I went to Belize
Uhmmmnnhnn yeah so I went to Belize. Was kinda disappointing. Weather wasn't so good, first of all. Actually, as soon as we started flying over in the little plane, I could tell this wasn't like where we had stayed in Costa Rica--the land is totally divided up, with huge areas cleared for farming and logging etc...depressing.
First day we went snorkeling of this little island. There were cute pelicans everywhere diving into the water. The snorkeling was ok, but the coral was all grey and unhealthy GLOBAL WARMING DFGHJFHJHJKLFF. I wanted to go to the blue hole, but that's really only good for diving I heard. I need to learn to dive...I mean, without sinking to the bottom and having to crawl through the sand like last time.
HOLY...OH GOD OH GOD. OH GOD RUN. JUST GO. RUN!!!
YAYYYY
Second day. went to a jaguar preserve. However, there are only like 50 jaguars there, so hardly anyone ever sees them.
First we hiked through the mud for awhile with big inner tubes and then we rode down the river in them. It was really hilarious because I couldn't reach to paddle over the sides of the tube and I kept flying into various obstacles--large rocks, logs, etc. After that we hiked (wet, uncomfortable) to a waterfall and swam under it--really cool. Then we hiked some more. The really disappointing thing was that we didn't see ANY animals. It was a friggin nature preserve! What the hell? But it was a jungle, not a rainforest, which might explain that. All the 500-year-old trees were cut down by idiots in the 1800s. Still, we should have seen at least a coati or something... The guide took care to point out every kind of plant though, how they can be used to cure malaria and sunburn, etc. It seems like every friggin plant can be made into tea and used to cure something. He explained to us how he used to live in the jungle--grow his own food and carve canoes out of logs and stuff. he made his roof out of palm fronds. Little Mayan guy was hardcore.
Third day, we went on the "Monkey River Boat Tour." This unfortunately involved visiting the Monkey River village for some reason. Poorest, most depressing village I've ever seen. Like, dogs everywhere, kids playing barefoot in the dirt and stuff. Apparently the town was hit by a hurricane in 2001, and they still haven't cleaned up. There's scrap metal and trash and crap all over the place. I guess when you're that poor, you don't care. So depressing. I think the money we paid to go on the tour goes to them, though.
The weather was terrible that day, so most of the animals we would have seen in the mangroves were hiding. On the bright side, I am an expert at identifying Belizean water birds now.
Tiger heron.
tree.
The whole point of the Monkey River tour was to see monkeys, but when we got off and hiked into the forest, they were, of course, all hiding because it was raining. So the tour guides of the other groups starting screaming and slapping the tree trunks with their machetes to get the monkeys to move. God, wtf.
We did find a jaguar track while hiking though. Sadly, this was enough to excite me.
The rain let up a bit on the way back, and we saw some crocodiles and iguanas. Once i started looking, I saw that there were tons of iguanas sunning themselves on high branches.
We spotted a bunch of baby crocodiles...
And this one big one. Poor guy didn't have any teeth. The guide said there are even bigger ones around there. We kept inching closer to him, and he wasn't moving at all. He was so still I thought he might be dead. Then he suddenly snapped at us and dove into the water. My sister screamed lol
We started looking for manatees as we moved out of the mangroves. Since it was so overcast, they were even harder to spot than usual. The guide kept saying he spotted their noses in the distance, but then they would disappear immediately. Since boats sometimes run over manatees, they know to stay away, and they only show up every 3 minutes or so to take a breath. Finally I started seeing their noses too, but they just looked like black blobs...
Yeah. that...yeah.
After waiting there in the rain quietly for some 20 minutes, cold, squinting at the water, they came close enough for me to see their tails as they dove back under. it was a mother and her baby, cuuute....finally we headed back, but it started to rain again. Really hard. And the boat was going REALLY fast, so the rain was pelting us. I seriously thought it was hailing. And it was so cold..it was horrible. It was like 45 mins of this. We resorted to covering ourselves with towels, which were held onto our faces by the force of the wind, and we just laughed hysterically the whole time. (that kind of, i-want-to-die laughing.) ahhh...
We spent the last day recovering from that. That night was new year's....kinda depressing to spend new year's there. The food and music were terrible. Next year I'll do something awesome for new years! (I say that every year, and then I end up eating ice cream at home and going to sleep early.)
One really cool thing about this place was that there were jacuzzis on the roofs. So like every day me and my sister sat in there like prunes, and we could see the ocean in both directions.
And there were a bunch of cats living on the resort grounds. I dunno if they actually belonged to the owners or what. The black-and-white ones were super friendly and cute. They let everybody pet them and always sat next to me during meals so I'd give them scraps.
he liked to roll around in the warm sand. good times
One night I saw a bunch of kittens in a bush, but they ran away from me. DON'T GO, I JUST WANT TO LOVE YOUUUU D:
oh lol, and one day after getting out of the jacuzzi, i was walking to the bathroom to take a shower, and I slipped on the tile floor and stubbed my toe on the doorframe. Somehow i did this with enough force to rip of a chunk of my big toe. The blood was like pooling on the floor. For the rest of the trip I had to tape a plastic bag around my toe to go swimming ORZ WHHYY AM I RETARDED
Of course it was perfect weather the day we had to leave. We took a swim and found a big starfish~ Also there was this little fish that kept following us. It was so cute~
some gays:
Agghghhhh we dared Saki to draw Danny Phantom porn and she ACTUALLY DID. so I had to draw this gengar/kabs I HAD TO OK. I HAD NO CHOICE....IM SORRY...
bad pokemon.
