Saturday, June 28, 2014 - Homeward Bound

Rough night.  I woke up at 2:00 a.m.  It was super windy outside and these large nuts were falling from the trees and hitting the deck.  It was really loud!  I slept on and off until around 5:30 a.m. when our new neighbors were out on their deck talking so loudly it woke us all up.  I still can’t believe they were that loud that early in the morning.  On the bright side, it was the only time we heard anyone during our entire stay. So maybe it is good that we are leaving now.  I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to get up and shower.

The shower was really nice.  Danika was up when I got out and Jason got up shortly after.  We went and had a nice relaxing slow breakfast and then headed back to the room to brush our teeth and finish packing.  Then David and I went to the front desk to check out.  We went back to the room to get the kids and our back packs (luggage had already been taken by the staff!).  David had to take a picture of a Belize license plate before we left.

It was a lovely half hour drive to Dangriga airport.  We waited about 15 minutes with Nancy and Jeff from Virginia.  This is our plane, waiting for us to board.

 Then it was a short 15 minute flight to Belize City.  The flight was great in the small plane.  

You could see everything because the wings were above the windows.  This picture is leaving Dangriga.

The view of the river was amazing...

 The kids were put in the very back seats, side by side, no aisle in between.

This is us coming in for a landing in Belize City.

It took us a very long time to get through customs in Belize City.  At least it was fairly cool as the fans were going and you really didn’t notice that it wasn’t air conditioned.  Although it is a small airport, there were tons of shops to keep us occupied while we waited for our flight.  I almost wish I had bought a hammock to remind me of the ones at Pook’s and Hamanasi.

Leo, the guy who booked our flights, really did us proud.  He had us set as Sky Priority, so our bags were tagged that way and we were in Business class, rows 2 and 3 for the flight to Atlanta.  That was great because they served us a fabulous lunch.  The kids were amazed at how well we were treated.  It was so nice to be pampered at a time when we knew we had a long day of travel ahead and we were sad to say goodbye to Belize.  The other really nice thing was that the flight attendant came up to us and asked us if Danika and Jason were our kids.  We said yes, and he proceeded to tell us how nice it was to have such well-behaved and polite kids in business class.  He said it doesn't happen very often and that we should be proud of them.  It is such a great feeling to hear nice things about your kids!

In Atlanta we split up to go through customs because David has a U.K. passport with a green card, and we have U.S. passports, and we didn't know we could stay together.  David had no one in his line so he was through really quickly and he went to get the bags.  Our bags were first off due to the priority tags!  Meanwhile I was with the kids in a LONG line of U.S. citizens.  There was a new system that had only been in place a few months.  You stand in line and then they send a bunch of you into this big corral of kiosks and they tell you to find one with a green light.  We saw one in the distance but by the time we got there, it wasn’t green anymore.  By the time we made it around again, many people that were behind us in line had gotten to kiosks that had freed up.  We finally got one though.  We scanned each passport individually.  The machine takes your picture if you are an adult.  Then it prints out passes. 

Danika’s had an X across it, so when we went to the next long line to get stamped in, they pulled us aside to go through stricter customs.  The great thing about that is that there wasn’t a line for that, so we got right through.  The customs agent there was great, really nice. 

We finally met up with David and were surprised that he already had the luggage.   So we were able to get through reasonably quickly and drop off our luggage on the other side to be checked through to Missoula, but we had to go through security again.  We all had forgotten about that, so all of our water bottles were full and our backpacks were recalled!

We had a little trouble with Delta trying to get our seats moved up because we were in row 33 for the flight to Minneapolis and we only had a half an hour connection to our Missoula flight.  Delta moved Danika and Jason to row 30, which didn't help.  They couldn't move us to 19 because there was an extra charge.  We ended up all sitting in 33 as we traded with really nice people to get back our original seats. 

Our flight was out of Atlanta was delayed, and we really thought we would miss the connection and have to stay in Minneapolis, but luckily the gate for the Missoula flight was right next to the one we arrived at, so we made the flight no problem.  The flight to Missoula was not full, so Danika and Jason had the three seats behind us, and David and I had three seats to ourselves.  We mostly slept.  We arrived at 11:30 p.m. and Paul met us at the airport.  We were home by midnight.  It was so nice to sleep in our own beds!

Friday, June 27, 2014 - A Day to Relax

Today is our last full day and I am a bit sad because I feel like I have just settled in to the relaxing part.  We have absolutely nothing scheduled for our last day, which is perfect!  The kids were up early on the only day they could sleep in – go figure.  We went to breakfast at 7:00 a.m.  There were freshly baked cinnamon rolls, yum!

After breakfast, David and I went over to the Adventure Center and transferred the pictures of the spotted eagle ray that I took so that Eric would have them.  Gary, the manager, said that he would work on it in photoshop and post it to the Hamanasi Facebook page.

Jason and I went into the gift shop to get a t-shirt.  Now that we have seen David’s Dive Belize shirt with the spotted eagle ray on the back, we all want one.  They don’t have Jason’s size out front, so we will wait until they have a chance to look in back.

It rained this morning during breakfast, but just a bit.  Now it is really windy and we are sitting by the pool reading.  I am looking forward to this do-nothing day.  It is so nice at the pool as there are only five people here.

One of the things we have loved about this place while staying here are these bowls of water to wash your feet.  They are by the pool, on the way into the restaurant and lobby, as well as the steps leading up to our deck.  It is so nice to be able to just dip your feet in here to clean the sand off.

David and I took bikes into Hopkins again.  Even though it was very hot, it was still lovely.

We also wanted to get the wood carver David to sign the spotted eagle he made for us.  He was really nice and signed it and wrote Belize and 2014 for our 20^th wedding anniversary.

 Next we rode around the corner to Alex’s, the place I bought my conch necklace, earrings, and hair clip.  We told the guy my hair clip broke and he gave me another.  David took this picture of the Belize flag that was hanging in the shop.

We decide to buy a really nice sea turtle here.  Alex wasn’t there to sign it, so the son carved Alex and 2014… He was not very good at it I must say!  It is easy to see why his father is the one that carves the animals.

On the way back through town, I saw this beautiful giant mango tree.  There was a lady with a really long pole reaching up and pulling down mangoes.  She had a table in front of the tree and was selling them there.  We stopped so I could take a picture from across the street.  While I was taking the picture, a young boy of 10 or 11 rode up on his bike and yelled at us for taking the picture. He said that I had better delete it, so I did.  But I must say that I am a bit sad because it was a really interesting picture of typical life here in Hopkins.

We biked back just in time to say goodbye to Chris, Larry, Grace, and Grant.  We were so hot from biking that we took a swim in the pool with Danika and then went and had lunch.

We swam a bit after lunch and sat out and talked, then David and I went for a walk down the beach.  It was really hot and we walked the whole way down looking at the other places and it only confirmed that we were really happy we were staying at Hamanasi!

The dive and snorkel boats are kept on boat lifts at the end of the dock when they are not in use.  When the sea is choppy it can be a real challenge to get the boat back on the lift without having the boat slam into the bottom of the lift in the water, or into the poles supporting the lift.  It was a really choppy day today, so David spent some time watching the crews get the boats out of the water.

Our room was being made up, so Jason and I were out on the deck waiting for them to finish.  He sat in the hammock and I was on the bench rocking him.  It was so nice to just sit and have relaxing time together.

We sat at the pool and had happy hour drinks that Edgar talked us into.  At 4:30 p.m. we went and got the kids to let them have a happy hour drink too.  While at the pool I overheard Michelle (Wendy’s sister who we met on the snorkeling boat) saying she needed some Valtrex, but the nearest pharmacy was a half an hour away.  I told her I had some and went and got it for her.  She was really happy about it and kept thanking me over and over.  

The kids kept swimming in the pool and met some other kids from Texas who had just arrived.  They all started playing Marco Polo and they kept playing until it was time for dinner at 6:00 p.m.

We had a nice slow dinner and finished at 7:40 p.m.  We had considered having a separate anniversary dinner by putting the kids at a separate table tonight, but both kids wanted us to have dinner with them, so we decided to stay together.  It was really fun to hang with them – we laughed a lot, good times!  During dinner, the waiter walked up with two drinks and we said that we hadn’t ordered them.  He said they were sent from Michelle, as she wanted to thank us.  So nice of her!  We went over and thanked her for the drinks, and she was still just so happy that I had heard her plea for Valtrex! 

Back at our table, the entrees had arrived... specialty pizza tonight!

Mango cheesecake for dessert!

After dinner there was a dance/drum show until 9:00 p.m.  We could hear it while we packed.  We went and got our boarding passes – so nice the hotel checks in for you!  They couldn’t check David in, but said we could do it at the airport in Belize City.  It seems like we are mostly packed now.  The kids did a great job packing their own bags too.  So it is off to bed and a relaxing end to our vacation.

Thursday, June 26, 2014 - Snorkeling Round 2

We woke up late at 7:00 a.m.!  The sun gets up really early here, around 5:30 am (and goes to bed around 6:30 p.m.) We had breakfast with Jim and Kathy and then went to get ready for snorkeling.  We left at 8:30 a.m. and it took us about 40 minutes to get out to what is called the 5^th Cut of the Southern Barrier reef.  It was a gorgeous journey.

When we jumped in the water and were away from the boat, David turned to get a picture of the boat.  We didn't know until we got home and looked at the picture that there was this large something in the water near the front of the boat.  If you zoom in, it looks like it is as big as the boat itself, which is about 35 feet!  How could something that big be in the water and us not see it???  I emailed Gary at Hamanasi and he said the consensus was that it is a ray with its wing out of the water.  HAHAhahaha!  It is all in the perspective!  It is much closer to us than the boat... boy, do I feel stupid!

The four of us snorkeled with 4 people we didn’t know.  Eric was our guide.  One of those four people needed a life jacket and seemed to need a great deal of help from Eric, so it was slow going and we didn’t get to see very much.   However, David took some really interesting pictures of the surface of the water which I will probably end up using in some art projects.

The visibility was much better than when we went scuba diving.

It was also great to be able to snorkel with Jason since we didn't get to do that the first time...

For some reason the first time we went out snorkeling I didn't really dive down.  I spent most of this trip completely underwater.

Surprisingly, Danika really enjoyed diving down too!

David took this great shot of this sting ray just leaving its hiding place in the sand on the ocean floor.

We took a break at IZE again, and had fresh watermelon, pineapple, and peanut butter cookies. C-Dog, our diving instructor, was there, so David snapped this picture of him on the dive boat because we didn't get one of him when we were scuba diving.

After a break at IZE we went out to 3^rd Cut and were with Eric again.  Danika had fun messing around on the boat ride over.

During the break, Chris Didway asked Garrif, the boat captain, if our two families could be together so that we could take pictures for them.  YES!  It was so much better.  I did a lot more diving under water and went deep and I could see so much more.  It was much easier than I remember.  We saw rays and sea cucumbers and many different kinds of fish. 

 Our friends, the Didways, just as we dropped into the water...

 David did some diving down as well.

I took some time taking pictures of the Didway family underwater.  It was really fun.  This is Grant and Grace...

This is Grant with Chris, Grace, and Larry in the background.

Larry diving deep...

Then Grace...

And Danika too...

Chris told me to make sure that I didn't use all of my time taking pictures of them, so that I could enjoy the snorkeling. I was actually having fun taking pictures of them.  When I thought I had a few good ones, I went back to snorkeling. 

At one point I dove down to take a picture of a stingray at the bottom and I hear Eric, our snorkeling guide, yelling “RAY...RAY” from on top of the water.  I looked up and this enormous spotted eagle ray was coming right towards us.  He swam right past me and he had two fish swimming in the shelter of its wings.  One of the fish was about 2 ½ feet long!  I was in shock at the size of the eagle ray, but somehow managed to swing the camera his way and snap a few photos!  It was amazing.  When Eric got to the surface after showing everyone, he said “Holy shit, that was the biggest spotted eagle ray I have ever seen!”  We figured the ray had a wingspan somewhere between 10 and 12 feet, and a tail length of about 20 feet.

Jason had chosen to stay in the boat for that snorkel outing, so he missed it.  I was really sad about that, but so happy that the rest of us were able to see such an amazing specimen.  When it passed, I handed the camera to David and he swam after it, but there was no way he could keep up.  The funny thing is it looked like it was drifting slowly due to its size, but it was actually hauling past us! 

We were on a high the entire way back to Hamanasi!  It was time for lunch and we decided to do things differently and have lunch down off of the veranda on a little patio of four tables.

After lunch everyone went swimming in the pool… what a great day.  

While we are sat here, the Hamanasi staff are in the middle of moving a huge palm tree.  They dug it up and it fell with a crash because they lost control of it… I think it was much heavier than they expected.  Luckily it didn’t damage any property.  It took over 40 men to lift it up and move it. 

After swimming in the pool a bit, David felt a little ill from the morning snorkeling so we split a 7-Up and sat by the pool.  Then David and I biked into Hopkins to a wood sculptor called David’s to look at wood carvings.  We also looked at another wood sculptor called Alex’s.  Alex had the nicer stuff and even had a really nice sting ray, but we wanted a spotted eagle ray because of the one we saw today. 

David’s place had a partially finished spotted eagle ray made out of ziricote wood, so he said he would take 10 minutes and finish it by putting eyes on it and making it look really nice.  So while he finished it, we went back to Alex’s to look at the sting ray.  When we went back to David’s, he put it on the stand and it looked like it was diving down.  We really liked it so we bought that one.  We paid the full price of $60 dollars which I thought was too much, but David wanted to do the negotiating and I guess he just really wanted it.  While we were there we met a couple, Caroline and Justin, and let us use her phone to take pictures of David the sculptor working on our eagle ray.  They emailed us the pictures below... so nice!

This is David working on some of the carving...

Here he is putting on the finishing touches and buffing it out...

We biked back to Hamanasi in time for happy hour, so we bought the kids virgin pina coladas and we had the special, El Matadors, where had tequila, rum, triple sec, lime and cranberry juice.  We took them out to the pool and relaxed before dinner.

There is this great guy, Edgar, that works at Hamanasi.  He started in Maintenance, then moved to the pool and serving drinks there.  He is moving to serving in the restaurant.  He is really personable and had a good laugh with David as he was taking these towels in from the pool.

After an amazing day snorkeling, we were all in high spirits for dinner.

The appetizer at dinner was amazing; coconut, carrot, and ginger soup.  The main course was a very delicious shrimp, mushroom, and bacon over penne pasta.  We had doughnut a la mode with bananas and caramel sauce for dessert – awesome! 

After dinner we got some coffee and went out to the pool to watch Danika swim.  Jason went back to the room as he wasn’t feeling that well.  The view from the pool out to sea is always beautiful, but so is the view back towards the restaurant.  David took this photo and it really gives you the feel of the place.

We went to the gift shop to get David a Dive Belize t-shirt with a spotted eagle ray on the back – so cool!  Then we went back to the pool to watch Danika and ended up laying back and watching the stars.  There was a perfect Big Dipper and it looked so much closer than it does in Montana.  It made me smile because Big Dipper is the name of the boat we took out snorkeling today.  

Then it started to rain slow big drops so we decided to head in and call it a night.  Danika wanted to snuggle on our big king sized bed.  David was taking a shower and Jason reading, so we started singing all of the songs from Sound of Music.  It was so much fun.  What a great day, We couldn't have asked for a better one!  I finally feel like I am truly relaxing.