Ok before I get into this post I want to update on walk distances since I’ve been forgetting to do that. On the week of the 9th we walked 43.3 miles and the week of the 16th 44.2 miles.

Ok so on saturday we really wanted to go swimming and were told that 6 miles down the road was a place called Bullet Tree Road and you could go swimming in the river there and there were some water falls. Hearing that we made plans to get up and get down there as soon as we could so we could spend the whole day. So we got into town and caught a cab out there because we still werent exactly sure how to get there and it was only 2 bucks. Turns out my definition of waterfall and Belizean definition of waterfall two entirely different things. To them, if water falls at all, its a water fall. Essentially it was a river with a few little rapids here and there. Regardless of the lack of water fall we all still had a lot of fun swimmin in the river. After we had our fill of swimming and the sun was starting to go down we decided to head back into town.

We spent the night in town hanging out with friends at a couple different bars and decided to settle to our favorite spot with the free pool tables. When we were there around 12ish a friend got a call from the archeology dept. A couple streets over they were digging out a drain pipe and replacing it with a larger one when they found a bunch of Mayan artifacts, so he had to go help with that.

That night we also talked to a couple people to find out where we could find some real waterfalls at and found there was another place about 4 miles away called Crystal Ray Falls so we made plans to go out there on Sunday.

Sunday morning we got up and headed into town to get some food and then catch a cab to Crystal Ray. As I said before, Sundays suck here. Its literally a ghost town to the point that you can walk a few blocks in town without seeing another person. Needless to say finding food is pretty hard unless you want Chinese food. Luckily we found a nice little stand and got some food there and then got some fruit from the market. 10 bananas and 5 oranges for $1 US :) Another cool thing they do down here that I may have mentioned before is that most fruit (anything citrus or juicy) is sold with a bag of salt with chopped habaneros in it. Now I’ve done the whole salt on watermelon or orange thing before but never salt and pepper. Its amazing. Actually I’m getting pretty addicted to hot stuff in general. I put habaneros on essentially everything I eat now, it just doesn’t taste right without it.

Anywho, after we got food we got a taxi to Crystal Ray Falls. It was a nice little ride through the mountain to get there. Our cab driver let us off by the falls and left us with his number in case we needed a ride back later.

These falls were actually falls but still not what I think of when I think waterfall. Still this little place was beautiful. It was a creek that ran down over limestone(creating really nice rock formations) and into another larger river. The area you swam in was a circular swimming hole at the bottom of the rocks. There were a couple places to jump in from too which was awesome. The main place everyone jumped in at was probably a little over 15 feet. As far as jumps to water go it was pretty safe, there was only one rock to avoid but as long as you ran before jumping it was easily cleared. I never really jumped off anything high into water before so this was quite fun for me. The first time jumping was a bit harder to work up the nerve to jump but after you do that first time and realize how simple it is, you just want to keep jumping.

I recorded some video of Alex and Leland(our other room mate) jumping but didnt get any of me. For me I was trying to attach the camera to myself so that it would film the jump itself but that didnt exactly go as planned. I’ll just have to go back and try again :P

After we were done swimming we started our walk back to town deciding it just wasnt worth the cab fair especially with it so close. Yea it was only 4 miles but it sucked because….well… we live in the mountains. Its not fun walking straight up a hill for close to a mile. It would figure though that after the road got flat and we were at the last quarter of our walk that someone with a truck would come by and offer us a ride. Still, you dont turn down a free ride  so we all hoped in the back of the truck and rode the rest of the way like that. (I dont know what it is, but there is just something inherently fun about riding in the back of a pick up).

We decided to have a slower night that night because how much we did during the weekend and we were all tired so we just went back to the house and played dominos(another game I will conquer before leaving Belize) for the night.

Here are some pictures from last week. Havent been able to take any recently due to lack of batteries but I’ll probably be getting some soon.

Spider

http://i.imgur.com/jWaGb.jpg

Our first encounter with a venomous snake.

http://i.imgur.com/qUmkQ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CrKWM.jpg

That venomous snakes last encounter with us

http://i.imgur.com/LoRrQ.jpg

Cahal Pech

http://i.imgur.com/ajWvk.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/5ytDQ.jpg

A view of the town from the road by Cahal Pech

http://i.imgur.com/ZhqTa.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2El8q.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/IqRs7.jpg

Videos from Crystal Ray Falls (and hopefully some of our kayaking trip depending on if they upload in time or not.)

http://s488.photobucket.com/albums/rr250/Uberbatman/unBELIZEable/

not much to say today or rather not much time to say stuff. A few things I’ve been meaning to post but havent are some common things here but out of the ordinary for us back home. For example, car insurance is crazy different down here. Here you don’t have personal insurance but rather you buy insurance on a car in 1-10 year increments. So if say, I buy a car and get 5 year insurance on it and then say decide after 2 years to sell that car. You buying said car from me would automatically have insurance on that vehicle for the next three years. Its a pretty awesome system imo.

Something that is going to take a while to get used to is Sundays. EVERYTHING closes on sunday down here because the whole sabbath thing. The only places still open are chinese places. And there are a LOT of chinese places down here. Actually every single super market down here (there are like 7 in my town) is owned by chinese people.

Ah well i got to go handle some shit with my visa.

two quick pictures, a wicked big spider and a moth
http://i.imgur.com/l8KPv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/G9vW2.jpg

      So I suppose it goes without surprise that pretty much anywhere you go to school its going to be a disorganized mess. Galen is no exception. They have this big thing here where any information about ongoings at the school or things from class will be sent to your Galen email (like most schools do) Thing is Galen has yet to give any of us international students an email, but keep stressing to us how friggin important it is to check the email >_<. Class schedules are pretty screwed up too and no one really seems to have any clue as to what is actually going on. But oh well I guess its just one of those things ya got to deal with. Honestly though, I dont care much I’m not so much down here for the school as I am the overall Belizean experience, and in that regard I can’t complain about much.

    Last night Alex and I went into town to meet up with a couple of the other international kids and grab a few drinks ($2 rum and cokes ^_^) when we were at the one bar we met a kid who had just flown into Belize a couple hours earlier from Hawaii and he will be staying down here for 2 months. We ended up hanging out with him for the rest of the night as well and he may end up renting a room in our house once our other roommate moves out.

   I also decided to start posting weekly how many miles I’m walking as a way of keeping track of it. So for the week of Jan 2nd-Jan 8th we walked 41.6 miles.  I know there were other things I wanted to tell you guys about when I got by a computer but now that I’m here  I can’t seem to remember most of it lol. Oh well always have next post. Pics after the break

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January 2nd
Flew out of Philadelphia airport and landed in Houston Texas. From there we got on another plane to Belize. On the plane we met a really nice guy named Leo who is a native to Belize but was going to school in California. On the ride down we asked him all kinds of different questions about the country, where to go, what to see and do and he was extremely helpful to us. When we arrived in Belize City we were going to have to take a taxi to the bus terminal and then from there, a bus to San Ignasio where we would be staying. But since Leo was getting picked up from the airport by his parents and they were going toward San Ignasio anyway offered to take us most of the way with them. On the way to our destination we stopped at an outside restaurant and got some food. After we left there they drove us to the bus terminal that was 20min outside San Ignasio. Before parting ways we got Leo and his brothers number so we could arrange some time to hang out and go camping or something.

While waiting for the bus to come I decided to go up to someone at a nearby building and ask him how often the bus normally comes. He told us usually 20 minutes but today it was running behind so we just sat around and talked to him for a while. After a while and no bus a taxi came by and asked us we’d like a ride to San Ignasio for $5 Belize ($2.50 US) each. Sold. There was also another couple in the taxi from Australia who travels the world to developing countries to help farming. The taxi dropped them off first on the way and then took us the rest of the way. We learned his name was Ramos and he was a native to Gautamala who moved here 25 years ago and decided to stay because of family, really nice guy and we had some good conversation on the drive. When we left he gave us his number and told us if we ever need a ride anywhere just give me a call and I’ll come pick you up and take you wherever.

Before he left we asked to use his phone to call Marvin (the guy we’re renting our house from) and arrange for him to come pick us up. The phone was kind of breaking up and I could barely hear what Marvin was saying but it sounded like he said he’d be there shortly and then the call disconnected. I thanked Ramos anyway and just figured ok whatever if he doesnt come in a while we’ll just find another phone to call him on. Ramos then left to drive some more people around. 20Min or so later he came back to tell us Marvin had called him back and wanted to let us know he’d be by shortly to get us. 5 hours in the country and we’ve already met more nice people than in America. Seriously every person we’ve encountered so far has just been extremely helpful and friendly in every way possible. You feel so welcomed here unlike at home.

After a short bit we met up with Marvin and hopped in another taxi to take to the house (which is walking distance from the middle of town but up a giant hill so taxi was easier with all our crap.) When we got to the house we were both blown away. We were expecting a big house but seriously nothing like this, its huge. Marvin showed us around the house and to our room. We then hung out on the balcony for the night just enjoying the amazing view and all getting to know each other. At around 7ish Alex and I decided to call it a night since we were so exhausted from the plane ride and lack of sleep from the previous day. So we got into bed and were layin there about to fall asleep when we saw this huge black shape flying around….. first thing to cross both our minds was awwww shittttt there’s a big ol bat in the room. I decided to get out of bed and check out what it was with a light. Turns out it was a ginormous moth that was bigger than my hand. We also had a cool little lizard come and join us that night. So of all things to get into the room, we made out well.

Jan 3rd
We woke up early since we went to bed so damn early the night before. Not wanting to wake anyone else up we decided to go for a walk and explore the Mayan ruins behind the house. Marvin had told us the night before it was just down the trail behind the house but that was it. So we decided to go on a little adventure. We found the ruins without much trouble at all. Walking around them was amazing, especially since no one else was there aside from us. The whole time I couldnt help but think, holy shit….this is in my back yard….. we decided to head back after a bit since we were both starting to get really hungry. When we got back to the house we found Marvin and Kinki our other roommate both awake. Kinki said he was going into town to catch a bus so he’d walk with us to show us the way into town and where to eat. We ended up eating a little place called Pops. I got a vegetable omelet with a side of two waffles and fruit and Alex got Rancheros with a side of Fried Jacks. The food was amazing. And the fruit….my god…. going down here I assumed I’d be eating some awesome fruit but I didnt really think about the common stuff back home like bananas or oranges. Eating a truly fresh banana was like trying a new fruit for the first time, just so amazing tasting, even star fruits which I normally consider to be pretty bland were amazing. We were both stuffed after the meal and it only ended up costing 14 dollars and we were ordering the more expensive stuff on the menu. You could easily get a really good filling meal there for less than 5 bucks.

After breakfast we decided to explore the town a bit and just walked around to various stores. We both got a cool little bracelet with a hand carved stone representing the symbol from the Mayan calendar for the month we were born in. From there we bought some stuff we needed for the house like hangers and outside the store there was someone selling passion fruit ice cream of 50 cents. I mean really who could pass that up? And it like everything else we’ve encountered so far, was amazing. From there we decided to walk down to the river and relax. We saw some fish in the river and fed them some of the left over fried jacks from breakfast. We also saw a really cool caterpillar and a colony of leaf cutter ants. We then decided to walk back to the house and do some stuff around here and I decided to sit down and write this lovely little thing. More to come in the future though I’m not sure how detailed I’ll be through out all this since this took me a good 20 min to remember/write but there will be plenty of pictures. Now we’re both hungry again so back to town to find some more awesome food.

(ok so im going to try and keep everyone posted on what we’re doing down there but i quickly realized there is no way in hell i’ll be able to write anywhere near that amount of detail in future posts because well theres is just too much cool shit goin on to write about it all.)