Last Day, Last Thoughts

Friday was our last full day in Belize and we booked a half day of snorkeling to the popular Hol Chan marine reserve and Shark Ray alley. We originally booked with the same company that took us fishing and we were out on the dock at 8am waiting for our ride when Yolanda came over from the office and told us that they had "a problem with the boat" but we would still be going out, it would just be about an hour delayed.
OK, we're already on the dock, it's a nice morning so we'll hang out and wait. Yolanda stays and talks for a while (about 45 minutes) and then tells us the boat should be here shortly. About half an hour later a boat shows up but they are not with our tour company but I do know that they worked closely with the other company and they are acting like they are our boat so we join their tour. There are already 8 people and we are the last to join so not bad - 10 people.
Of course, that is just our boat and when we get to Hol Chan we see several other boats and they all have way more then 10 people. I am immediately put off by this but we get our gear on and get in the water at which point my camera dies. I'm a bit bummed because it is our only snorkel trip for the whole vaca so I would have really like to have some pics - Oh well, I will just enjoy the view.
Our guide gets in and all 10 of us are trying to follow him while not smacking each other with our fins but honestly, there are just too many people both in our group and overall to avoid smacking or being smacked with fins. That and the fact that our guide seems to be on a speed tour really did not make for the best trip but we did get to see a few neat things and when we got to Shark Ray alley, it was less crowded and we got  to swim with some pretty big nurse sharks. Overall I would not do this snorkel trip again.

The remainder of Friday we hung out around our rental and as usual we discussed our trip, where we went, what we liked, could we live here, etc. and here is a summary of what we discussed.
Overall we liked Belize. We visited Corozal in the northern mainland area because it is a more affordable area but felt that overall it was much dirtier than we would prefer for a place to live. Don't get me wrong, I do not mind poor and I do not expect a place where I can live cheaper to not have some challenges but in this area people went down to the water area, partied hard and just left their trash every where all over the ground. Now, they did seem to have public works come around and clean up the next day but when you watch a stray dog picking at a dirty diaper because someone couldn't throw it in the several trash cans that are around - that's not a place we would prefer to be. However, the people in this area were some of the nicest, most helpful people we've met in any of our travels.

As for the island of Ambergris Caye, we stayed south of town which is a little quieter and definitely more our speed as opposed to being in town where things are much busier. We really like the island but overall it is definitely a little more expensive that I would have preferred. Also, everyone kept telling us that it was the slow season but I thought there were "quite a few people" there and wondered how busy it really gets during the busy season and if we would really be able to handle that even if we did not choose to live "in town".
This and the fact that there are only a few actual walk in beaches that do have sea grass everywhere makes it a little less like the "beach" atmosphere that we prefer.
Again, we knew all this before the trip but seeing and experiencing things is different than reading about them and that after all is why we go and check all these places out.

So we will be plotting out our next adventure/survey trip and see where that brings us next.

Until then, here are a few funny things that stand out about this trip that I've not mentioned before:

There are many sugar came fields and we saw that they seem to frequently burn the fields and we asked 3 different people and got these 3 different responses:

1. They burn some of the crops to create the brown sugar (sounds reasonable)
2. They burn all of the crops to get rid of the snakes because the men have to harvest the cane by hand (this was a little more convincing)
3. They burn the fields after the cane is harvested to make the soil rich so they can grow more sugar cane (I think this guy was just telling us gringos something)

Remember the picture of the iguana in the gutter?

Well, I did not have my camera with me but a couple days later we saw an iguana at least 3 times bigger crawl up into that space behind right behind this guy, right up into the roof!!!! I wonder if they hear him roaming around up there at night...LOL

If we decide to move anywhere where the primary mode of transport is a golf cart, I am going to have to up my insurance to cover road burn from when I keep falling off...LOL

Well, gotta go start planning......