To the Underworld and Back!

She’s finally here!!! Amanda arrived on Friday, and we had a super busy weekend filled with lots of fun.

We jumped on a bus to Orange Walk right after she got here and spent all of Saturday on a grand tour of Belize that we departed for at 7:00am.

These cute kids ran up to Amanda right after we got off the bus in Orange Walk and wanted their picture taken.

The first stop was at the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary which turned out to be more or less and beautiful lake where lots of birds gather each morning.

Then we stopped by the Community Baboon Sanctuary which is where we spent lots of time hanging out with howler monkeys. It was awesome! We even saw a couple little baby monkeys latched onto their mothers. Our guide pulled Amanda over to a low branch and they started climbing all over her… see, I knew Amanda always like monkeys! lol

We made a quick trip to the prison, not to drop anyone off or take anyone out, but because it was supposed to have a really neat gift shop filled with handmade crafts that the prisoners work on during their time there. Let’s just say it was a bit of a disappointment, but I did come out with a couple souvenirs.

We ended our day at Jaguar Paw, which is a reserved area and also features a river with caves. We went on a cave-tubing tour and it was absolutely amazing! Let me first start by telling you that our guide, Lewis, was the fastest walker I’ve ever seen which is even more impressive since he was just over 5 feet tall. We hiked through some of the jungle with our inner tubes and head lamps. The river where we began our tubing adventure was gorgeous and filled with crystal clear, blue water. We began our quest into the “Underworld”, as Lewis referred to it, and were soon floating through a pitch-black cave. We got out of the tubes at one point to crawl (yes, I mean on our hands and knees and sometimes stomachs) through the inner part of the cave that was home to some Maya artifacts like pieces of pottery. We were covered from head to toe with mud by the end of this pit stop. I can’t even describe what a cool experience this was! It ended with a leisurely float down the rest of the river outside to our starting location.

On Sunday, Amanda and I stayed in Orange Walk to take the river boat tour to the Lamanai Maya Ruins which was the first place I visited here in Belize back in January. We ended up getting a little wet boat ride due to the rain, but it cleared up by the time we got to actual site. We climbed to the top and got a great view from the top! However, on our way back from the site, we got drenched since it rained nearly the whole 1 ½ we were on the boat… not fun!

Sadly, my 8G SD card is not working right now and it has tons of pics from this weekend. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon, and I can get more pics uploaded! If you know of anywhere that I can have the data recovered from it, let me know please!