Belize City, Belize 3-15-11

What did we see besides the jungle and beautiful river? Lots of poverty. Not nearly as poor as west Africa but right along there. There is one photo of a small steel container that someone obviously stole from a shipyard and put it up on blocks, cut out a door and put a padlock on it. That is a home. No windows, no bathrooms, no kitchen...got it? There are a lot of Squatters in Belize from other countries. The government allows it. The country only gained it's Independence in 1973. They have people from Honduras, India, Africa (the poorest parts)..all squatting on small pieces of land. Belize is about the same size as Massachusetts. It has the second largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere, second only to the great barrier reef. Belize is the only country in central america where English is the official language, Spanish is second. However, the locals speak a crazy kind of creole english that is not recognizable as english. This country only has about 250,000 people. They also have had many Chinese immigrants of late. This tiny country used to be part of Honduras, has a great Mayan civilization history, as well as pirates and slavery. Today it is and independent and democratic country. They have more trees than people that we found out for sure.
There is a photo of a cemetery. It makes you think that they bury their dead above ground. They do not. However, they only bury 3 feet deep and then put a concrete decorative vault on top of the grave, much like the people in Mexico.

We had a great guide in Belize, Ali. She knew everything there is to know about every tree in Belize! Very interesting. We had a jungle hike that took about 45 minutes, we were all carrying our inner tubes and wearing life jackets for the hike. When we reached the top, we all got in the river for our "float" through the caves and rapids. It was really interesting. Good news/bad news...no cameras! Ha! No great pictures of the four of us hiking/schelpping/trudging through the jungle! There were trees there that they call the "Tourist" trees. They have red bark, peel and then turn white! Ha! Sound like a sunburned tourist?? They have trees that you run to and chew on the bark if you happen to be bitten by one of their 9 poisonous snakes. Too bad we can't remember the name of the tree to run to!!
Did any of you know that termites have a minty taste?? Really? Minty, yes! We stopped along the path in the jungle, always on the lookout for jaguars and snakes so Ali, our wonderful guide, could crack open a termite mound and offer us a taste of those little wigglers!
Belize was last hit by a hurricane in 2006. Some of that damage is still in full view.
The river we floated down as cool and a welcome cool, as we were ready to cool off when we got to the top. We all had really nice headgear. Miner helmets fully loaded with halogen lighting so we could see formations in the caves and of course the bats!!














The catch phrase for the country is "Unbeliezeable"!! Very cute!






Welcome to Belize!