New Years
For new years all the volunteers had been planning to go to Caye Caulker, a vacation spot where we could dress like Americans and just relax for a while. Most everyone caught the 6am express and we had a 6 hour bus ride up to Belize City. Then we made a hilarious white people train as we walked through the rain to the water taxi…you see none of us wanted to pay the 6 dollars for a taxi. We quickly discovered it was indeed cruise ship day (even though it is supposed to be Tues and Thurs and it was Wednesday). I have never seen so many white people since arriving in Belize. It was weird. I found myself staring at them, at their new clothes bought just for this cruise, at their short shorts, at the way they bumbled around sticking out like sore thumbs…I repressed my feelings though and we made our way to the water taxi. An hour on a speeding boat later and we are at our hostel. We toured the island, which took about 40 minutes (it is a small island) then went swimming at the split. They have picnic tables in the water that you can drink at. We just splashed all around and swam until we were freezing. After dinner we proceed to sing karaoke for several hours in a bar full of tourists.
Our hostel
On new years eve we went on an all day snorkel adventure that we got a great discount on because of one of Kevin’s friends from his village! 65 Belize for lunch, fresh fruit, seviche, 3 hour long snorkel stops…the last being a guided tour, and punch. The captain and first mate (Rasta man) remembered Emily, because she speaks kriol so well, and we had a great time. On the way out only one person, Kevin, succumbed to sea sickness…we would have had more but the captain keeps Dramamine on hand. We saw more fish on this tour than we have anywhere…Hawaii, Italy, California, anywhere! It was amazing. We swam with sharks and rays at the second stop. They threw off a bunch of little fish bits and a lot of nurse sharks appeared out of nowhere. Then we jumped off the other side of the boat and we could swim right with them. We fed big blue fish oranges from our hands and Greg got caught in a feeding frenzy while hand feeding bait to the eager fish. He even got little nibbles around his hand.
All of us about to have the most awesome snorkel time ever!
Even the dogs are happy and enjoy the blue waters
The split
LUNCH
Look at the sharks! Such blue water!
On our guided snorkel tour we saw a moray eel. Our guide just dove down, made some clicking sounds with his hands near a hole and bam, out comes a huge green eel! The guided tour was along this natural channel and we were told to swim close to the 20ft wall of reef so we don’t go into the open channel That’s where the ‘big fish’ come in from sea. We saw a fish that looked like something out of the life aquatic. It was four inches and bright royal blue, but it had bright blue rhinestone looking dots all over it that glittered as it swam. I was mesmerized. We saw a devilish looking group of 4 to 5 foot barracudas daydreaming with their nightmarish grins staring off into the distance. We didn’t linger there. We swam over to the shallows and after a few minutes we were right up on a green sea turtle. He looked over and seemed to care less that we were there and dove back down to munch on some broken coral. I had never seen a sea turtle in real life in the ocean; I thought they would move quicker. We also saw goliath carp or grouper (I can’t remember which) they were about 4 feet and just huge…like the size of a pig with a big trap door mouth the size of my hand. One was lurking in the shadows of an anchored boat and yeah, maybe I got a little scared. On our way back we were under sail the whole time as the sun set and it was just super. A fantastic way to end the year!
Lilly got that hat for free, the Kev's dominated in arm wrestling.
New Years was spent overeating on lobster pockets and then dancing our hearts out until 1AM. Everyone was sweaty and happy, it was one of the best new years I’ve had. We relaxed at Pat and Keri’s awesome house…used the internet and the washer AND DRYER and watched TV with Peter. Great vacation, just what we needed.
Belize City bus station vendors
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