Belize - Day 3

Another early morning. While the birds were quieter this morning, the mosquito fogging truck happened by about 5:30 am. Oh well, there was a French press waiting downstairs and I took the opportunity to have some amazing coffee and work a little bit on a grant application for work.

About 7 am, we hopped on our bikes and made the quick trip to get fresh tortillas. When we arrived at the stand, the woman told us they needed 10 more minutes to finish heating the griddle so we pedaled off on a morning tour of town. Everyone here is so friendly and there are already many familiar faces to wave to. We even saw Chocolate out walking his dog! In a little less than 10 minutes we were back at the tortilla stand and the beautiful little golden discs were cooking away. The woman loaded about a dozen and a half into a paper wrapper, took our $2.50 Belizean dollars ($1.25 US) and we were on our way.


Back at home, we wrapped the warm tortilla around refried beans and eggs scrambled with onion, cheese and hot sauce. Accompanied by good coffee and a ripe pineapple we bought from a stand yesterday and it was certainly a breakfast fit for royalty!

After tidying up the kitchen and finding the compost bin in the neighbor's yard (don't worry, we asked permission) it was time to get ready for our day. On the agenda was a 1/2 day snorkel tour with French Angel Tours. We stopped at 3 locations on the reef, the first being Shark Ray Alley. The attraction in this area is that it is full of sting rays and nurse sharks. We have been to this location before, but there were no sharks there at the time. Today there were about a half dozen nurse sharks ranging in size from about 2 to 6 feet. A little unnerving at first, but soon it's clear that they are very used to the swimmers and just circle around the area. Both the sharks and the rays come very close to you, and even bump in to your legs once in a while. One of the sharks picked up a conch shell from the floor of the ocean and tried to crack it open between it's teeth. You could hear the conch cracking under the water and it made me hope that they were truly friendly.

A shark and a ray together

Andrew and a shark

More sharks (and more Andrew)

Upon special request from Carter, we also took a couple of pictures of us touching the rays. We could not get close enough to the sharks to do the same. Sorry, they were just too fast and it seemed like a bad idea to chase them!

Me touching a ray

Andrew touching a ray

After The Alley, we headed over to two other locations - Coral Garden and The Swash. It wasn't the best snorkeling we have ever done, but the coral is always fun to see. In addition to coral, we also saw some big grouper, parrot fish, and a Morey eel.

Best pic of the eel. He was a quick guy!

After getting back on land, we walked back to the house, showered and headed out to find some lunch - we were starving! Some of the other folks on the snorkel trip with us suggested Rose's for fresh seafood, so we gave it a try. We ordered conch fritters, ceviche, and conch nachos (did I mention we were starving?). Everything was amazing, but there was way more food than four people could have eaten. Total for the three plates with a couple of cocktails and tip was $40 US.

Conch fritters

Ceviche (my favorite!)

Conch nachos (Andrew's favorite)

As we were instructed to do, we stopped by to see Chocolate again this afternoon. Sorry Shelby, forgot to take a photo. Still no word on when he's going out. "Check back tomorrow." Ok, we will! Stopped at the store to load the bike basket with sodas, one of which promptly exploded all over Andrew after he hit the first bump in the road - diet orange too, of course! Why is it that Sprite never explodes?

Now we're back at the house, and are likely in for the evening unless we have to wander out for a snack. We're both tired and I really need to do some more work on my grant proposal. We've turned the air conditioning on today, for the first time. So far we've done fine with fans and the ocean breeze but it seems extra hot today so we're going to let the a/c cool it down before bed.

More house photos...

The roof deck

View of the lagoon from the roof deck

The back deck (lagoon side of the house)

Since we're not going out with Chocolate tomorrow, we're going to take the water taxi to San Pedro, which is the city on Ambergris Caye about 30-minutes away. It's one of the main tourist cities in Belize so we expect to be able to wander around for the day, and maybe even do a little shopping. Photos to come!