Belize!

Ben and I had never been to Belize, and we fell in love! It is such a beautiful country!

We had to take a short tender to shore, then a long bus ride to our excursion: Cave tubing and zip lining! We have so much been looking forward to this! I saw pictures of a friend doing something similar a couple years ago, and I had total vacation envy. No longer do I need to have vacation envy! This was simply spectacular!

Our Belizian guide told us that nobody in Belize is unhappy. Everybody is happy there- they aren't rude, they are simply happy. Now, it is not a first world country. We saw a lot of poverty on our drive. Our guide said in Belize they never use the word "poor." Nobody is poor in their country- instead, they are called "hard working." I LOVE that!!!! I want to change my vocabulary as well!

One of our guides, Maria, was incredible. She carried Camille's tube and helped her so much. It was sweet. She told me that Belize is where everyone in Central America tries to emigrate to because it is such a great place to live. What tiny bit we saw of it, I could see it would be a great place!

Look at this beautiful rain forest we got to walk through! Simply stunning!

My pictures inside the cave aren't great, but you can get a small idea of the beauty:

Then switching to zip lining!

We had to climb up high. The views made it worth it!

We were 200 feet high in the beautiful jungle. It was paradise!

Then we got some coconut milk. It was incredibly tasty, but I waited too long to order it, and once again we almost missed our bus. That was not good at all...

We had multiple people thank us for coming to Belize. Admittedly, it was actually really heart-wrenching for me see such extreme poverty, and then to get back on the ship and see such gluttony- people ordering three main dishes and eating 2 bites and throwing the rest away and such. It's hard to be so blessed with so much and see how others are not as blessed- simply by virtue of where they were born, pure dumb luck. But, I need to remember that by visiting their country, we are supporting them- and at least three people thanked us for simply coming to Belize as 30% of their economy is from tourism. I certainly did fall in love, and I can't wait to go back!

Formal Photos

For formal night, there are professional photographers everywhere. It really must be quite the racket. We had probably a dozen pictures of us taken, at least. We settled on two.

Cozumel!

Our first shore day was Cozumel! We had a pretty big problem because on our Sea Day yesterday we got a letter saying our shore excursion that we were really looking forward to, swimming in cenotes, was canceled because there weren't enough people signed up. This was a HUGE bummer for us! We were so looking forward to this, and had booked it months ago. So, Ben and I had to scramble and do some research to find another one.

Eventually we chose Xel-Sha, a water park type area that looked really fun.

In the end, it was a GREAT choice! Our biggest complaint is that we simply didn't have enough time. It would be like having 4 hours at Disneyworld- we simply weren't able to do all the things we wanted to do before we had to get back on the bus. So, that was a huge bummer- BUT- it was still amazing. We did a little bit of floating down a river, a little bit of jumping off cliffs (Ok, Audra was the only one brave enough to do it- and she even did it twice so I could get video of her when I missed her going the first time), some snorkeling, some bicycling through a forest- so, basically, it had everything. We could have easily stayed there twice as long.

We had to take a one hour tender and then another 1 hour bus ride to get there:

Here's the girls "officially" stepping foot into a foreign country for the first time- so exciting, even though we didn't get a single passport stamp the entire trip.

Our bus ride:

It was basically a water amusement park. It is very large, so they let us ride bikes up to the entrance of the river. It was absolutely beautiful:

By now, Claire is already sick of pictures. Too bad! This trip will have LOTS and LOTS of pictures!

We were tubing under the beautiful lush vegetation. It was very, very, very slow- that was the only problem:

Oh, and there were iguanas everywhere!

This is the cliff Audra jumped off. She is so brave!

Then we went back to the same area as the tubing, but a slightly different starting point, and snorkeled down the river.

 I think this is Audra and Claire:

This looks scary, but it wasn't at all. It was maybe 50 feel long, but it wasn't very high, then dipped into the water in the middle. Camille was sad because she wasn't quite tall enough to do it, but we still had fun.

Then, there was ziplining over the water! I told you, this place had everything! The lines were not long at all, it was perfect!

Authentic Mexican food! It was really yummy!

 We got virgin pina coladas- they weren't great, but they were fun.

Then we found this kid area that Claire and Camille loved. So much so we had to race back to our bus and were three minutes late, which really stressed us out as we did not want to miss our bus! But, it all worked out.

Camille was tuckered out! Actually, we all were!

It was a wonderful day. Honest, I would definitely go back. When the biggest problem is you wish you had more time, that's a good day.