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Brief Belize Trip Report 4/30-5/08/05 (BC/Cayo/Caulker)

Brief Belize Trip Report 4/30-5/08/05 (BC/Cayo/Caulker)

Old May 27th, 2005, 09:27 AM
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Brief Belize Trip Report 4/30-5/08/05 (BC/Cayo/Caulker)

Here's the short version of our trip. Will do a full report (hotels, restaurants, driving conditions, tour operators, times, etc) with photos soon.
==============================

We had a great time. The trip there was uneventful. We left DC 45 minutes late but that just cut our wait time in Dallas down. When we arrived it was SO hot! We hadn't eaten all day - they don't feed you on the airplane anymore and we didn't have time to get anything in Dallas - so instead of exploring Belize City, we got food then crashed! It's a two hour time difference. Normally one hour, but they don't do Daylight Savings.

Next day (Sunday 5/1) we got up early because we had to drive Orange Walk to our activity - Lamanai/New River cruise. We had to go 60 miles and we got an early start because we weren't sure about the road conditions. Turned out it was fine. Got there early, which was a bonus, and walked around that town, Orange Walk, for a bit before our tour. We took a boat trip down the New River to visit Lamanai. The boat ride itself was nice and our guide (Anthony from Jungle Walk tours) was wonderful. We saw birds, waterfowl, bats, monkeys, and iquanas. Our guide made us a home cooked lunch that we had when we got to the site. There were 5 of us on our tour - one guy was totally annoying. Everyone else (the other two) was nice. That lasted all day.

Early Monday morning we finally walked around Belize City. It was a holiday (Labour Day) so people were just milling around but nothing was open. We checked out of our hotel and headed to the Cayo district. We stopped at the zoo on the way. Their zoo is nice. Very small, but nice. They take animals that are injured, in danger (like if their parent was killed), abandoned or illegally owned. We continued our drive and stopped in the capital city, Belmopan, to have lunch. The capital is interesting because it was created in the 70s because the then capital, Belize City, kept getting hit by hurricanes. Thing is, no one treats this new city like the capital. The prime minister doesn't even live there and all the embassies are still in Belize City. We finally arrived in San Ignacio, the town we would be staying in for the next three days. We went to Cahal Pech, a Maya site right in town. We basically had the place to ourselves so we explored for about an hour.

The next day we went to the largest Maya site in the country - Caracol. Now this was a bad road, and apparently it's "much better than it used to be". It was basically gravel for 25 miles, then sort of paved the rest of the way. Once again we had the place to ourselves. We spent two hours wandering around. We would have stayed longer to have lunch (we brought food with us) but it started to rain so we didn't want to get stuck driving on this bad road in a downpour, especially since the road is prone to flooding. The rain stopped (or rather never really got going) so we stopped at Rio Frio cave. (You can see from one end to the other.) Would have stayed here for a while as well, but the thunder started. We missed the turn for our next stop, Rio On Pools. We turned around but right when we got there the sky opened up. Funny thing is, we drove about 6 miles back toward town and the rain stopped. Not only did it stop, you could tell that not a drop had fallen. People were probably wondering why our car was wet.

On Wednesday we did the Barton Creek Cave tour with our hotel. We were the only ones that went so it was just us, our driver and our guide. We took a canoe into the cave for about one mile then we had to turn around because a section of the cave has collapsed so you can't go all the way out. The Mayas believed that caves were the entry to the underworld and used them for ceremonial purposes. After that was over we went to Xunantunich. We ended up not having enough time because it closed earlier than we thought (4 pm). Oh well. They were nice though and let us stay until 4:15. We didn't have anything planned for the rest of the afternoon so we just wandered around the town. That ended up being plenty.

Thursday was the big day - the day we went to Guatemala to the Maya city of Tikal. It was so much fun. We did it through our hotel and were alone again. Our driver was really nice and we met our guide when we arrived. Very knowledgable. Just driving through Guatemala and dealing with the border crossing was exciting enough (not that we did anything but stand in line). Then Tikal was spectacular. It was great having a good guide. We saw so much wildlife as well. There was hardly anyone visiting that day - just one school group and a few other tourists. The school group didn't stay in any one spot long enough to be annoying. Even though we only had part of a day, we saw a lot of the site. We had seen so much Maya stuff by that point, that it was all starting to run together anyway.

On Friday we headed back to Belize City to return our car. En route we stopped at another cave that we could walk into and explore with a flashlight. (St. Herman's Cave) That was spooky cool. There was a short hike to the cave then we spent about 1/2 hour in the cave then hiked back out. Popped over to the Blue Hole to sit for a little while then continued on our way. We drove to BC where we returned our car and took a "flight" to the Caye (pronounced Key) Caulker. After checking into our hotel, we just walked around the island and watched the sun set on the Carribean.

Our last full day was supposed to be fun but it turned out not to be. We went on a snorkeling/manatee watching cruise. The manatee part was fine (saw several of the water creatures) but the snorkeling sucked because I don't swim and my DH had never snorkeled. The guide/boat operator was useless. He didn't show us how to do anything which p'ed off my DH. I still managed to have fun but DH just moped the whole day instead of saying something to the guy. If this had been the US we would have demanded our money back.

Our final day, Sunday, was very low key. We just walked around the island that morning and sat near the water before going to the "airport". We putzed around the Belize City airport for a while because once again our flight was late. This time, that wasn't a good thing since we had to clear customs in Dallas before continuing on to DC. We got to Dallas and had to circle because of weather so needless to say, we missed our flight. American put us - and the others on our flight that missed their connections - up for the night. We were supposed to be on the first flight out on Monday but we switched to a later flight so we could get some sleep. Flight was full so we had seats at the VERY back of the plane. Didn't matter cause I slept the entire way. It was just too bad cause flying into Washington is always neat, but we didn't have windows. Got back Monday afternoon.
============================

That pretty much summarizes the whole thing. Thanks to everyone that helped me plan. By the way, only occasionally did we not have electricity - the zoo, and the Tropic Air office at Municipal are the couple of times I can think of. Jungle Walk didn't have phone service so we couldn't reserve in advance. Therefore it was good we drove into Orange Walk instead of waiting at the bridge. Will get the full report up ASAP.

~gnr~
gnrbernstein is offline  
Old May 27th, 2005, 07:06 PM
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Glad to hear you had a good time and thanks for the report. We're headed that way next week and can hardly wait! Any tips or suggestions?
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Old May 27th, 2005, 10:23 PM
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who did you go on the manatee trip with? if you don't swim and don't snorkle-what did you expect? i don't understand how you could be mad at the guide? its advertised as a "snorkle trip" not swimming lesson 101. i don't mean to sound sarcastic but i really don't understand this. the trips off Caye Caulker are not advertized as "learn to snorkle"...what you are saying would be like going to a ski resort, taking the chairlift to the top of the mountain, and then getting mad at the resort owners because you don't know how to ski downhill. anybody at Caye Caulker would have helped you learn to snorkle (including the guide) before the trip
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Old May 28th, 2005, 03:49 AM
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Tips for other non swimmers-all boats have life vests and rings-use them. And let the captain know if your swimming skills are under parr. Popular snorkel sites like Hol Chan can have a strong current. Guides will help if they know you need it.
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Old May 29th, 2005, 03:57 PM
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To pumpy - Can't think of anything major off the top of my head. If you are driving into San Ignacio, then be sure to follow the signs once you get into Santa Elena. DO NOT continue straight across the bridge because it is one way the other direction!!! If you are driving to Caracol yourself and planning to stop at the Rio On Pools on the way back, if you cross the "double" bridge after Douglas D'Silvia, you just missed your turn. Have fun!

mitty - If you had participated here before I went on my trip you could have made your position clear. As it was, everyone else said that it "takes 10 minutes to learn to use a snorkel" and "you don't need lessons". The people we took the tour with knew before hand this information and the guide asked when we arrived. He then made some "oh great" noise, handed us the life vests, "said stay here and practice" then left. I'm sorry if it's not intuitive how to attach the snorkel to the mask, how to clear water from the mask/snorkel or how to use the life vest to just float in the water. I bet you didn't know that you don't just put it on? I also didn't expect my tour to be a water taxi service into Belize City which it was. He also took the opportunity to refuel. We were supposed to make a second snorkel stop but we didn't because we made that unexpected side trip. To answer your first question, the tour was with EZ Boy but we actually signed up with and paid Anwar. Others who have gone out with good guides and with children have told us how the guides took a few minutes to show proper use of the equipment and to make sure the person was comfortable. If they didn't want to take new snorkelers they should advertise are experienced snorkelers only. I imagine they wouldn't get a lot of business if they expect everyone to have snorkeled before arriving at their site.

Katie - That was my point. Our guide knew and didn't help. My husband only needed him to explain how to use the equipment which everyone told us would happen. Otherwise we wouldn't have done the tour in the first place.

~gnr~
gnrbernstein is offline  
Old May 29th, 2005, 04:24 PM
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gnr: sorry it turned out that way for you both. never heard of your guide but Anwar is known to be ok. i'm glad you got to see the manatee anyway, special creatures they are!
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Old May 29th, 2005, 07:21 PM
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Yeah. That's what I kept trying to tell my husband - that the trip was mainly to see the manatees. For a while it didn't seem like we would find any, but then we ran across the two or three out feeding. They kept circling the boat. I didn't think we would be that close to them so that was a treat.

~gnr~
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Old May 30th, 2005, 07:39 AM
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We will not be driving (taking transfer service Chaa Creek). However, cuirous about San Ignacio. Since it's close to CC Lodge, I thought we'd probably want to visit the town (may canoe into town if that is safe again). Is the town worth a visit? Also, we will seeing Xunatunich. Did you vist there?

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Old May 31st, 2005, 05:59 PM
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We did visit Xunantunich. It was nice and we needed about 1.5 hours but most people would probably think that 1 hour was plenty. We didn't look at the museum and we did that at all the other sites. It closes at 4:00 and the last ferry is at 3 so you have to be there by 2:45. We stayed in town so we spent a lot of time there eating and shopping. If you aren't staying there, there isn't a lot to see or do, just shop and eat.

We didn't spend any time at the river so I don't know if it's safe or not. We were at the river just long enough to take a photo of the bridge.

Have fun.

~gnr~
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