| Tuesday 25 September | |
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Day 11 – Tuesday 25th September 2007 Belize What a fabulous day – our guy was waiting for us at the pier with my name on a sign. He’d replied a couple of times to my emails but they kept bouncing back. He was a great guy – Major Tom Greenwood, 63year old native Belizean who runs this business with his son (Tom Jnr). Belize was formally British Honduras, became an independent nation in 1981. Belize has the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world (no prizes for guessing where the largest is!), so the ship can’t get in to dock at a pier, it anchors out at sea, and then we go in by tender (smaller boats). Was so nice to do a smaller tour, there were only 12 in our group (by major coincidence, 2 of them were ladies Michael played Bridge with, who were in awe of his Bridge playing skills, despite only learning from the computer). We saw the Carnival tour people all getting on their buses with 50, who paid $90 each to do the same tour that cost us $45. Lauren decided to stay on board at Camp Carnival (she hasn’t actually left the ship yet!), which turned out to be a good idea as it was a 1hr bus ride, then about a 45min walk, while carrying your inner tube. She would have enjoyed the floating down the river on the tube through the caves part, but all the getting there would have been too much, Brayden and Hayley loved it though. The river and caves themselves were amazing. There were quarts deposits through the caves, so some of the cave formations were glistening like crystals. Some of the time it was quite dark as you went through, others were open air as the river went through the rainforest. We all had waterproof torches, we bought a waterproof camera on the ship so hopefully got some photos. We pushed for time to get back to the ship, so had lunch on the run, was rice & beans with chicken and potato salad. The chicken was just delicious, we ate in takeaway containers in the van as we drove back. Lauren had a great time onboard. Her group started building a volcano yesterday, and tonight from 7pm they were painting it, so all through dinner she was bugging us to get back to her kids club so she could paint (so much for missing us through the day!) Samson is funny, he calls Camp Carnival ‘school’, so he’s always wanting to go ‘back to school’. The kids all ate with us at dinner tonight, then all went off to Camp Carnival while the adults enjoyed a cocktail on Karen & Michael’s balcony while watching the sunset, then went to an area where an ensemble group were playing piano & violins while we chatted before collecting the kids about 9.30pm – a very civilised way to holiday! Each night our room stewart makes an animal out of a towel, we’ve had a frog, seal and dog so far, will hopefully attach a photo of the kids I took tonight with the seal and the dog. Have also loaded a photo of us with Major Tom after our cave tubing. Photos can be either on the first or 2nd page on the site, it’s a bit finicky to load so who knows. Tomorrow we go to Roatan Island, Honduras. I know nothing about the place, as it wasn’t meant to be on the itinerary, was a late replacement. We’re planning to just check out the island and find one of those nice turquoise blue beaches I keep seeing and have a swim. We’ve told Lauren she definitely has to forgo kids club tomorrow and spend some time with her family off the ship! |