Adventuring through BELIZE

Jan 16th- 22nd
So Bre and I continued on our adventure to BELIZE!!! Wahoo!!!!!! It was quite a long bus ride. We took the all night bus to the border and then took a van to a city just across the border called San Ignacio. We were told by a fellow traveler that we had to stop there and go to some caves... so that we did!

 

San Ignacio 

We had a very enjoyable couple days in San Ignacio. We made sure to book our tour for the following day to go to the cave and then we found some things to do while in town. We found a Belly Dancing class! We just couldn't resist! We really loved it! We felt super feminine! The teacher was all about GIRL POWER! We all took cards at the beginning of one woman goddess and read it and then said how that woman represents us at this time in our life. I got Freyja... the goddess of love and war. She's known as the goddess of adventure because she was so versatile! Perfect fit, huh? :) Breanna and I really got a hang of the dancing. It was fun to learn the history of belly dancing too! So it was awesome! We had a ton of fun! It was very empowering! 

Ultra feminine - super empowered women!

Then someone gave us free coupons to get margaritas at the bar, so we spent the evening there. Mmm...Mmm.

Free Virgin Margaritas

The next day we got up bright and early and drove out to these ancient Mayan caves we'd heard so much about!
Here we are marching one by one... hoorah, hoorah :)

And the ants were marching one by one, hoorah  hoorah. ;) They're strong ants!

It was a nice little hike and it was beautiful! Check out this tree:

Okay and now for the ATM CAVES aka Actun Tunichil Muknal
This is a cave that the Mayan's used to perform ceremonies and to make sacrifices. We were so excited to check this out! 

The gorgeous opening of the cave:

You have to start off swimming in!

Then you get to the point that you can start walking through.

The ceilings are dripping with stalactites. They're huge! Check those out!!!

The cave had ancient artifacts everywhere. Our tour guide explained that the broken pots were brought in full of food or various items to pay a type of tithe to the gods. And it was ritual to break the pots when you got in there. Interesting huh? So there were broken pots all over the place!

There was also quite of few bones and skeletons from actual human sacrifices... now that was crazy to see.  It's just crazy to walk by and see human bones laying there from over 1000 - 1500 years ago.  All over the cave you could see small bones sticking out of the dirt. Most are partially under dirt because they've been there so long in a moist cave. Check out this skull!

 Then at the very top of the cave where there is less moisture... there are 2 bodies that have all of their bones in place. One was sacrificed on his knees so it's just a pile of bones and the other was sacrificed on her back. Check this out!!!

They call her "The Crystal Maiden". They call her that because her bones have calcified so they sparkle and make it look like they've crystallize. So when you shine your flashlight on her she kinda glows. It's kinda hard to tell in the pictures that I took, but she really does glow!!!

(better photo found online) Isn't that incredible!

The tour really lasted several hours. It was awesome! Then we all had lunch outside the cave. What an experience. Our guide was very knowledgeable. In fact he guided the national geographic magazine people when they came out because he knows so much about the Mayans and the caves surrounding the area. It was really cool to hear all that history. I'm so glad I didn't live back when they sacrificed people!!! I just can't even believe that!

So the next day we made our way to the city. We took the local bus and had a good time just enjoying the sights of Belize from the bus. We're so lucky with the couple of switches we had to make here and there that we didn't get on the wrong bus and end up in the middle of nowhere! :) I could see us doin that. But we got to the city and found a nice hotel for the night. We'd missed all the ferry's that take you to the islands, we got in kinda late.  So we spent the night and went on our way in the morning. 
Caye Caulker
The boat ride was beautiful and the island was no disappointment either!  After finding a nice little cottage to stay in we walked all around. It was sure beautiful!

Check out the Iguana that lived under our little cottage :)

So of course we booked a sailing and a snorkeling trip!  That was a must! We had a blast!

The tour guides threw in a ton of bait so the sharks would gather all around and then they had us all jump in! AH!

Petting and swimming with the sharks!

Loving all the wildlife in the ocean!

We saw some awesome things! Including this....
STING RAY

GLOW-IN-THE-DARK BEAUTIFUL FISH

AND A SEA TURTLE!

We had a ton of fun snorkeling in 3 different locations. They brought us to all the best spots!

Then we enjoyed the luxury of sailing in Belize, just soaking up the sun! Talk about a good time!

We spent the rest of our time just relaxing by the beach and finding some places to eat. It was too expensive to do much of anything else. The internet was like 12 bucks an hour to use, so we hardly even went to an internet cafe. :) It was really nice though to just have that relaxing, fun time on the beach.

We also had a good time watching the fisherman from our little cottage area. They caught a ton of fish and lobster!

Then we walked past and caught them doing the dirty work of gutting the things! Yuck!

 We only stayed on Caye Caulker a couple of days! I really missed Matt and Bre needed to see a doc about her eyes. (They were acting up and we got worried) So we decided we'd go back a little early. I didn't tell Matt, I wanted to surprise him! Plus we needed to get back and get all ready for our upcoming cruise. What a life, huh?  So we filled our pack back up, bought a postcard as a souvenir (that was the only affordable thing! :) and headed for the airport.

So crazy that I've been gone about 2 months now! I've had the adventure of a lifetime! I'm so glad I could share it with my amazing hubby and my amazing sisters! I'm sooo grateful to have such wonderful people in my life to share adventures with!

Sister Trip through Guat and Semuc Champey

Guatemala Jan 1st - 16th, 2010

So Matt left Guatemala on New Years Day. It was too bad that that was the only day he could fly standby and make it home to get back to work in time. So that left me in Antigua all alone! I had never really been alone like that, ever. I got surprisingly depressed and lonely quick! It's a good thing I started studying the following day 5 hours a day at the Spanish School Sevilla. Then I studied after our sessions too! 

My teacher Vicki

I also moved into a house with a family who rents their rooms for some extra cash. For an incredible deal of $70 bucks a week you get a weeks stay and 3 meals a day per day except for Sunday! 

 Iris is the mother of the household, she cooks amazing Guatemalan food, for the most part. :) I am just accustom to American food, so it's hard to eat completely differently all day, every day.

 

So things got better quickly. I started making friends at school and going out to different cafe's and places for lunch and just to hang out. I also met up with a friend from Nicaragua on Monday the 4th. He traveled all through Central America too  and had finally made it to Antigua. He was traveling with a girl that he met while traveling and they made a nice dinner for me :) It was lovely. We hung out all night and then they walked me home so I wouldn't have to go alone! Then before I knew it, Bre was there. She came on Wednesday the 6th. I had convinced Bre and Jess to come travel with me before Matt even left, but they couldn't come that exact day. So Bre came out on the 6th and Jess came out on the 8th! I was super happy that they came out cause I was definitely ready to have some fellow travelers with me to do some fun things!  So Bre didn't want to attend the spanish school so she slept in and then I was done by lunch time. Then we had the rest of the day to explore and do anything we wanted to. We actually did a lot. We participated in some of the activities that the school put on, including some Salsa dance lessons. Then we tested em out a couple times at the club. I had made some friends at the school so we would all go out dancing. It was a really good time! I love to salsa! When Jess came in to town we went out dancin too! It seriously was a really good time!  

 Here we are at the club! :)

But we didn't want to stick around Antigua the whole time. They were anxious to see all of Guatemala and I wanted to go see a bit more so we booked a trip and left Saturday morning to go to Semuc Champey.

So we took off

So we took a long, windy, bumpy ride. We all got a little sick, but Jess got very sick! So she got shotgun! Bre and I were stuck in the very back! We got a couple of popsicles to help replenish us when we made a pit stop and mine had like a 14 inch hair in it, so then I was really sick! Blah! Gross huh?

We got in around dinner time and checked out the town... Bre got some cool shots as we were driving in.

This is where we stayed. It was pretty darn nice!

We had some grub and then headed straight to the BAT CAVE!!! :) You'll see why it's called that.

So we rode a taxi like this to get there: 

This is a normal taxi in Guatemala. All the locals just hop on and get where they want to go with everyone else. This is their public transportation.

So this is us in the taxi, hair flying crazy in the wind and holding on to the bars for dear life.

And now we're at the entrance of the bat cave. We had no idea what we were in for. When we first walked up, we could see hundreds of bats flying out of the cave. They were flying out for the night to go find their food!

When we got in that cave we saw very few bats. We hiked a good ways in and the guide told us all about the cave and the geology of it all and also about all the bats that were "all around" yet we saw hundreds flying out of the cave, and we weren't really believing that there were a whole lot in there. UNTIL... he had us all sit down, back to back, in a central part of the cave. Then the lights that lit the cave turned off. Almost immediately we started hearing bats all around us! And then we felt the wind on our faces from the bats flying all around us. So we took out our cameras and started taking pictures. When the flash went off you could see the bats all around us! It was incredible!!! These are some of the best pics. Most of them didn't turn out too well. Turns out it's hard to take a good picture of a bunch of bats!

By the time we got to our hotel for the evening we were exhausted!!! We hit the hay so fast and it's a good thing cause we had quite a day planned for the following day! 

So the next day was probably one of the best days of the whole trip! SOOO MUCH FUN!!!

It started off with strapping our shoes on tight so we'd be ready for the  

LANQUIN CAVES

The caves are filled with water and you have to swim through a good portion of em. What is cool is we brought candles instead of a flashlight. It made things a whole lot more exciting!

There were all sorts of obstacles. With just a tiny rope we had to get up  some huge drop offs.

Here is Jess getting up a different one. 

 We also got to do a little cliff jumping. We've never really cliff jumped in the dark before! Talk about fun!!!(Ps. It looks brighter in the pics than it was because of the flash)

Here's some pics of the 3 of us! I'm so glad they came out to travel around Guatemala with me! What a fun sister trip!

It was over just a little too fast...

But that's okay cause we were on to the next thing! ROPE SWING!!!

And there is no backing out cause if you don't jump, you are screwed! So here's Bre (she's screaming) as she reluctantly lets go! Ha, it was awesome! Of course Jess was fearless! That's just how she is! I think she was probably even the very first to go. We didn't even have time to get the camera out that quick! :) It got my adrenaline pumping. Look, it's quite a drop! Plus the guy scared us by saying that we had to let go right when he said so because the rest of it was too shallow so you had to drop right in the middle and right when he said "now." Yeah, easier said than done! :)

After that, we made our way up the river to an area with some beautiful falls.

Then we hopped on some tubes and headed down the river! And we're thinking: "this day just keeps getting better and better."

We all started off together but the currents took us all different speeds. After finally catching up to Bre we locked feet so we could stick together the rest of the time.

If you thought we were done... you were wrong. We still had a lot of the day left! We took a taxi again to the bottom of a hiking trail and then hiked up this mountain so we could take a look at this view:
SEMUC CHAMPEY

Talk about a worthwhile hike! We really wanted to be in the picture with all this beauty so we had no choice but to do this...     and here we are with Semuc Champey...

Here's the crew that we spent the day with. They were all super nice. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them and getting to know them. So anyways, we sat down on this little lookout area and ate a little lunch. We started making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when all of a sudden....

we dropped the peanut butter lid! We had to get a little crazy to get it back! Bre and I headed head first over the ledge to see if we could grab it! :) We really needed it. PB and honey has been our biggest source of food this whole trip. Yes it was necessary to go to extreme measures to get it back.

Yes this picture is definitely upside down!

And then continuing our hike down the mountain to actually see that view at a much closer distance!

GORGEOUS huh?

We even got to swim in there! 

We had a lot of fun goofin around and just havin a good time!

Sadly that was the end of our day! If you bet we slept well that night, you are correct my friend! What an amazing day huh!?! We slept with huge smiles on our faces cause we just had one of the best days of our lives.

So the trip was over for me but not for Bre and Jess. I headed back to Antigua and school, and they headed to Florez and Tikal. (Matt and I had already been so I decided to go back and get a couple of extra days in of studying Spanish.) They had a good time checkin out the rest of Guatemala and then Jess had to get back home but Bre came back to Antigua and was back with me by Wednesday. We were planning on leaving Saturday, to go to Belize, so we just wanted to take everything in. So we enjoyed our time just checkin out the city. One of the coolest parts of the city are the windows and doors.

Once again we spent our evenings out on the town with a group of friends from school. 

And of course we spent some time shopping. We enjoyed checking out the local markets.

We were such suckers! We bought from almost every kid in Parque Central. We had too! Look at how sweet they are! And a dollar means a whole lot more to them than it does to us, that's for sure!

We really enjoyed our time in Guatemala but we wanted to move on. So we said our goodbye's

packed our things

and waited for our shuttle to take us to our bus to take us to Belize.

SIDE NOTE: While we waited we hurried and took some pics of Iris's house so we wouldn't forget what a typical Guatemalan home looked like. And perfectly enough I got the funniest picture of Bre! See if you can spot her! :) Ha ha ha! Photography at it's best huh? You'd a thought I planned that! :)

Okay so now time for the wrap up..... We had a good ol time in Guat and now...Another adventure...comin right up!