Honeymoon Day 5

(So this is way out of order, but I'm just trying to keep you all on your toes!)

Day 5: Belize

Before this trip, in my mind, Belize was going to be the most tropical Paradise-type stop of the whole trip. Oh my, was I ever wrong! This was, by far, the most ghetto place we visited and resembled Mexico much more than Tahiti.

We booked excursions ahead of time in every stop but this one. Because I thought it was going to be so beautiful, we decided we could just get off the boat whenever we woke up and walk around and see the sights--no excursion necessary.

That morning, we did sleep in and head to shore mid-morning, but the next few hours did not turn out like we had planned! Of course, the harbor area was modern and well-kept and looked like most every other stop we visited. However, after walking a few blocks, we found ourselves in a 3rd world country being accosted by local cab drivers and tour guides who wanted our money.

There was a disagreement at this point between Kory and I because I wanted to keep walking in one direction and this old man told us everything in town was the other direction, so Kory wanted to turn around and go the other way. I could clearly see that there was more town ahead and pretty much every person who got off the boat was continuing to walk the direction I wanted to go...so I wanted to keep going until we ran out of town and then turn around and start back the other direction. After all, we had many hours to spend here, so I figured we should see all of the town and get some more exercise.

We ended up going the way Kory wanted and it was fine. Life didn't end. However, I was so frustrated that Belize wasn't meeting my expectations that I was probably taking it out on Kory. My bad. We walked and walked and walked and the further we went, the more shady the neighborhoods got. At one point, Kory said it was getting too bad and we needed to get out of there before we got kidnapped. I was still mad because we waited in line for about 10 minutes to get a Coke and never got one. The men in front of us were just chatting it up and had no concern for the 5 people in line behind them.

We decided that we would just go back to the ship and hang out there the rest of the day since Belize had not been kind to us. I was definitely mad that we were going to waste this whole day and that everything was going wrong. Kory was trying to make things better and figure out what would make me happy but I was just in a funk and couldn't get out of it.

Right as we headed back to get on the boat, we passed this tour shop and stopped for a second to see what trips they offered. A tour guide immediately approached us and tried to sell us one of his tours. I wasn't interested but Kory started asking some questions. The guide said the cave tubing adventure was easily the #1 selling tour and that it was the most popular tour. Back story: my co-worker told me they went cave tubing and she LOVED it and it was so fun and the best thing ever, blah blah blah. Well, I looked at the tour on Carnival's website and wasn't that interested in it before and was even less interested after hearing my co-worker go on and on about it.

So the tour guide told us he had a group ready to go on the cave tubing, but they had to have 2 more people before they could go. He told us he'd give us 50% off if we would go with him. This guy was most definitely local and quite hard to understand, but he was certainly enthusiastic. Anyhow, Kory thought it sounded fun and was much better than going back to the boat all day, so he wanted to do the tour. I figured I should let Kory do what he wanted since I'd been such a Debbie Downer all day, so I agreed to go. We reminded the driver we had to be back in time to catch the boat (we only had about 3-4 hours left) and he said it would be no problem and we would make it back with time to spare.

AND then the real adventure began! I'm very sad to say I don't have pictures to document the rest of this day...but the one picture I do have is of the van we took for the tour.

This van had no A/C and the chair I sat in faced sideways so I was looking right at the rest of the people who were in forward-facing chairs. We met a Canadian couple who was also going to be on this tour and immediately hit it off with them, so my attitude was quickly changing and I was feeling better about this day.

As soon as we got in the van and headed out of town, we had to stop by the Tourism Agency Board to let them know how many people were going on the tour and where we were headed, etc. In retrospect, I appreciate them doing this because the likelihood of tourists not returning from such trips is probably pretty high. This tourism board consisted of two women sitting in folding chairs at a card table on the side of the road with a notebook and pen. Our driver slowed down and rolled down his window to shout our numbers and destination at them and keep driving. Official business.

So then we drove. And drove and drove and drove. Oh my goodness it was taking forever to get to this place. It turns out that these caves are about an hour and a half out of town! We were speeding down this dirt road and passing large trucks at insane speeds and I was getting very carsick. We finally arrived at the cave tubing location and changed into our swimsuits and got our inner tubes and headlamps. The next surprise on this trip was that we had a 30 minute hike before we could get in the water. I thought we'd grab our tubes and be in the water within a couple minutes. After hiking (mostly uphill) for what seemed like forever, the guide told us we needed to start hurrying or we weren't going to make it in time. So now we were hiking even faster and I was getting more and more nervous we were going to miss the ship.

We finally got to the water and lined all our tubes up to form a train where we each held the next person's feet to connect the tubes. The tour allows people in these "tube trains" to float on the water through this cave system. Truthfully, I wasn't that impressed. Part of that probably comes growing up near Carlsbad Caverns. I have probably visited there 5 or more times in my life and after a while, it kind of loses it's excitement. Kory & I also visited the caves near Austin a few years back. The other people on our tour were from Canada and Puerto Rico and none of them had ever seen the inside of a cave before, so they were completely amazed.

Now, that's not to say I didn't enjoy the tour. There was a natural waterfall in the cave that was just incredible! The sun was shining in through an opening and it was beautiful. There were also a couple other formations that were really neat and it's always fun to just relax and float on water. However, there was not as much relaxing as one would hope for...the water gets really shallow in places and you have to lift your bottom up so it won't drag on the rocks. We also had to paddle in the still water and get out and walk at one point because the water was almost dried up in that spot.

When you finish floating through the caves, you are free to just float the rest of the way back to the vans and swim/jump off rocks/whatever you want to do. Well, by this time, we were REALLY cutting it close on time and we had to get a move on it. The Americans and Canadians were swimming back as fast as we could while carrying an innertube, but the Puerto Ricans were nowhere to be found. They were on a different cruise line and their ship didn't leave until several hours after ours. Again, I was really frustrated that they were just taking their time and were going to make us late.

We ended up practically running to the van so we could head back to town. I found out on the ride back to town that the really big guy from Puerto Rico weighed too much for his tube to handle and it was losing air and that's why it was taking them so long. Anyhow, I think we made it back to town in about 45 minutes. Oh it was a terrifying ride for sure, but we didn't care because we were cutting it so close on time! Thankfully we made it back with just a couple minutes to get back on the boat. There was a crazy long line to get on the boat, but we knew we were going to make it at least.

However, we had reservations for the steakhouse that night and by the time we got back on the boat, we only had about 30 minutes to get to the restaurant. That might have been ok but we each needed to shower and get ready and it was a fancy night so we had to really dress up. I ended up throwing my hair into a wet bun and we were a few minutes late to the reservation anyhow. We have no pictures because I was looking pretty rough and also we ran out of the room in such a hurry that I forgot my camera.

The meal was amazing, though! I wish I had my camera to document the incredible food we had...and, of course, I can't even remember what it was all called. So just trust me when I say it was delicious and we ate WAY too much.

Honeymoon Days 1 & 2

So a few months ago, when I returned from my honeymoon, I promised my dear friend Rachel that I would post detailed blog posts about each of our stops...I have been waiting until we had fast, reliable internet at home to do these posts and we finally have that, so I'll get started on these honeymoon recaps now.

The morning after the wedding (Sunday May 29th) we woke up at 4:00 a.m. to get to the airport and start our journey to Miami (after arriving at the hotel after midnight the night before). With the wedding over, I finally lost my adrenaline I'd been running on for the past week and was totally and completely exhausted this day. I could hardly stay awake in the El Paso Airport long enough to get boarded on the plane. I'm pretty sure we both sat down on the plane and went to sleep within 2 minutes, after taking a picture for the blog, of course. We were pretty much out until we arrived in Miami at 1:30 p.m.

When we arrived in Miami, there was a man from Carnival waiting at our gate to escort us to our bus outside. I'm not sure why we got the VIP treatment, but this guy carried our bags for us and when we got outside to the bus, there were probably 50 people waiting outside in the heat and they took us to the front and loaded our luggage and allowed us to get on the bus before they even let anyone else check-in. I booked our tickets for the transfer from the airport to the cruise ship a month or two ahead of time, but surely I'm not the only person who did that? Anyhow, it was a great start to the week of relaxation and fun!
 
When we first got on the ship and found our room, we were surprised by how small it was and were afraid that the lack of window would make it too dark and not fun to be in the room. We ended up booking a room without a window because someone suggested it would help with sea sickness. We left the room to walk around the ship and see what was going on.

Waiting for the boat to take off

Shortly thereafter, we sailed out of Miami and we hung out on the deck for a while before heading to dinner. The warm weather was SO nice after 7 months of rain in Oregon!

We went to a show that evening after dinner and it was so corny, we didn't stay long at all. We didn't even make it a seat actually, we stood there for a few minutes and quickly decided we had no interest in staying there for an hour or however much time was left.
 
We had an early morning excursion the next day and I was completely exhausted and wanting to go to bed early. I held out until 9:00 p.m. and could not keep my eyes open any longer. Kory went to the deck to watch Despicable Me and to regret the fact that he had married the most boring woman in the world!

However, that small dark room was JUST what I needed. I slept 13 hours that night and woke up the next day feeling amazing!! Monday was our first day at sea and we had a very relaxing day. We ordered room service, laid out on the deck, played in the pool, ate way too much at all the buffets, watched a movie in our room, ate some more ice cream and I know there was a lengthy nap in there somewhere also. It was such a perfect day!