Abergris Caye, Belize

November 09, 2019

Abergris Caye, Belize

Also known as my dreamland... seriously, this place had it all from good food, to cute little local kids and awesome snorkeling and beautiful views. I loved this place! So we started to trip at 9pm friday night. Headed down to vegas and flew over to houston and then down to belize. So it was a rough night... red eye's are never fun, but Id do it again in a heart beat. We arrived in Belize City where we met up with James. James is one of the locals that kason and mel have become pretty good friends with so he gave us a ride to the water taxi. BTW it was flipping hot and humid while waiting for the water taxi. Hour and a half on the water taxi and then we had made it! The beautiful city of San Pedro. Mel was there to greet us with the golf cart and the ride to the house was awesome. I knew so quick that the week ahead was going to be awesome. Once we finally made it to the house it was about 2pm so we grabbed some food and just chilled. Our first meal was some bbq chicken with rice beans and a tortilla from a lady on the street and it was delish. That night (and pretty much every night) we headed to the truck stop for some wings and tostones. The truck stop is definitely a fav spot. It's a ton of storage unit type things that sell a bunch of yummy food, drinks and ice cream. It also has live music and movies at night so we went there a ton. Saturday night I fell asleep at 7pm because I was so exhausted.

Sunday morning we headed to church. I love experiencing church in other countries and this was such a crazy experience. a total of 13 people were at church and of those 13 there were probably 6 locals. The others were missionaries and tourists and us. So pretty crazy, but there was one older lady that got up and shared her experience about taking a trip to Mexico to go to the temple. It was such a cool story and an incredible example to me especially because the st george temple just recently closed. The diligence and faithfulness of members around the world blow my mind. We are so dang lucky here in the US and especially here in Utah. I know we are blessed immensely, but its always a huge reminder to me when I visit other churches and meet people around the world. Truly great examples. I also met a little boy named Mark. He was there with his dad and it was both their first times at church. Apparently the missionaries were walking down the street when mark says "Hey you guys wanna come to my house?" Such a sweet boy. He played with my bracelets, hair, ate a ton of my gum and told me he was being batman for halloween. As we were sitting in church he was looking around and says "It is so beautiful in here, I just want to stay here." Made me happy that he liked it at church and makes me hopeful that he will come back, but it also makes me wonder what his home life was like. Makes me sad. I just want to give everything I have to these sweet kids. :'(

After church we relaxed and took a walk on the beach later that night. We got lit up by the mosquitos. LIT UP! So apparently mosquitos have never been a problem until now! Throughout the week we were constantly rubbing ourselves down with deet. Sunday was another chill day just enjoying the sabbath. Monday is when things start getting crazy!! In the best possible way... We headed out on a Catamaran Tour that took us to Hol Chan, Shark Ray Alley and Caye Caulker. So the boat was awesome. I sat in the very front on these nets that would splash up water every once in awhile. When we stopped at Hol Chan Marina Reserve we got our snorkel gear on and headed out. We saw tons of jellyfish, sting rays, eagle rays, fish, reef, conch shells and even some little sharks. And that was just the start of a freaking awesome day. Our next stop was shark ray alley. Our captain, Martin and our snorkel guide, ricky, chummed the water and thats when we hopped in. So many sharks and rays, it was epic. The coolest thing ever. We were surrounded by sharks and rays and we even got to touch the sting rays.

The boat to ourselves - perks of slow season

Happy place

Can you spot the ray above and jellyfish below?

Oh also I had a major crush on our tour guide. I mean he's a freaking shark/ray whisperer. Who wouldn't dig that? Except he's married...major bummer.

Next stop: Caye Caulker. The boat dropped us off at the island for a couple hours of lunch and swimming. I ordered some jerk chicken and tried some really good lobster. We headed over to the swimming spot where you can jump off a high dive and stuff like that and found a ton of starfish!!! Made my day! I had asked Mel if she had ever found any starfish around here and she said no, so it was the coolest little surprise.

What a day - headed back on the boat for the ride home.

As we were pulling back into ambergris caye a nice little storm rolled in. It was actually way fun to be out on the boat with all the waves and rain. Each day little rain storms would roll in and last like maybe 10 minutes then it was back to being a pretty sunny day.

Ok so now you see why this was probably one of the greatest days of my life...

Tuesday we headed to secret beach and just relaxed. I ordered me a good ole strawberry daiquiri and found some cute hermit crabs.

After swimming in the ocean all day would we always come home and swim some more in the little pool and watch the sunset. Im telling ya.. I was living my dream life.

Wednesday we snorkeled at a place called Rojos. We snorkeled right off the dock... wasnt as pretty as the reef, but it has some cool wildlife. We saw a lion fish and three eels.

I didnt get any pictures of the eels because they were hiding pretty well too, but the lion fish is hiding in the right side of the cinder block. We were super smart and poked a stick in it to try and get the fish to come out more, but it didnt work.

Some more wings and tostones from the truck stop. Wednesday night we watched cabin in the woods at the truck stop and it was a terrible movie, but I guess it got us in the mood for halloween. Thursday was another one of my favorite days... started off the morning as usual eating my breakfast on the roof with this awesome view

Then we took the kayaks out to the water and paddled about a half a mile out to the reef. Jumped in the water with our snorkels and it was beautiful. The reef is amazing and the wildlife is my favorite. As I was swimming around I saw a couple more starfish, a ray, tons of fish and a ton of conch shells. So I found the prettiest shell and dove down to get it. I knew it didnt have conch in it because the shell had a hole at the top which means the locals already harvested it, so it was free game... at least I thought. I swam the shell back to the kayak and set it in the kayak and rested for a bit. When I looked back over at the shell I saw something coming out of it. I immediately grabbed it and realized it was a baby octopus. This was my favorite moment of the whole week. Earlier that day I had asked if they had ever seen octopus around here and Mel said no and looky here.... I found one! What are the odds that I would pick up the conch shell that was home to an octopus and also a little starfish. Seriously made my day. It was the cutest little thing. We put some water in the kayak and let it play around. I put it in my hand to take a picture of it and it jumped into the ocean, well I picked it up again and apparently it really didnt like me so it dove back in the water again and then the saddest thing ever happened... we watched this sweet baby get ripped apart by like 10 fish. I felt so so bad. Actually I still feel really bad, but I guess thats the circle of life. Eat or be eaten am I right? So ya I went from 100 to 0 real quick after that. haha. Such a fun afternoon at the reef though. Just this one week I have been able to swim and see so much awesome ocean life it blows me away. I feel like I'm living in the blue planet movies. Reason 5000 why I'm going to live here one day.

wow cutest little alien guy ever. highlight of the trip for sure.

Such a pretty conch, no wonder the little guys chose it as their home.

Friday - our last day on this beautiful island. We headed back to Rojos for some more snorkeling and hoping the lion fish would come out to play, but we were out of luck... the lion fish actually wasnt there at all. We swam around and swam back at the house. Packed up our stuff and went to some local shops. I miss so much driving around on the golf cart and waving at all the locals. We had some fresh caught fish for dinner which was delicious. Well if this blog doesn't convince everyone to visit Belize then I don't know what will. Friday night a huge storm rolled in. I woke up at 4am to a ton of rain and the loudest thunder. It was actually kind of scary. It was the kind of storm that as a kid I would have gone and slept in my parents room. It did however make for a beautiful sunrise and some rainbows to send us off.