. The website link is www.sanpedrowatertaxi.com

It was approximately an hour and half ride, and we enjoyed the breeze and chatted while we ate our breakfast, thanks to Victoria House packing up the food in bags for us! Another point for them.

We arrived in town, and walked into the main city intersection wandering around and checked out the farmer's marke--the fruits were beautifully displayed and so cheap! We walked to a specific location to meet our tour guide Reggie and he was there waiting for us.

We greeted each other--he was very friendly and we were immediately at ease with him. He offered us bottles of water and we clammored into his white van to start our journey...a day full of cave tubing and ziplining!

We had found Reggie through here, Fodors Travel Forum, so thank you to other Fodorites for him! There were great reviews and recommendations about him, so I e-mailed him and he promptly responded, answering all my questions and we made all the arrangements through e-mail. It was great to have a "private tour day" with him instead of riding on a gigantic tour bus full of people...you know what I mean? We just wanted to work with a local guide and to support the Belizean economy and to work together one on one.
His website:
http://regtourbz.com/index.htm

We had a fun adventure on the highway when we had a flat tire! We pulled over, and Reggie fixed the tire within minutes then we hit the road again to the border where we finally arrived at our destination--the cave tubing and zip lining! We were so glad to have Reggie when we saw other gignatic buses. We walked down to the cave tubing area after picking up our tubes, and we were so excited!

As you can see from his website and photos with descriptions, we were hooked up together, I was up front and our friend was at the end, and we trailed down the river together wearing our headlights and oh my, it was so fun! We loved every minute of it. We took tons of pictures and laughed together. We were sorry to have the tubing end when we arrived at the end. BUT we were then off to the next adventure....ZIPLINING!!!!!

We were supposed to have Belizean lunch on the grounds but we ran out of time, as Reggie quickly drove us to the ziplining grounds. We met up with three guys who would be responsible for our ziplining experience. I originally planned not to participate, just be an observer, because I have a fear of heights...BUT I was talked into it, and I am so happy they did, because it was one of the best experiences in my life! It was so exhilarating and I felt so high on adrendaline!

Two of my other girlfriends were bit hesistant as well but we all ended up supporting each other! The guys loved it! They went wild ziplining throughout the jungle. I believe there were six to eight posts we ziplined from. One time I got stuck in the middle and I was freaking out, but the guide got on the line, held my arms and commanded me to look into his eyes and saying "don't look down" and he calmly talked with me. I felt comfortable and calm right away and I really appreciated him very much. I mean, how many guides would do that?

We all had a wonderful time--it was the one of the BEST highlights of the trip. Reggie met us afterwards and drove us back into Belize City where we waited at the water taxi dock with Belizean beer in hand and rode the boat back to San Pedro, watching the sunset. GORGEOUS!!

I highly recommend Reggie and you can customize any tours with him. Again, thanks to Fodorites for him!

The next day, we with all of our friends relaxed by the pool with drinks. We also swam in the ocean and took a nap in the hammock on the beach.

The next day we split into two different activities-- some of us went on a snorkeling trip with Grumpy and Happy--again, we found them through Fodorites

[email protected]

The snorkeling trip is run by a couple named Lorne and Jolene. We swam with nurse sharks and stingrays! Fortunately, they had their breakfast first before we jumped into the water...
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Old Jan 9th, 2012, 08:42 AM
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...and it was fascinating to have these huge sting rays floating around you. I kept thinking of Steve Irwin. I know, I know. The nurse sharks were bored with us, fortunately. They were fun to watch though. The water was crystal clear and the reefs were gorgeous! The reefs in Belize is one of the best besides Australia's Great Barrier Reef (which I had experienced back in 1992)and it was pretty amazing to go on a reef snorkeling tour with Grumpy and Happy (Lorne and Jolene)
We went to a reef wall that was split in half and we went through that. Words can't describe the vivid colors and it was just breathtaking.

It was a half day tour and we then went back to the VH, as another bonus was that the couple were able to pick us up at the VH dock. Nice!

Xavier, Howard, and Mandy went on a scuba diving trip later in the day--it was arranged through VH and again, the guides came to the VH dock and picked them up. It was a magnificent trip for them because they saw dolphins and manta rays. They were so exhilarated.

We went into town for dinner--at a resturant--Blue Water Grill--but it wasn't very good, but we as a group had a great time hanging out together. I forgot to mention about Wild Mango, a wonderful resturant in San Pedro, where we had dinner after our adventurous day of cave tubing and ziplining!Wild Mango was a perfect place to kick back with delicious seafood (grouper, snapper, creviche, etc) and wonderful mojitos and Belkini beer. I highly recommend Wild Mango if you're in the area! Service was great and the location was spot-on! Afterwards, we strolled along the beach before taking the taxi bus back to the Victoria House.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restauran...ize_Cayes.html

Up coming next...the surprise birthday beach dinner for Xavier and Hector!
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Old Jan 9th, 2012, 12:00 PM
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victoria-house awesome when there last
Gret Blue Hole is an awesome dive for
experienced diviers.

thanks for posting great report.
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Old Jan 9th, 2012, 01:29 PM
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So glad you picked back up on this - thanks!!
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