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The ship arrived in Belize this morning about 8:30 am. There were a number of other cruise ships anchored a fair distance from shore. After going in circles for about 30 minutes, we finally figured out that the whole area is surrounded by a giant barrier reef. Today we were going cave tubing so we took the tender from the ship to Belize City, found our tour guide and went with a group of about 24 on a bus ride to a national park area. The bus was old, pretty uncomfortable and the roads were quite bumpy as well. There is a lot of poverty here…I’d say a somewhat upscale third world country. The tour guide gave us some details on Belize on the 40 minute ride through pretty lush landscape.
We are lunch at the park and it was pretty good — comprised of locally grown foods. Then, we went and picked up large plastic inner tubes, a plastic helmet with an LED light and a life vest. We hiked about 30 minutes on a dirt trail and our guide pointed out the local vegetation, trees, ants, bats, etc. We went through Mayan caves, discussed some historical events and finally made it to the river.
We got on our tubes and strung ourselves together by putting our feet under the arms of the people in front of us. We went through some mild rapids and then got into the cave system. I was able to take some pictures but had to be careful since my camera isn’t waterproof and it was pretty wet!
They Mayans were quite superstitious about the caves — they actually called them “the first level of hell” — so we were a bit hesitant when we floated into the darkness…the head light on our helmet helped a bit — but it was pretty dark in there! The ceilings of the cave varied dramatically — some were just a few feet over our heads and other soared to a hundred feet. There were stalagmites and stalactites all around us. Some of them forming very interesting shapes!
We finished up the cave trip by taking a short walk back to the buildings/staging area, changing clothes in the large restrooms and boarded the bus for the trip back. The picture above shows the typical view outside of town.
When we got back to the ship we relaxed in our room and the butler brought us some appetizers. We met some nice people we had had cocktails with on Monday night for dinner at the main restaurant (Compass Rose) and had a nice time relaxing with them and some more good food. Went to bed early tonight — the cave tubing was more exertion than we had expected! ‘Till tomorrow.
Belize Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/Belize-Jan-13-2010/25151958_7Z5SVL#!i=2062499374&k=wnDJbtc
jthor2054 - Concerned today. After following the shore party to their authentic Mayan Tubing ceremony, probably in worship of the Mayan Tubing God Quetzaltubechain, I observed them preparing to enter the first level of hell. To my dismay, they appear to be more sophisticated in their methods and equipment than I had believed. Here’s a photo as the move upstream to the the cave mouth (http://tinyurl.com/ygjgbnw , see second photo … that’s Dale bringing up the rear).
I shall have to rethink some of my plans. Clearly this is a more technologically-savvy bunch than I had first suspected. Zut alors!