La Perla Del Caribe San Pedro

... Go Slow', and its certainly appropriate!

Before I came I had intended merely to do some snorkelling around the island, but Katie, an Aussie girl that I was travelling with managed to persuade me to ditch that plan for the far more grandiose adventure of diving the Blue Hole. In fairness, she didn't need to do much persuading. Its expensive, certainly, but lots of people come to Belize purely to do this one activity, and who knows when I'll be back around ...

... min boat ride to the island. There was a couple there with a cute little baby that had been on our last 2 flights. Made friends. They live in Denver.( Lindsay and Ashley, you have a dinner invitation from them :-). Any way it was getting dark as we arrived so we got our room grabbed some dinner and crashed. The next morning we got locked out of our safe and we met our Neighbors, Doug and Coleen. They told us the combo and tried to get it open ...

... bar tab. After 2 more for the road I headed down the road to Coconuts to meet up with Nancy and her husband. The band is a blues band and was really quite good, so I hope to catch them again either on this visit or the next. The crowd was mixed... lots of faces I knew, lots I didn't, and by the end of the night I'd made a few friends. Isn't that what vacations are all about... relaxing days, good drinks and new and old friends.

... aproximadamente 1 hora, llegamos a la isla a las 5 de la tarde. Al desembarcar, rapidamente varios guias turisticos nos rodiaron tratando de ofrecernos hotel, y planes de vacaciones. Sin embargo gracias a la ayuda de un mapa de la isla que esta expuesto en cada esquina, con todos los nombres de hotels, pude safarme de su ayuda y les hice entender que ya teniamos reservaciones en un hotel desde hace meses. Por supuesto era ...

... quite vast and less populated by far, straw huts dotted the landscape but this time they had more land around them and even though we were on the country's main highway, it looked more like a back lane, just about big enough for 2 cars to pass! It was hard to tell if electricity existed in some areas and on arriving at our first town it felt more like a village compared to Mexico, such a difference already and we had only journeyed about 30 miles!!! On ...

... who is interested in the types of activities we did (seeing ruins and local scenery, canoe trips, horseback rides), but we would warn them about the temperature and Cicadas during the middle part of May when we were there. The shuttle was mostly uneventful with only a couple of "highlights". We passed by one of the controversial security checkpoints on the Western Highway and the guard standing ...

I took a walk on the beach to the north this morning. Saw folks voting at the high school. Looks like a pretty good turnout. Of course, no alcohol will be served today until the polls close. Damn politics! We had breakfast at Blue Water Grill - cinnamon French toast and a Belizean breakfast with coffee and tea for less than $20 total. We've found prices to be pretty comparable with American prices. Now we're about to get on board for a snorkeling tour of Hol Chan Marine Reserve ...

Belize. A small carribean country where there is a mix of spanish mexicans and west indians. strange after Mexico to see black people, your people Mike, and from the relative smallness of Mexicans to Afro Belize people, Creole I think they call themselves, as big if not not bigger than me! The country itself had a nice feel to it but once we hit Belize city and the concrete buildings, narrow ...

... to our hotel, where they have the good news: We do not have our ocean view (ok) We have twin beds for the night (almost ok) We can change tomorrow to ocean view but still twin beds: NOT ok What do you do? The next best is twice the price. We would like to stay a couple of more days but not if we sleep at the other side of the room. Wait and see, we go diving tomorrow. The city is cute, the transport is ... golf carts for tourists or locals.

... Honduras, it was just snorkeling, but that was impressive enough! Swimming with sharks (the undangerous nurse variety), sting rays and a lots of different coloured tropical fish and checking out the colourfull coral constructions, that s what you get. Also a burnt back though, as that is both the part that is the hardest to cover with sun screen ...