Golf Cart Day

Our trip to Belize was set up with a perfect balance for a Central American, Caribbean Sea-facing nation: four days in the jungle on the west side of the country and four days at the beach (and Belize's second-world-best barrier reef) on the Caribbean side. We spent our jungle time exploring Mayan ruins (including a sneak into Guatemala) and bird watching and hanging out at our swanky tropical resort while also taking in the local cuisine and maybe a drink or two. 

When we finished our trip for four days on the beach side of the country, our plans included lots of boat and water time. After all, the premier attraction for us was what was below the waves, not on the surface of the land. That meant plenty of time snorkeling looking at species of fish that we just can't see here at home. Not that we go snorkeling around here or anything. I mean the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay aren't exactly snorkeling hotspots. 

Our beach accommodations were in the town of San Pedro on an island called Ambergris Caye. Or as Madonna sold it: "La Isla Bonita". So in addition to wanting to focus on that tropical island breeze and all of that nature wild and free in a place where the sun warms the sky, we also wanted to spend some time in the town of San Pedro and on Ambergris Caye. On land.

And to do that, we needed one thing: a golf cart.

Yep, you read that right. The predominant form of transportation on Ambergris Caye is the good old golf cart. Are there cars and vans and motorcycles and bikes on Ambergris Caye? Sure there are. But if you want to get around the island cheaply and conveniently, you must rent a golf cart. MUST. There are tons of rental agencies on the island that will meet you at the airport or ferry terminal or however else you are arriving on the island. And you will not be the only golf cart driving tourists on the island. Everyone is doing it.

Originally, we planned to rent a golf cart for just one day and take taxis or walk to everywhere else we needed to get to on the other three days. But the low, low cost of less than $200 US for all four days convinced us to trade in the freedom of being on foot and having someone else drive us around for what is probably the least powerful gasoline powered rental vehicle I've ever rented. The Nissan Versa Note we got stuck with on Hawaii's Big Island was close but I think it just beat the golf cart out by a couple of horsepower. Just (but not by much).

Is it safe driving around in and parking (especially overnight) a golf cart on Ambergris Caye? Our instructions from Mark who met us at the ferry terminal seemed pretty straightforward. Press the right pedal to go and the other one to brake. Switch between forward and reverse by turning the dial below the seat. Lock the steering wheel using the padlock after you park it. And just don't flip the golf cart. How on Earth do you flip a golf cart? The thing only goes like 15 miles per hour, if that! Mark assured us it could happen. I'm sure he knows.

And yes, driving a golf cart is safe and easy, even when your first task is to un-parallel park out of a very tight space. 

I think one day roaming around the island was about right for us. We made a super long list of every place we could think of that we were remotely interested in and we hit every one with some time to spare. Honestly, we could not have stretched this out to a second day without spending all our time in bars or restaurants nursing a Belikin or two. Or more. Or a lot more. 

Let's start with what was on our list that isn't worth spending a ton of time writing about (shopping) before moving on to the one place that I have a bit to say about that wasn't worth visiting before finishing with the three places that really made this day a great day.

So the shopping...while I am sure that this would be disputed at times by the person I live with, no trip is a great trip without a little shopping. Handicrafts, art, food, cheap souvenirs, flip flops, whatever there is wherever you happen to be. And quite frankly, there's enough decent shopping in San Pedro to kill an hour or so. Highlights: looking for monkey farts soap (and finding it sold out) at the soap shop; picking up some ridiculously low, low priced jewelry; and ending the day with a cup of hot chocolate and some chocolate truffles at the Belize Chocolate Company. This hot chocolate...I swear it was mostly molten chocolate with a little bit of some sort of liquid in it. It was like drinking literal melted chocolate. Two enthusiastic thumbs way up, even if they were out of the chile chocolate.

Is it really able to be called Secret Beach if there's a giant sign to it?

Shopping took place close to our hotel. The furthest we went out of town was a place called Secret Beach, which is really anything but. I guess maybe one day way back when it was actually a secret it was probably pretty cool and very remote, but now it seems to epitomize the growing takeover of Belize's vacant lands by properties catering to tourists that want to spend time on the land and not in the water. And by "not in the water" I mean not snorkeling or diving; I don't mean standing in waist-deep water with a sugary cocktail in each hand.

In a partial defense of Secret Beach, we may have ended up at the property that was about as misaligned with us values-wise as it could have been. I'm not naming names (and partially because it's not worth looking up) but any place that offers every new customer a rum shot from a bottle with a dead fer-de-lance snake in it is probably not the place we should be hanging out. And no, the shots ain't free and there was usually a giant crowd of friends around the one or two dudes dumb enough to fall for this stuff. 

We probably should have shopped around a bit when we arrived at Secret Beach, but we were hungry and just parked at the first place that had an empty parking spot. Live and learn. Although we met up with some new friends later that same night by accident who had a similarly un-rewarding experience at a different place at Secret Beach. Maybe we are too old? That's probably it. 

The signature experience on our Golf Cart Day agenda without a doubt was a visit to ACES Wildlife Rescue north of the bridge that connects the two parts of Ambergris Caye. We spent the most time on our day at this spot (probably about a 90 minute duration total) and it had the most serious and consequential things going on. Not that you have to be serious and consequential on vacation...

ACES is a visit-by-appointment-only wildlife sanctuary that is supposed to be a way station for injured animals to be repaired, patched up, fixed or whatever else they need before being returned to the wild. Supposed to be is the key here, because ACES will do that if they can. Some patients are too badly damaged either physically from their injury or just mentally and behaviorally from being kept as pets and having their wild-ness taken away by the way their owners treated them. In those cases, they become permanent residents and those few animals became our educational tour on the day of our visit.

ACES stands for American Crocodile Education Sanctuary but crocodiles are not all they have on property or all they deal with. They will take all variety of birds, reptiles and mammals and try to do the best they can with the resources they have to get the task at hand completed. And I probably should stop using the term "they" to refer to ACES because there is no they. The whole place is run by one woman (Christina) who is the third custodian of the place and came to Belize with no training in animal husbandry but just fell in love with the island and ACES and stuck around to eventually adopt it as her own. 

It's up to Christina to do it all, whether it's care and feeding of those animals still on site or fixing up and bandaging patients who eventually will live again as wild and free animals. X-rays and basic repair? She's got it. Anesthesia and surgery? Has to be outsourced but Christina still has to find someone to do that and pay for the service. And with an estimated 120 varieties of animals cared for during her time there and a prohibition on transporting animals on or off Ambergris Caye during COVID, I imagine her job has been and is a daily exercise in figuring things out.

Does this place look like paradise or what? ACES' budgie cage with various palm trees.

What's on the tour at ACES? Well, not the animals that are planned for return to the wild. The less contact those species have with humans, the better. They need to be plenty afraid of the greatest killer on the planet once they get released back into the wild. But how about a brain-damaged osprey who flew into a building so hard that he'll never fly again? How about a green iguana (also brain-damaged) who was used as target practice by his owner and who won't run from predators? How about some domesticated Muscovy ducks who were found in such a state of mange that it took nine months of rehab for them to shed their damaged feathers? How about some budgerigars that people just got tired of taking care of and just gave up on? How about a furrowed wood turtle with a foot fetish who isn't scared of anything and just wants to lick toes? 

Is this an island of misfit toys type situation or what? These poor animals were for the most part just blatantly abused or treated like toys to the point that there is no way they can possible survive on their own in the wild. They'd be eaten up by a predator the first time one came across it. Especially poor Turbo the turtle, who would be gobbled up the first time he tried to nuzzle a crocodile's foot. 

Why do people do this? I can understand people wanting pets but you can't give up when you get tired of it. This animal is dependent upon you. You can't just discard it. There's even less excuse for those who were abused. I mean how do you think you have the right to just treat an animal that way? 

Wobbles the osprey (top) and both of Belize's iguana species (green and black spiny-tailed) in one shot.

The most unfortunate and heartbreaking stories for me belong to ACES' three resident crocodiles, none of whom will ever truly walk or swim free again. 

Jewels is an American crocodile who was kept as a pet before the people who were keeping her decided maybe having a four foot (and growing) crocodile as a pet wasn't such a good idea. The problem? They trained her to hunt not by lying in wait and striking by surprise (like crocodiles do) but by playing with her and rewarding her with food. Think nature is going to do that for her? Not a chance. She's crippled as a wild animal because of it.

Cecilio is a blind Morelet's crocodile who was caught in a fisherman's trap and couldn't get out. I can't imagine the shock of the fisherman but if Cecilio was released back to the wild as is there is no way he can survive by himself. As if we needed proof of his blindness, he managed to walk right into the chain link fence when he smelled the raw chicken that Christina had for him.

Then there's Phinneas, a 12 foot long croc who had a house built over the top of his territory and who ate the house builder's pet dog because, well, it was right there and available and I guess didn't run away fast enough. What happened next? The house owner trapped Phinneas, wired his jaw shut and was in the process of cutting off his head before a neighbor intervened and stopped the killing of a protected species. I mean what are you even thinking about doing that?

Phinneas was rehabbed after two hours of surgery and released back to the wild but there was a problem: he had a taste for dog and was roaming around neighborhoods looking for more of that tasty meat. It wasn't likely to end well for anyone so Phinneas is now back at ACES and a permanent resident. 

Jewels and Phinneas are at ACES because of human interference in my opinion. Plain and simple. It didn't have to be this way. Luckily for them, a place like ACES exists. I hate that there is a need to keep any animals in captivity but the only other alternative here is death. They won't make it out there alone.

Top to bottom: Jewels, Cecilio and Phinneas.

If you can't make it to ACES on an appointment basis, there's a great opportunity to hang out with some of the green iguanas that populate the mangroves on the perimeter of the island. In fact, even if you do get to visit ACES, you can still hang out with the iguanas (we did!). It's called the Iguana Eco Sanctuary (although it seems to have had a lot of different names over the years based on some internet searching) and it's on the west coast of the main island of Ambergris Caye.

The iguanas (all green but not necessarily actually colored green; except the mating males are various shades of orange) that hang out at the Eco Sanctuary are not tamed or caged in any way. In fact, I think they are there solely because the owners of the place put out tons of fresh fruit and vegetables for the iguanas to stuff themselves full of. It's like a reptile buffet. You can get super close to these animals which are hanging out in the veg piles but also in the mangroves. You are not going to kill a lot of time here but it's a cool diversion if you don't get a chance to see green iguanas very often. The first two iguana pics on this post are from our visit there.

Finally, I said there were three places that we found were worth visiting on Golf Cart Day. The last was Gill-E's Pour House, a dockside / beachside casual bar where we got to spend the last hour or so of our day chatting with friends over a Belikin or two. Unwinding is important.

I've complained in other blog posts from this trip about the weather. We actually picked the perfect day to roam around on land. We sandwiched this day between snorkeling days two and three and this day turned out to be the windiest and roughest seas day. Sometimes things do work out.

Intrepid vs. DIY

When I first started writing this blog, there is no way I could have conceived of participating in anything like an organized tour for a vacation. I mean, why would I? It just didn't seem like it was necessary or worth it to me. It likely would cost more; I'd have less freedom to do whatever I wanted; and I might have to travel with some people that I really didn't care for, let alone want to spend a week or more with together. I just couldn't see any upside. Day trip tours maybe. MAYBE! A whole week or a whole vacation? Forget about it.

Almost 12 years later, my opinion has changed a little. Over the past dozen years (but really just the past 10), we've booked an organized tour for three trips to sub-Saharan Africa, two trips to South America and one trip to Portugal. You could make a case that our 2022 trip to Costa Rica and our 2017 trip to Alaska (cruise) were also organized tours. I won't take the time to debate that if that's what you think. There have definitely been significant benefits particularly regarding in-country transportation on some organized tours. It would have been way more difficult to do it ourselves. 

As a very quick aside and because I won't feel credible if I don't say this...we would under ordinary circumstances never, ever, ever participate in an organized tour in Portugal or western Europe in general. But considering we needed a confirmed negative COVID test to board a flight back home, we figured it would be a good idea to have a guide on hand who could get us to a testing site so we could get home on schedule. And that part worked just great. Was it worth the extra cost and the frustration of being with people we weren't crazy about? Yes, it probably was. Probably.

Slaty-tailed trogon, Caracol, Belize.

So considering all that, when it came time to book a trip to Belize and Guatemala, I did something I never would have done 12 years ago and I instantly looked for a tour company to take us around Belize with a quick border crossing into Guatemala to see the Mayan ruins at Tikal. I settled on Intrepid Travel's "Land of Belize" tour. Eight days, seven nights in mid-January at a cost of $2,270 per person. We'd need to pay for two and we weren't willing to wait and see if Intrepid put this tour on sale (which they do sometimes...) so that would be $4,540 for the week for the both of us. Seemed like a lot..but OK, we can swing it. And it's no hassle, especially on the transportation front.

Then one day I was on Intrepid's site and I read a review of this tour which effectively said that one drawback was that the hotels were pretty basic level accommodations. Now, at one time in my life, I wouldn't care about that but as I've aged, I've come to appreciate paying for some comfort in accommodations. We've also been disappointed with the quality of the digs on some organized tours, most notably in Peru and Uganda (both through Gadventures). Basic was a bit concerning here.

So I had a thought...what if we organized this trip ourselves. Could we do it cheaper? Turns out I thought we could. And I thought we could get significantly better accommodations. So with a price to beat of $2,270, here's what we did.

Spoiler alert...this is not EXACTLY the same itinerary. We started out trying to duplicate it day for day but we made some modifications to (in our estimation) improve our experience. Improved and cheaper would be even better than just cheaper.

One of the two s'mores pits at Ka'ana Hotel. Nightly s'mores are complimentary with your stay. 

Hotels

Intrepid's itinerary included one night in Belize City; one night in Orange Walk; three nights in San Ignacio; and two nights in Caye Caulker. Total of seven nights.

We decided to adjust Intrepid's agenda just a bit and stay in just two places (moving around is a pain; less moving / fewer hotels = better for us). We opted for four nights in San Ignacio's Ka'ana Hotel and Resort (Ka'ana is part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World portfolio) and four nights (note the extra night there) at Ambergris Caye's Best Western Grand Baymen Gardens. 

Ka'ana was our splurge on this trip. This resort is not cheap (upwards of $300 US per night) but it was definitely a very comfortable place to stay and that was, after all, the point of this whole idea. No complaints about what we spent and what we got here. Grand Baymen Gardens was definitely less plush but it was clean and came with a kitchen. These two hotels were definitely the largest expense on this trip. But then again, they most often are. And...we took care of all our lodging (and an extra night) for less than what we would have spent on one Intrepid tour and our accommodations were much better. I can't emphasize that enough. MUCH BETTER.

So, yes, we didn't do exactly what Intrepid had planned. We could not find anything (admittedly from reading about it online) more appealing about Belize City than San Ignacio so we figured a swap there for an extra night in San Ignacio was an upgrade. We also (without ever having visited Caye Caulker) saw Ambergris Caye as an equivalent to Caye Caulker. After having visited both, I think we made the right call.

See my description below under Tours about my logic in skipping Orange Walk.

Hotel Cost: $2,152. Target to beat is $4,540.

Tropic Air's plane for our 13 minute flight from San Pedro to Belize City.

Transportation

Probably the greatest obstacle to me planning this trip myself was the transportation we'd need to get around the country. Intrepid would have taken us from Belize City to Orange Walk to San Ignacio and then back to Belize City to catch a water taxi to Caye Caulker (included both ways with the tour price) and back again. That's a lot of getting around and a lot of logistics, not to mention the fact that we'd need to find someone or some company that we trusted. It's way easier to just walk out of your hotel and find things taken care of you for the day.

We definitely simplified the transportation situation by reducing the number of hotels we stayed in. Our transportation itinerary would take us from Belize City Municipal Airport direct to our hotel in San Ignacio; then back again to the ferry terminal near Belize City; a one-way ferry ride to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye; round-trip transportation to and from our hotel on Ambergris Caye; and then a plane ride back to Belize City Airport. That list was definitely simpler but it also pretty much mirrored Intrepid's included transportation, except for the plane ride back to Belize City, which we saw as an upgrade, and our transportation on Ambergris Caye, which was a four day golf cart rental. We also saw THAT as an upgrade.

Full disclosure, we spent a lot to get to and from San Ignacio. Like $250. We figured it was worth it because we (1) wanted private transportation and (2) wanted to stay true to mimicking Intrepid's itinerary which would also be private (albeit with more people). It was also the trip that required the most research in terms of price and reviews. We needed reliablity and cost effectiveness but ultimately we'd pay a bit more for service. I think we got that. We used a company called Mayawalk Tours out of San Ignacio and had no issues whatsoever. Great choice for us.

Transportation Cost: $643 (Total Cost $2,795). Target to beat is $4,540.

Tikal's Temple I. I know I already used this pic elsewhere but this is my favorite Tikal pic.

Tours

One of the benefits of joining an organized tour is the array of day trips that are often included in your itinerary. Intrepid's "Land of Belize" trip features four tours: (1) a day trip via boat to the Mayan archaeological site of Lamanai (with birdwatching from the boat along the way); (2) a visit to the San Antonio Women's Co-operative for a cooking demonstration; (3) a cross-border excursion into Guatemala to visit the Mayan city of Tikal; and (4) an orientation walk around Caye Caulker.

We didn't plan to match that agenda. We did go to Tikal (I mean...OF COURSE we went to Tikal) and we figured heading to the old Mayan city of Caracol would equal or best Lamanai (Caracol is generally considered to be the most impressive Mayan site in Belize) so skipping Orange Walk would not be a giant loss (that finishes out my note about Orange Walk hotel above...). 

To substitute for the other two tours, we picked a food tour in Ambergris Caye (Belize Food's Savor Belize Dinner Tour) and a hiking and birdwatching tour near San Ignacio. Based on the theme and/or length of these tours, we figured they were at least comparable to what we missed out on at the Women's Cooperative and in Caye Caulker. 

Tours Cost: $1,042 (Total Cost $3,837). Target to beat is $4,540.

Ka'ana's fry jacks with egg, beans, cheese and ham. These were the best far of all the fry jacks we ate and they come with the room.

Meals

Intrepid's itinerary included one breakfast, two lunches and one dinner.  We got breakfast included with our room rate at Ka'ana (so four included breakfasts) and our tours to Tikal and Caracol and our birdwatching / hike also included lunch. Add in dinner as part of our Ambergris Caye walk and I figure four breakfasts,  three lunches and one dinner eclipse what Intrepid was offering. 

Meals Cost: $0 (Total Cost $3,837). And that's it. Target was $4,540.

Overall, we bested Intrepid's cost by $703. I think that's pretty good. I think that's worth spending the time to customize our itinerary to do what we wanted and choose our accommodations. Ultimately, we managed to upgrade our hotels significantly, pick our tours, add a night to the agenda and still cut our costs. I mean what else could we want?

A little disclaimer here: this WAS an expensive trip (and the total cost is NOT the cost above). We made it that way based on our choice of hotels and opting for private transportation for only our group. Could we have done it cheaper than this? Sure we could. But the point here was to beat our benchmark in Intrepid's tour cost AND get some really good hotels. We definitely achieved those objectives. 

Does this mean we'll be planning everything ourselves from now on? Absolutely not. We still have three more major trips this year and the last one we are signed up for a tour (via GAdventures) for at least part of our time in southern Africa. There is more than one way to do traveling. Ultimately, different approaches do work. It's OK to tour to one place and DIY to another. I expect we'll continue to take a combination of both approaches in the future. But for January in Belize, we definitely picked the right way for my money.

The savings without the extra night we added would have been $901, by the way.

Fresh red snapper, anyone? At Caramba Bar and Grill, San Pedro.

Octopus's Garden

WHAMMMMM!!!!!

It's late January 2025 in Belize and we are in about the tiniest boat possible racing for the shore of Ambergris Caye (pronounced amber-grease key), the largest of many, many islands off the east coast of Belize's mainland. We are in the beach portion of our trip. Our expectation here was crystal clear waters that would be so calm that you can see the sand at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea teaming with multicolored tropical fish and turtles and rays and other marine life without even getting into the water. We were thinking smooth sailing; bright and warm sun; and water so beautifully aqua that it would rival what we found in the Bahamas in 2020.

Belize had other ideas. Or maybe it was just Mother Nature. A winter front had dropped over the western Caribbean. It was cold (well...cold for the beach). It was windy. It was wavy. It rained. And all that made the water angrier than we had any reasonable right to expect. That boat ride back to shore was an ordeal. We clung to the boat. We made sure that we had everything that could fly out of the boat strapped and tied down and fully secured. And every time we crested a wave, the hull of the boat slammed down on the water in a way that made you feel like the whole boat could just break in two. It didn't, but every time it dropped down onto the other side of a wave, it hit my lower back and telegraphed up my spine in a decidedly non-pleasant way.

And we thought we'd have a nice calm sunny winter getaway at the beach...

Sunny beach vacation? Not so much. I did NOT sign up for this.

We split this eight night trip pretty much equally between the jungle and the beach. The jungle on the west side of Belize was amazing and the perfect setting for some Mayan history and some incredible birdwatching. The beach portion of the week away was scheduled to be spent exploring the barrier reef off of Belize's east coast, which is supposed to be the second best barrier reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia). That meant lots of time in boats and lots of time in the water looking down.

Our plan in our three and a half days staying on Ambergris Caye was to spend two and a half of those days on and in the water. Day number one was planned at Hol Chan Marine Reserve (that's essentially the barrier reef) followed by a stop at Shark Ray Alley to see...well, sharks and rays. Day number two was planned for snorkeling and fishing at Mexico Rocks followed by some boat-made conch ceviche and a beach barbecue and more snorkeling after lunch / rum drinks. Day three (that was our half day) would be spent in search of manatees, which apparently leave the mangrove swamps around Ambergris Caye and spend some time in the brackish water inside the barrier reef. 

The weather had other ideas. Manatee tour? Yeah, that pretty much went off without a hitch. No weather issue there. By the time we got to our last day, the water had calmed down considerably. 

The other two days? Not smooth sailing and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Beach barbecue? Too windy. Fishing? Seas too rough (although one of the three of us and only one of us caught a non-keeper fish). Rum drinks? No rum drinks. Conch ceviche? Umm...no. Our captain found tons of conch but used the meat as bait to help us catch a non-keeper fish. Mexico Rocks? Never made it.

Day one on the seas? We did everything we planned to. Snorkeling at Hol Chan. Stopped at Shark Ray Alley and saw a ton of sharks (but no rays). Had lunch on Caye Caulker just south of Ambergris Caye. Watched tourists feed sardines to tarpon. Day two? What did we do instead of Mexico Rocks and a beach barbecue? We did the exact same thing we did on day one. 

The. Exact. Same. Thing.

Did this all work out happily for us? Actually, yes, it did. And it worked out in large part because I panicked on day one in the water when I jumped in and tried to go snorkeling.

Sharks and even more sharks at the appropriately named Shark Ray Alley.

Now, this is not the first time I've snorkeled since I started writing this blog, although admittedly, I have not done it a lot. In almost 12 years of writing these posts, I've been snorkeling on three prior trips. That's right...just three. And the last time was in 2020, just a tad more than five years ago. Did I practice swimming in all that time? Eeehhh...not so much.

So what do I do when I get into some unexpectedly choppy water off the east coast of Belize? I panicked. Too wavy. Can't breathe. Can't swim. I'm ditching this thing. Too dangerous. I bailed. And on that first day, considering we didn't go back out Hol Chan after lunch like our tour was supposed to do, my chance to see the second best barrier reef in the world was lost. Because I panicked. How stupid am I?

Now...if I'd have stuck my face in the water and started breathing through my snorkel and just followed the crowd, I'd have been fine. But I didn't do that. I got nervous with all the waves hitting me in the face with my head poking out above the surface of the water and of course I did. That's not snorkeling. That's not what you are supposed to do.

I cannot express how disappointed in myself I was. Did I get in the water with about a million (OK...maybe 20 tops) nurse sharks on the next stop? You bet I did. But the reef...uh uh. Nope!

Nurse sharks and some other fish. I love the remora on the shark in the top photo. Shark (Ray?) Alley.

So on day two when we found out we'd be doing the exact same circuit we did on day one and NOT going to Mexico Rocks and having a beach barbecue, do you think I'm disappointed? No. I was not. This was a chance to do exactly what I chickened / panicked out of the prior day. When you get a second chance in life, sometimes you just have to take it.

I just mentioned this is not my first time snorkeling since I started writing this blog. This is also not the first time I have blogged about my time on and just below the waves. Each of my prior blogs about snorkeling (Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas, if you must know) have been named at least in part "Under The Sea". Hawaii was the original post and I added "Part Dos" for Ecuador and "Part Three" for the Bahamas. And in case you were wondering...yes, the posts are named after the song in The Little Mermaid.

My intent here for my Belize snorkeling is that it would become "Under The Sea, Part Four" but in the end I couldn't do it because snorkeling in Belize was that much more spectacular than any of the previous three trips. So it got "Octopus's Garden" because The Beatles are better than Alan Menken and it was the first thing that popped into my head. It's also a symbol of my lost experience on day one because our group saw an octopus on that snorkeling over the barrier reef that I missed. 

Coral and fish.

Why was snorkeling in Belize better than Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas? Well how about close or close enough encounters with green turtles, eagle rays, stingrays, parrot fish (and tons of other fish) among and over the most expansive coral fields I've ever seen. In addition to a giant pile of sharks off the back of the boat and right in front of me. This was an incredible experience. And admittedly, it would have been better if I had done it twice, but I'll stop beating myself up about that issue. Probably.

In all my prior snorkel memories, I have to say I've never really seen anything that was not a fish. Well, OK, so there was a sea lion in the Galápagos but other than that, it's been just fish. Some were admittedly brightly colored and pretty impressive but they are still just fish. And yes, sharks count as fish here. 

In Belize? First ten minutes of face down time at Chan Hol and there's a green turtle munching on the sea grass at the bottom of the reef. Just right there in front of us. I know I probably sound schoolboy giddy here but this was huge for me. Not a fish. A turtle. Like 12 feet or so from me. Unbelievable. I am sure there are many, many thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands of people) that have had a similar encounter so excuse me for going on and on about this. But...not me. Not before Belize.

Green turtle (top two pictures) and parrot fish (bottom). Just look where Marvin is pointing.

The turtle moved on. And so did we. And a couple of minutes later...sting ray. Just hiding under the sand until our guide, Marvin, spurred it into motion and it showed itself in full. Again..unbelievable. Never seen anything like that before. 20 minutes or so after that, we found an eagle ray. Two days later, we found a lobster hiding in a crevice in the coral reef we snorkeled over the top of. Not all fish. Much more than fish. This was astounding.

Now, truth be told, this is not the first time I've been snorkeling where someone I was snorkeling near or with (depending on how you view people on the same boat that I don't know) had seen a turtle. But I didn't. I also didn't see the octopus that other people we raving about on another snorkeling stop I was on. The reason I didn't see those things (or even have a chance to) is that I am pretty much blind. And when I take off my glasses, I can't see anything out of my short-sighted / near-sighted / astigmatism-plagued eyes.

This year, I could see. I bought a prescription snorkel mask.

I can't describe adequately to people who can see pretty well without glasses what a game-changer this is for me. It's literally going from not seeing to seeing. I know that sounds stupid but it's true. Anything pretty much six feet from me is totally invisible to me in an underwater environment where (let's face it...) most creatures are hiding from other creatures trying to eat them and therefore are pretty much fully camouflaged. The chances of me seeing an octopus or lobster or turtle or ray concealed with sand without a prescription mask? Pretty much nil.

So in past years when I snorkeled, if it (read: a fish) wasn't right in front of me or happened to not be visible in my GoPro videos that I had made while blindly swimming about, it pretty much got missed entirely. And it's not like these things that are camouflaged can't be missed on GoPro videos if you don't know they are there in the first place. I have to say there is pretty much no way I would have noticed the eagle ray on a video that I was blindly shooting that shows up in the third picture below. This year, I could see it with my own eyes and I got it deliberately. 

Sight. I don't know what else to say. It's pretty cool being able to see underwater. Belize has an amazing environment to snorkel. But honestly, without the prescription mask, it might have been about as good as every other place I've snorkeled in the last let's say 30 or so years.

Rays. The eagle ray is in the bottom picture. Look center left-right and just a bit higher than the midpoint up-down.

I hope that all of that sounds incredible and worth the trip down to Belize despite the less than ideal weather. And all of that doesn't even consider the manatee.

If I had made a list of creatures my size or larger that I would have been OK running into inside Belize's barrier reef (I'm assuming dolphins and humpback whales don't venture into water that shallow...) there would have been pretty much one thing on that list and that would have been a manatee. What would have been my other choices? Tiger shark? Bull shark? Crocodile? No thanks to all three of those. Manatee. That would have been it.

So I may have spoiled things a bit by writing earlier that the manatee tour we'd booked went off without a hitch but I didn't mean to imply that we actually saw one. I've been on plenty of "no hitch" nature tours that didn't yield the expected sighting of the animals we came to see. I expected the same sort of thing to happen here. I mean how big is the Caribbean Sea inside the reef and how many manatees are there hanging around Ambergris Caye and neighboring cayes?

I don't know what the exact answer to that question is but for me after snorkeling in Belize, the answer is "at least one" because we saw one. It took two stops with our captain, Sammy, (the self-proclaimed "manatee whisperer") but he got us what we went to see. Would I have preferred more than one? Sure. But one was OK. Better than none.

If the turtle and the rays and all the different types of fish were an amazing baseline exprerience (particularly with my brand new mask...), the manatee put this trip over the top. There's not a lot of action with a manatee but thankfully this one was tolerant of us swimming nearby and obviously following him and didn't turn on the jets and run. 

We spent maybe 10 minutes maximum with him. It may have been less than that. We spotted him when we first got in the water at a distance of maybe 50 to 60 feet and were able to close to within maybe 20 or less. Most of our view of him (which did include a surface for a breath of air) was from behind but he did tolerate me swimming a little alongside him which got me the first photograph below.

You can't always get what you want, especially when nature is involved but despite the unfriendly weather; the panicked and aborted first swim; and some changes in plan that on the surface seemed disappointing, this all worked out great. I am sure some of this had to do with our multiple days in and on the water but I'm certain a lot of it had to do with Belize. One more snorkeling adventure in the books, but it was certainly far superior to anything else I had ever done. Sometimes, you get lucky.

Our manatee. So cool.

So about the prescription mask...I ordered it from SeaVision USA. Based on some shopping around with various mask manufacturers, it seems like you can only get so precise on the prescription with these things but based on admittedly very limited research, SeaVision seemed to have a pretty precise range they could get to and they can do bifocals (which I theoretically need). 

To order the mask, I used a prescription from my last visit to my eye doctor but also needed the pupillary distance that I had to make a special trip back to my doctor to get (they didn't charge me for that). I thought the cost at just a bit more than $350 was extremely reasonable and the turnaround time was about four business days from order to receipt which I thought was astonishing. That's quicker than I get my glasses orders filled from my eye doctor. For what it's worth, my mom thought the cost was a lot. She clearly doesn't pay for my glasses when I get new pairs.

I can honestly see perfectly out of this mask. Like I could walk around at home with it and see if I needed to. It's pretty much the same as my glasses, and I am extremely pleased with it. I'm not sure I needed the bifocals and I'm sure they cost me a bit more. My reading vision really close up is really pretty good and I don't need to read dials or gauges the way a scuba diver might need to. Still, absolutely no complaints on this one. This product is a huge needle mover for me. I can't wait to get back in the water with some colorful fish.

Hopefully less than five years from now.

Black Rock

In my first post about our Belize trip last month, I wrote that we went to Belize to see Mayan ruins and toucans. That was true, but that alone is not the whole truth. Sure, we did want to see both those things, and we did. Very comprehensively on the Mayan ruins side of things and well enough on the toucan side of things. But that wasn't all. We went to see the landscape and the barrier reef and eat local food and meet people we'd never met and snorkel and swim and learn about everything we could in the limited corridor of the country we decided to explore in 2025.

We also had no intention of stopping our bird quest at toucans. We wanted to see much, much more. And Belize is an amazing place to do so.

To further that goal, we decided to take a bird watching tour on one of our three full days in the jungle in western Belize. We picked a place called Black Rock Lodge which is about eight miles and about 30 minutes into the Belizean rainforest right along the Macal (which used to be macaw) River. It was a pretty incredible choice. Our guide, Richard Harris (but not the actor, obviously), goes to Black Rock on his on his days off to go birdwatching. On his days off!!!

To be clear here, we are not first time bird watchers. Over the past few years, we've spend many, many weekends roaming around our home state of Virginia looking for birds. We've also spent significant time in the United States and overseas seeking out local species of birds, most notably in Kenya, Tanzania, New Zealand, Singapore, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Uganda, New York, Oklahoma and Seattle. And I'm sure with that list I've missed many, many spots.

From here on out, this post is mostly a photo dump but I think some of the pictures we gathered on this day are just gorgeous. There's a little bit of an explanation here and there but mostly, this is a pretty pictures post. Enjoy!

Tanagers

We found two species of tanager at Black Rock: the yellow-winged tanager (it's really just a flash of yellow on the wing) and the summer tanager. The male summer tanagers are very, very red. The last picture below is the female summer tanager.  

Manakins

There are two species of manakin in Belize (the white-collared manakin and the red-capped manakin). We found them both at Black Rock Lodge. Manakins are just exquisite little birds. The red-capped manakin is a bit out of focus but that shot was taken through a window between a series of leaves and branches that required some body contortions (by me) to get properly. A second or so after taking this photo, it was gone.

Aracari 

A bit more than two years ago we visited Costa Rica and were dying to find some toucans. We did, but barely. One of the bird highlights of that trip was finding a couple of flocks of collared aracari, technically toucans but not FULL toucans. I was thrilled with those sightings in late 2022. We found a ton more at Black Rock and in a familiarity-breeds-contempt type moment, collared aracari became a species I was ready to move on from and find something new. Been there, done that?

I do still love the colors on the collard aracari. It's like someone spray-painted some red spots and bands on a bird which is really just yellow on its front and blue-black on its back. Of course, that's not what happened. I love how well you can see the red tail feathers that are also present on the keel-billed toucan (one of the collareds' cousins) in the second photograph.

Seedeaters 

Certainly not the most colorful birds we saw in our few hours at Black Rock but definitely worth including for one reason and one reason alone: I don't think I've ever seen a seedeater in person before. The top one is a Morelet's seedeater. The bottom two are male (black) and female (brown) variable seedeaters.

Gartered Trogon

We saw two (or was it three?) species of trogon either at or on the way home from Black Rock but the only good pictures we got were of this singular gartered trogon. You may marvel at the colors on this black, white and yellow bird but it's probably one of the least colorful trogons out there. 

Great Kiskadee

Speaking of black, white and yellow birds, we saw great kiskadees in a number of spots in western Belize. 

Maybe. 

The first afternoon we were in country after arrival at our hotel, we found some yellow and black birds at play on our hotel property. Our Merlin app variously identified the birds we saw and heard (with the pictures we sent to Merlin and the sounds picked up by the app) as great kisakees, social flycatchers or tropical kingbirds. Which ones were those on our hotel grounds? Probably social flycatchers according to our guide, Richard. Kiskadees, he explained, are bigger (without having seen any of the birds we saw two days before we met him).

The one below, though, he felt pretty sure was a kiskadee. I'm still confused.

Chestnut-Sided Warbler

OK, so this is probably the least spectacular picture in this post but it's here because every time I get a halfway decent picture of a warbler, I feel some measure of success. We can find warblers near our home in Virginia but it's only for a brief window in the spring and fall and these birds do not sit still. I must have taken 15 or 20 pictures of this chestnut-sided warbler before it flew off. This one is the best I got. I know, it's not great.

Hummingbirds

OK, so this is hummingbirds with for sure a lower case "h" because neither of the birds below actually have "hummingbird" in their names.

When we got back to Black Rock Lodge after our hours-long walk around their property, we found pretty much every spare tree covered with slices of fruit and every hummingbird (lower case, again) feeder filled to the brim with some sort of sugar water (I'm imagining). These hummingbirds don't play. They are territorial and they chase rivals away. Cool to see. Been a long time (Ecuador, 2016, I'm thinking) since I've seen this many hummingbirds in one spot.

The bird in the top picture is a white-necked jacobin. The bird in the bottom picture is a wedge-tailed sabrewing.

Cattle Egrets

How did I not know about cattle egrets before I visited Belize? We have cattle and egrets in Virginia, just maybe no cattle egrets maybe? Yes, that sentence deserved two maybes.

So cattle egrets are just what they sound like: egrets that hang out with cattle. I guess they pick the bugs of the cows. And sure enough, pretty much every time we saw a field of cattle when we were being driven around Belize, we saw a corresponding number of cattle egrets hanging out with the cows. We saw a large flock of cattle egrets flying down the Macal River when we got back to San Ignacio. No solitary birds at all, unlike other species of egret we have seen nearer to home.

Yellow-Throated Euphonia

OK, so we are almost done here and we are getting into the mind-blowingly gorgeously colorful species. I had no idea what a euphonia was before we got to Black Rock Lodge. In fact, I had no idea what a euphonia was when we got back to Black Rock Lodge after our birding walk. Now I do. These little sparrow-sized birds are spectacularly maize and blue colored. Well, except the females (the bottom pic).

Honeycreepers

Before we departed for Belize, I did a little homework. Or, depending on your perspective, I cheated. I wanted to get some idea of what birds we might see in country so I peeked at a list of Belize birds, including checking out the ebird list for Black Rock Lodge. One bird caught my eye: the red-legged honeycreeper. These brightly-colored blue (or is it more indigo?) birds with the contrasting red legs were a bird we just had to see. HAD to. So when Richard asked us what birds we were hoping to see, we answered "toucans". And then we answered "red-legged honeycreepers". We really wanted to say "male red-legged honeycreepers with mating plumage" but didn't want to appear greedy, I guess.

I did not expect that we would see these birds. Yes, I know I just said they were on the ebird list for Black Rock Lodge but there are plenty of birds on ebird lists in Virginia that we never see despite multiple trips to the same locations in different seasons. My hopes were low here.

I should be more optimistic. Not only did we get some great looks at the males which we knew were the bright blue with the red legs but we also saw females (second picture below) and a molting male. This could not have worked out more perfectly.

And...we saw some green honeycreepers too. Bonus!!!! That's the first photo, in case that wasn't reasonably inferable. 

That's it! That's all I got but I think what I got is a whole lot. This has to be (and I know I'm doing this in a completely understated way) pretty much the best day of birdwatching ever. No hyperbole there. I'm serious. Can't wait for the next day this good. No idea when that can even possibly be but I'm up for it when it happens. Until then, I'm satisfying myself with Virginia birds, not that there's anything wrong with that. They are just going to be a bit less colorful.