The Marshall family: Belize

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Belize – Day 3

February 25, 2013

I can’t believe its day 3 of our trip already. I don’t even know where to start with our day either. It was AMAZING! We again started out our day at Granny and Grandpas (granny slept at our hotel with us last night) for breakfast. We had scrambled eggs, fresh hash brown potatoes, orange juice and toast. Delicious!

We then hopped in the car and headed off for our adventure. We drove about an hour to meet Ronnie. He was going to be our tour guide for the day. We then drove deep into the jungle to a tourist attraction where we were set up to go zip lining through the jungle and then a cave tubing expedition. I still can’t even put into words how unbelievable our day was. We started with zip lining. Grandpa purposely set us up to do this on Monday because it’s the day that there are no cruise ships coming in. It was nearly empty, we almost had the entire place to our selves. They told us that on a normal cruise ship day they have 1500-2000 people go through there. We MAYBE saw 100 today. I bet not even that many. Our zip lining guides were Edgar and Ruben . Ruben always started our runs and after Edgar got us all across safely then he would finish it up. Then we would move on to the next run. I think we did a total of 8 lines. I think the highest we went was 120 feet above the ground and it was 700 ft long. Yes, even Seth did it!

After we finished our zip lining we met back up with Ronnie and he took us to the little bbq chicken hole in the wall restaurant for lunch. Seth and I were a little leery of the food but we ate enough to keep us satisfied through our 4 hour cave tubing adventure. Everyone else was a little more adventurous in their eating that we are and they loved the food.

We changed into our swimsuits and picked up our tubes. We began our journey even further into the jungle. We walked for about 5 minutes until we got the river. But this was the point that the tour ended. So this began our hike. It was more of a nature hike. We walked for about an hour and Ronnie told us all about the trees, bugs, Mayan mythology and beliefs. All our feet were killing us by the time we got to the river. We came to this ridge where we couldn’t see what was on the other side. Ronnie told us to put our tubes down and to come see where we were getting into the water. It was the most breath taking view I’ve ever seen. The water was so beautiful. It was down a deep rock wall/bed thingy… that we had to climb down. The water was this beautiful blue green and so clear. We could see so deep. We climbed down a bit then jumped off a tall rock wall into the water (about a 10-12 ft jump). After our long hot sweaty hike the water was so refreshing. It was so crisp and cool and felt so good on my hot sticky skin. We got to swim around here for a bit until we all decided we were ready to begin the cave tubing. I’m so sad this day is over because as I’m posting these pictures I’m realizing that they don’t do this oasis justice. This place was so heavenly. Its somewhere I want to visit every day. It’s the kind of place you only dream of visiting, something you just see in movies. I hope I can remember how unbelievable this was forever!

We hopped into our tubes and all hooked together. Ronnie took the lead and was also our paddle. He called this his gym. I bet he gets such a good workout. There wasn’t much of a current so with his arms he pulled us all 5 behind him. We went into the first cave. It was unreal. The stalactites and stalagmites were everywhere. As we got deep enough into the first cave Ronnie had us turn off our headlamps. It was so dark and peaceful in there. He said one thing about doing the run today is that we get this moment of peace. When the cruise ship tours are going through he said its loud the entire day. Well the cave was so dark that we couldn’t see anything. I put my hand in front of my face about an inch and couldn’t even see a hint of it. It was unbelievable. We came out into a clearing for a few minutes before we headed into the 3^rd cave (I forgot to mention the first cave that was during our hike. Not in the water). This is where the journey got interesting. As part of this special 4 hour tour we got to start at a place that not many people get to (cruise ship tours are usually on a time crunch and have to start further down the path, some people don’t want to hike for an hour) Where we had all day to do this we didn’t care how long it took and we were up for the full adventure. So this 3^rd cave we went into was just as amazing and as beautiful as the last. We came to a point where we heard a waterfall. When we reached the waterfall Ronnie pulled us to the side and helped us climb out. We were at the bottom of a huge sinkhole. They had created a huge staircase the lead to the top of the sinkhole. We hiked up and around to the back side and explored for a while. It was incredible; we were walking around on stalagmites. They were some of the most beautiful formations we had ever seen and we were right there walking right up to them. Then we hopped back onto our tubes and he took us back to the backside of the cave. It was called the crystal cavern. When you shine your lights on some of these formations they looked like a huge mound of crystals. He led us to a spot where again he helped us all get off our tubes and we walked around again. He showed us some ancient ruins, more formations and more caves. We explored around in there for another half an hour. Then he led us around the backside of the waterfall where we got back on our journey. We finished that cave and were lead out into the open river. At that point we un hooked our selves from each other and just relaxed while the river took us along to the end of the trail.

I hope I’m able to portray even an ounce of the beauty that was in this place through my words and pictures.

What a day!

Tonight we got back, showered, and headed to the Medina home for dinner and family home evening. She made us pupusas. They were delicious. Their family was so sweet and Seth ate it up. He loved being around friends. It was a 3-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. They ran around outside for a bit, sat on a hammock for a while, and then played a card game and hangman together. The little boy was obsessed with Seth’s watch. Seth was so cute and sweet with him. He let him wear it. While they were on the hammock together Seth even played silly little toddler games to make the little boy laugh. It was very tender. Family home evening was beautiful. And sister Medina (her name is Anna too!) showed me her beautiful garden outside. She didn’t speak much English and I don’t speak much Spanish but somehow we understood each other!

I loved today! I wish I could experience it every day.

A couple things that caught our eyes on the way to the caves

A cardboard license plate...