Belize

Today is Belize.  I've been wanting to come to Belize since my last cruise 5 or so years ago and from what I'm hearing about Belize - I don't know why I've been wanting to come:).  I came down for my morning latte and ran into Willy and Lilly and we talked for a while.  They had heard it was really poor, smelly and possibly dangerous.  I guess we'll see.  We can't come to a different country and never go on shore!

We've anchored out so no willy-nilly going on shore and off shore.  We have to tender off and on the boat with local charter companies.

It took about 30 minutes to get to shore and there was a friendly Belizian talking to everyone - and we can't forget the group of Spanish speaking tourists from some crazy country that kept on yowling and sending their old grandma up to one of the deck poles to so pole dancing for them.  I can't tell what they were clapping and yelling but it seemed to be "Toga, toga!!" We're still not sure but it was not attractive!

Lots of waves and lots of in and out sun, and besides the crazy Spaniards, an enjoyable ride over - and no foul smells hit us on the dock.

We got off the boat into the tour city area and decided we wanted to go see more Mayan ruins and the rainforest so - we found an on shore tour company and got stuffed into a van sardine-like with 13 other fellow tourists as trusted that we'd make it somewhere safely.

The ride there proved to be exceedingly interesting as there was a wonderful couple from Texas seated in the front and twinging and twanging up a "bless her heart" storm.  Telling stories about their trip to Brussels where no one spoke English and a cruise they took up in British Columbia, all prefaced with y'alls and "they done"s.  And what was even more amusing is that they were seated by a couple from Victoria, Canada with their little accents "we went ew-t" and going on about how they speak French and all the great things they have in Canada.  Cruise ships definitely have quite a concoction of passengers -provides for hours of entertainment.

We're now getting a linguistics lesson from our driver... He's saying that the Belize dialect is close to Jamaican which is a mix of English and Creole.  He gave a for instance that if you want to know what time it is you'd say "how much o'clock?"  

The last 14 miles to the ruins the driver called the "adventure" part of our tour - the drive there on the "2 lane" road... 

And now we're on the "highway" to Mexico.  Apparently if you stay on this road it will take you about 3 days to get to Mexico. It actually seems like its going to take us 3 days to get to these ancient ruins!... Actually, I do believe we'll be ancient ruins by that time!

We finally got to the ruins and were accosted by a hundred different locals peddling everything from mohagany wood carvings to coconuts and dried bananas.

We got our tickets ...

And entered the ruins of 

There were some of the ruins we could climb so of course - they had to be climbed!

The ruins were pretty interesting - and pretty - ruined...:)

And then we also got to stroll through the rain forest at the back of the ruins.

We got back to the front and our guide took us over by a little "restaurant" there. I'm sure we were supposed to buy from his friends.  

I spotted some kids across from the restaurant and so I opted to make some new friends...:).  They belonged to the woman who worked in the kitchen at the restaurant and poor things just wait there for her each day.  We had fun coloring and playing with cars until it was time for me to go.  I think we shared solidarity - 5 brothers and sisters and I told them there  were 5 in my family too.  3 sisters and 2 brothers - they all liked that.

And now we're back in our van, on the "Mexican highway" headed back to the dock - hopefully in time to make it to the boat.

And because I'm attempting to finish this to get free wifi because I'm almost done with my boat wifi - Ill leave you in suspense until tomorrow to find out if we made it back to the Caribbean Princess!