Belize continued

Well, it's been a long time since I was actually in Belize but here goes.

San Ignacio: we arrived in San Ignacio early afternoon and were only planning on staying one night so we wanted to try and find something to do soon after finding a Hotel. We saw a town called Bullet Tree Falls on the map only 5km from San Ignacio. It sounded promising (and we'd been looking forward to swimming and cliff jumping for a while). When we arrived at Bullet Tree Falls we found a river, and no falls. Honestly, who names a town after Falls, when they are non-existent...was that person blind? Fortunately, we spotted a rope swing on the edge of the river and it actually worked! We stayed and goofed on the swing for about an hour before catching a Taxi back. Tons of fun, and well worth the money for the Taxi's. That night we found an Indian restaurant...awesome.

Placencia: Our second and only other stay in Belize. We brought a tent along (advice from last years volunteers) and camped on the beach (yes we had to pay) for 3 nights. We couldn't beat the scenery, and camping on the beach sounded great but it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Yes, we had the best location for our lodging but sand isn't as soft as you may think (and it gets lots of lumps in it), and the sand flies were merciless, and it happened to rain two of the 3 nights. O well, we still had a good time. We met some other travelers from England and went on a nature hike and river tubing trip with them in the Cockscomb Basin which was a lot of fun. unfortunately we didn't see and jaguars.

We left Placencia on the 10am water Taxi and decided to try and make it back to Esquipulas in one shot...we arrived back to the monastery at 10pm completely exhausted (traveling is tiring...especially when it goes boat, public bus, boat, public bus, public bus with only a few chips and peanuts for food). It goes without saying that I slept well that night and did not wake up for prayer at 6am (or breakfast for that matter).