Back to Belize..and the perfect holiday!

We finished up in Costa Rica with a day in San Jose where it rained. A lot like the rest of our Costa Rica trip! We decided against walking around the city and being all cultured and instead spent the day in a shopping mall eating Burger King and popcorn at the cinema. We didn´t even spend a night in the city, well not in a hostel anyway, we slept at the airport! The reason we slept at the airport was we had a very early plane to catch..to Belize!! YES!! We were so excited. For so many reasons! The main reason was that we were meeting my parents in Belize City airport! The second reason was returning to our beloved Belize where we spent so many months 3 years ago having so much fun with Trekforce. The third reason was 'where' we were spending the next 8 days (probably the reason we were quite satisfied to spend a night on an airport floor).

The plane journey to Belize was maybe the most exciting plane trip of my life...we´d had very little sleep the night before but I was so excited I couldn´t sleep at all on the 2 hour journey. We arrived at about 10am, my parents were due in from Miami at 11am so I had just enough time to get my bag, change my clothes and look slightly more presentable (just so I didn´t look like I had slept on a floor the night before!). So we waited for our bags to come off the conveyor belt. No sign yet. We waited a bit more. Chris´ bag came off. Great! We waited a bit longer...and then they closed the belt and told us that was it, no more bags came off the plane. WHAT???!!! I felt sick. I couldn´t believe it, for the last 6 months I had feared this moment the most..my life is in that bag-everything! Where was my bag? It was one of the most horrible moments, and I was so upset as I had been looking forward to this morning since we left the UK-seeing my parents after 6 months! I should be happy, instead I was devastated. We spoke to the woman in charge and she assured me my bag was probably on its way to Houston on the plane we just got off ... or it was in El Salvador, where we changed flights at 6am that morning. I felt a bit better and gave her my details. Chris did his best to cheer me up and we went out to the viewing deck to watch my parents plane come in. It landed about an hour late and we watched them get off the plane..it was so good to see them and I was happy again!!

There was a big excited re union as they emerged from baggage control and then a mad dash to catch the next flight we were all getting on!! This plane was a little bit smaller than the previous aircraft's we had just arrived on. Much smaller in fact. We were getting on a tiny little plane of about 10 seats to take us to Placencia, in the south of Belize. The flight was about 25 minutes and had 2 stop off's on the way..like a flying taxi! It was great to see Belize from up above, we flew over Belize City, Dangriga and Hopkins- where I was based for my teaching phase in Trekforce. It was so much fun being in such a small plane too..you can feel every little bit of wind, taking off and landing was great!

We landed in Placencia and were met by a driver from our resort, Roberts Grove. We were given bottles of mineral water as he carried our bags to our car. Chris and I were NOT used to this...it was fantastic! And we were certainly not used to what was to come! We arrived at Roberts Grove and had our first glimpse of absolute luxury! It was AMAZING. Roberts Grove has it´s own beautiful white sand beach, three beachfront freshwater swimming pools, tennis courts, a gym, rooftop jacuzzi´s, sailboats, wind surfers, kayaks you can use, 2 beachfront restaurants and a bar. It was paradise! We couldn´t believe this is where we were staying for the next 8 days!! Now the original plan for when my parents were coming out to see us was Chris and I staying in a hostel in Placencia and my parents staying in a lovely resort not far off. However I received an email from my Mum in May telling us that she had booked a two bedroom suite and that we were staying there too!! So we had been pretty excited about this for months!! We knew we´d not be staying anywhere even remotely this lovely our whole trip away, now we don´t stay in awful places but this was just another level! Our suite was so lovely, it was air conditioned (one of our favourite things about it..we always just have budget fans in our hostel rooms!) there was a kitchen, a living area, 2 ensuite bathrooms, satelite television and a balcony with hammocks and chairs overlooking the swimming pool below and the sea behind. Perfect! This was going to be a good holiday.

Now you may be thinking as I say this is a holiday..are you not on a 8 month holiday Liz??! Well technically yes I am...however, travelling is hard work..you have to get buses, you have to pack your bag all the time, you have to...um...Ok I´ll stop there, I can´t think of anything else that´s hard..but we don´t stay places like Roberts Grove ever and eat the best food every night, and have air con..so I´m calling this a holiday!!


We had an absolutely amazing time with my parents, we sat by the pool relaxing, we took the little sailboat out with my Dad, we played tennis, we used the gym, we sat in the jacuzzi and watched the sunset, we ate some spectacular meals at the restaurant-including an all you can eat BBQ in which Chris managed to devour 5 lobster tails, 2 fillets of snapper, about 20 large shrimp, some pasta and a couple of chicken wings!!

We took a trip out to Hopkins to visit my host family when I lived there and to see if the school we painted was still there!! Luckily it was..and my family were so happy to see me..my ´mother´said she´d been waiting on the porch for a week to see me arrive! I had a good welcome! It was so lovely to be there and to show my parents where I lived.

We also visited Cockscomb Jaguar Reserve and had a walk through the jungle- a very funny trip! We took a snorkelling trip out to one of the beautiful Cayes in the barrier reef and spotted huge lobsters, a few nurse sharks, so many colourful fish, barracuda and an eel! It was my Mum´s birthday during their trip so Chris and I cycled into Placencia and had a cake made for her, we had a great day with brunch of toast (and the Marmite brought over from England-AMAZING!), cream cheese, bacon, scrambled eggs and tomatoes. The chocolate birthday cake was pretty special too!

And in case you were wondering I did get my bag back..after 2 days of a small (!?) amount of stressing, maybe a few tears and a lot of phone calls to the airport from my Mum and Chris we found it it had flown to Houston that day! The airport sent it straight to Roberts grove on the next plane to Placencia from Belize City so we didn´t even have to go and pick it up! I was so happy!!

In addition to all this excitement 3 of my friends from work- Simo, Elise and Greg were in Belize having arranged to all meet up months ago. Chris and I cycled into Placencia to see them and there was another very excitable reunion!! It was fab to see them and we immediately tried to make plans to stay together for as long as possible..even if it meant changing plans!! I thought we should definitely all make use of the wonderful Roberts Grove so the 3 of them came to spend the day the next day, we went for a sail (all 5 of us on the sail boat was a bit hairy!), used the pool and of course the bar. In fact they loved it so much that we all decided to stay on one more night after my parents had left..we had the whole suite for the 5 of us-it was great fun!!

The last day with my parents was so sad, there was an emotional goodbye at the little Placencia airport, we´d all had such a good time it was sad for it to end! Chris and I honestly cant thank them enough for everything- it was the best holiday I´ve ever had in the most wonderful place with the best company!!

Tortuga!

Next stop in Costa Rica was the rainforest of Tortugeuro National Park. The park stretches north along the Caribbean coast up to the village of Tortuguero, which has a small population of around 500, no cars, and is located on a relatively narrow spit of land between the beach and a canal. We had an amazing 4 hour boat ride up the canals to the village spotting lots of wildlife, including another sloth! We also saw howler monkeys (a pretty standard sight now!), really big crocodiles-the biggest I´ve ever seen, lots of pretty colourful birds, toucans and a really cool Jesus Christ Lizard, aptly named because it can run on water!

We arrived at Tortugeuro village about 6pm just in time for a massive storm. It was huge. We had to grab our backpacks from the boat and follow some random guy who was taking us to our hostel. Apparently there was only one place that still had a room for us. So, shielding ourselves from the driving wind and rain, we followed him into the tempest. Before long we were soaked from head to foot, and could hardly see the person in front because of the rain. It was the biggest storm and the most amount of rain I ever seen!! We should have expected it really..we were in the rainforest now..it was crazy though! After what seemed like ages we finally arrived at the hostel - which had hot showers! Amazing!

Our main reason for visiting this part of Costa Rica was to see some turtles! Tortugero park is the most important hatchery and nesting area in the western Caribbean for green sea turtles. We were walking along the beach one day and noticed these massive tracks, at first we thought they must be boats being dragged into the sea..but there were literally hundreds of them all along the beach! We then realised they were turtle tracks! We were aso excited to see them and couldn´t wait to possibly see a turtle!

The best time to see the turtles was at night so we booked a guide for one evening. It continued to rain for about 90% of our time in the park, but we were really lucky the night we booked our guide it was a lovely clear evening. So we met our guy at 8pm and found that he spoke very little English..oh dear. So he was desperately trying to communicate to us all this wonderful facts about the turtles which we understood about half of...when he got a call from ´turtle control´telling him there was a turtle approaching the beach to lay eggs. So it was a mad rush to his boat and a very excited 5 minute boat ride to a beach the other side of the village.

We arrived in perfect time..a lovely big green sea turtle had hauled herself up the beach, picked her spot and had begun to lay the 120 or so eggs she would lay that night. We were about 2 meters away from her and it was amazing to see this giant animal so close. However the next thing we know we are being dragged by our guide to get even closer to the nesting mum, so close we could have touched her...then he gets out a special infra-red light so we could actually see the eggs being laid into the earth below! It was so bizarre, I felt terrible being so close to the huge 200 pound turtle while she was laying her eggs...normally quite an intimate moment I expect...and there we are pointing lights at her! I wasn´t expecting to get so close at all. It was a great experience to see the nesting but it also felt really wrong at the same time. We were assured that this is the norm though and all guides get that close. About half way through this turtles nesting we were called over to another part of the beach where another turtle had finished her business and was returning to the sea. We watched her shuffle back to the sea..it was such a great sight to see (and I felt much better being a few meters away!)

Sloths!!

There were couple of reasons I was excited about Costa Rica..the beaches..and the sloths!! As you will read we visited many beautiful beaches which lived up to all expectations, and we also met a few sloths which I think exceeded our expectations! I don't think I had ever seen a sloth before, maybe in a zoo when I was a lot younger, but nothing that sticks in the mind, and the only thing I knew about them was that they are very slow animals that live in trees. We had heard all about the sloths of Costa Rica and were really hoping to see some in the wild, we were also very excited about visiting Avairios Del Caribe, a Sloth Rescue Centre that we had been recommended to visit by some friends.

Our first encounter with a sloth was in Cahuita, a lovely little uncrowded Afro- Caribbean beach town just north of Puerto Viejo. The town itself is great, sitting just next to Parque National Cahuita- a dense jungle of coconut palms and mango trees skirted by white sandy beaches stretching for miles. Another perfect beach..made even better by the group of howler monkeys playing in the trees above and behind us on the beach! One day after a long hard day of sunbathing and playing in the waves we walked back to our hostel and found a sloth walking around in the palm tree above!! Very exciting!! It was a two toed sloth and was lovely! He was so slow and graceful, we watched him for about an hour...and thus began our new found love for sloths!

The next day we got the bus half an hour down the road to the Sloth sanctuary, it was a very exciting bus journey..we actually couldn't wait to get there!! We met Judy, a lady from Alaska who started up the sanctuary. She had a B+B set up with her Costa Rican husband and one day 16 years ago, was brought an orphaned baby sloth. She'd never even seen a sloth before! However, she managed to nurse the baby back to health, named her Buttercup, and learnt everything she could about these mysterious animals- she now knows more than anyone in the world about sloths, and gets brought on average 10 injured or orphaned sloths per month to the sanctuary. So now Aviarios del Caribe rescues and rehabilitates injured sloths and cares for those that have been separated from their mothers. One of the main objectives, aside from caring for a growing number of resident sloths, is to educate the public about the sloth and to expose the truth about these creatures. We learnt so much about these amazing animals from the volunteers and the workers by chatting to them and actually meeting the sloths too!

We were very excited to meet Buttercup, the long time family member and star attraction of the sanctuary. The three toed sloth sat on her hanging chair and looked down on us wisely, every so often picking up a bit of greenery to munch on, but doing very little else! We met lots of other sloths who live at the centre, three toed and two toed. I think our favourite part of this wonderful day was meeting all the little babies- there were about 20 little ones in baskets and boxes all over the place, some of them had literally just been brought in the day before after sadly being found without a mother. They ranged from days old to months old and some were tiny! They were absolutely amazing...maybe the sweetest baby animals ever!! We watched them being fed and being given medicine..in fact we sat and watched them for hours!!


A few sloth facts we learnt..Costa Rica has both two-toed and three-toed sloths. Two-toed sloths are light brown and have lovely, seal-like faces, while three-toed sloths have the characteristic raccoon-like stripe around their eyes and a whimsical grin. Both types of sloths move as if in a tai-chi class--deliberate and in slow motion. Sloths spend most of their lives upside down in the trees and most of that time sleeping- an average of 15 hours a day (amazing!!). Camouflage in the canopy is their main form of protection, although they can also defend themselves with their sharp nails. They are incredible creatures and it was so good to learn so much about them, and spend so much time with them too!

Sun, Sea, Sand, Sushi ... And A Surprise

After a very relaxed border crossing, the first town we hit in Costa Rica was Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. The only really remarkable thing about Puerto Viejo was the "Thursday night all-you-can-eat sushi for $10" at a place called Chile Rojo. Fortunately we arrived on a Thursday night. The sushi, suffice to say, was amazing, and has since made its way into our "Top Meals" chart. On the menu was tuna nigiri, salmon and cream cheese rolls, prawn and avocado, tuna and jalapeno, and my all time favourite: marlin and mango. Mmmm. We stayed for over 3 hours and ate 5 rounds of sushi between us.


The next morning, nursing large overfed sushi bellies, we made our way a few miles down the road to a one street beach town called Manzanillo. A real end-of-the-road destination, Manzanillo consists of a couple of bar/restaurants, a few "cabinas" to sleep in and a small sand football pitch, all just yards from the beach. It was pretty much paradise. Hardly any travellers spend the night in Manzanillo, so each day we only had to walk just 10 minutes down the beach to find a near deserted section. We spent the next few days chilling out in the sun, and eating scandalously good seafood at Maxi's - one of our two restaurant choices.


Now, I know that everyone reading this who has a job, work, deadlines, projects, targets, etc. will have a fit when I say this, but ... it was really nice to just relax and so nothing for a few days. "What!" I hear the workers amoung you cry, "But you relax and do nothing all the time anyway!" Not so. I'm not about to pretend that the past 5 months have been the most strenuous of my life, but long distance travelling can, at times, be quite stressful. This is particularly true when you have a deadline (e.g. meeting Liz's parents in Belize) and then get caught up in some kind of ridiculous "having to see/do everything a country/continent has to offer" notion in the meantime.

This happened to us in Bolivia and Panama, and we spent our time in these countries tearing around the place, never staying in any one region for more than a couple of days, and trying to see and experience everything available. When the inevitable happened - illness, travel delays, blockades, bus cancellations, etc. - we became even more upset and stressed because we were forced to miss something that we had planned to do. It also meant that we were spending a couple of hours a day packing/unpacking, and the most of the rest of our time ... as always ... on busses.

Not that I'm complaining too much. This speed tourism was great fun and allowed us to jump from one great experience to the next, but there comes a time when you really do need to take a break and lie on the beach for a few days. Costa Rica provided us with that opportunity. We had 12 days there, and decided to spend those days exclusively on the Carribean coast, doing very little at each destination. At Manzanillo, this plan went off without a hitch.

At the risk of spoiling an upbeat ending, I feel I must relate a rather shocking event that occured on our last night in Manzanillo. Wanting a low-key kick-about with the locals, I grabbed my football and jogged down to the sand pitch to see if anyone was up for a game. When I got there I found pretty much the entire town clustered in a tight group down by the beach. Wondering what all the fuss was about, I pushed my way through the crowds right to the front. There on the ground, in the middle of everyone, was a lifeless man in swimming trunks. He was Costa Rican, probably in his thirties, and was a very unnatural looking blue colour. The locals did their best to ressussitate him, but unfortunately all in vain.

We learned later from one of the barmen in Maxi's that he had come to Manzanillo with a couple of work mates, drunk a little too much at lunch, and then disappeared for a few hours in the afternoon. The body had then been seen floating near the beach shortly before I arrived. Apparently it was only the second death by drowning that Manzanillo had ever witnessed. It caused quite a fervour in the town, but we were quite happy to leave for Cahuita the next day, and put that macabre incident behind us.

Boquete - a very wet place

The next stop in our shotgun tour of Panama was Boquete (pronounced with an inflection on the last "e", and not "Bocket" as we found when trying to catch a bus there). Boquete is a tiny village famous for four things: picturesque public gardens, coffee plantations, white water rafting ... and rain. We manage to experience three out of the four in our short time here; the copious quantities of the last item making visits to the first largely pointless. Nevertheless, it was possible to glimpse a very nice chilled-out mountain atmosphere in the short gaps the mist and rain allowed us.

Probably our favourite feature of the village was the improbable 24 hour supermarket, stacked with American style goodies, just a two minute walk/swim from our hostel. I say improbable because here was a fair sized 24 hour supermarket, comparable to a Tesco Metro, situated in a village the size of a postage stamp. In fact the supermarket pretty much was the village. In any case, the steaks, pork chops, tuna sandwiches (made with Hellman's mayonnaise and Lurpack butter!) and mini lemon meringue pies went down very nicely over the 3 nights we spent in Boquete.

On to the white water rafting. Continuing our trend of participating in semi-dangerous adventure sports, we booked a full day outing on the roughest river available. The rapids went up to class 4+. The highest you can go without a certification is class 5, so these were pretty big without being all-out mental. The river itself actually winds through Costa Rica for a bit, so after a few teething problems with some of the other rafters in our party forgetting their passports, we were ready to raft.

The day started well, with the long lost Mr. Sun even making a brief appearance. This made getting completely soaked by the first class 4 all the more bearable. After that the rapids came quick and fast, as did the shouts from our steersman and guide at the back to "Paddle harder!" There was barely time between rapids to wipe the water out of your eyes, let alone rest. After half an hour I was knackered!

Then came the inevitable near-death experience, courtesy of Miss Elizabeth Beresford. After a particularly bumpy class 3 (only class 3 for goodness sake!) I felt something had changed in the aqua-dynamics of the raft. Looking round I saw that Liz was no longer in it. That would explain it then. On further inspection, I noticed that she was thrashing blindly in the water just a few feet from us. She was also just a few feet from going head first into another rapid. I shouted a lot, and the guide (rather more helpfully) extended an oar for her to grab onto. However, because of all the spray she didn't see the oar until the last minute ... when it was too late.

As I watched horrified from the raft, Liz plunged straight into a particularly meaty class 3. She then failed to resurface. For ages. We were told later by our guide that this "ages" amounted to just 3 seconds, but that 3 seconds is a long time to be in a rapid. It certainly felt like it watching from the raft. That 3 seconds was also exactly the amount of time it took me to consider jumping in after her, only to reconsider, and calculate that I could wait at least another 10 seconds without significantly reducing my chances of rescuing her ...

She did, fortunately, resurface, and was then collected with extreme nonchalence by the rescue kayaker. This did nothing to reduce the impact of Liz's exclamation: "Oh my God! I almost died!" when she was deposited back on the raft. Luckily she was far enough away from death to enjoy the rest of the rafting: 4 hours of strength-sapping, near constant white water, much of it in torrential rain. It was awesome! At one point our guide shouted above the thunderstorm: "This next rapid is a class 4, but gets to a class 5 in the rainy season!" Apparently we weren't in the rainy season ...

In any case, despite getting very wet, and Liz almost dying - it was a great day. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures, because taking a camera white water rafting would be a very silly thing to do. The pictures above are after we finished ... and are soaking.

The next day - and our final day in Panama - it was raining. We did however manage to make it to a coffee plantation. More specifically, we made it to a coffee house adjoining the coffee plantation, but I think given the circumstances, that definitely counts. It was here that I had the best cappuccino I've ever tasted ... and then danced in the rain with an umbrella.

All that we had left to do then, was to buy the biggest box of cookies seen outside of the US and sit in our warm, dry, hostel room eating them for the rest of the day. Next up ... Costa Rica!