Thursday, March 22, 2007

Belize

Hi from Belize! I'm on the island of Caye Caulker, a famous snorkeling and diving destination. People speak English here, mon, as well as Spanish, and it's a cool crazy mix of all races of people. They use their own English here, a road sign I saw, for example, read, "STOP SPITE WI RUN, DI HEAD TAX MONEY." Any guesses as to what that means? Everything costs a whopping lot of money here, man alive. (Mon alive?) Parental note: it is safe and full of tourists.

Getting back to things, on Monday I crossed the border into Guatemala from Mexico on a 4 person-capacity wooden boat across a silty and eddying river, then boarded a rickety school bus and got jolted around on a dirt road for 4 hours to Flores (this all from a travel agency!). It was hilarious. I stayed 2 nights, just enough time to check out the jungle-enshrouded ruins at Tikal and leave. I will be back to Guatemala during Easter weekend, yippee!

The second biggest coral reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia) is here near Belize and Honduras. Today I casually booked a snorkeling excursion without really knowing what I'd see, and ended up swimming with sharks!!! Parental note: of course, harmless ones. The boat people then threw a bit of fish meat into the water and within seconds I was surrounded by about 15 meter-long stingrays!! (15 of them---they weren't fifteen meters long). I took lots of pics with my nifty underwater camera (Thanks Dad!).

Saturday I'm off to the island of Utila in Honduras for about a week. More beaches, tourists and coral reef, but cheaper. Hopefully they'll have internet.

By the way, the people of Belize have asked me to tell you, the people of America and other countries, to come to Belize. Tourism has dropped lately, probably due to global warming and people staying home, who knows. It's a beautiful country, so I will spread the word, mon.

7 comments:

Kanabanana said...

Hola, bella, de EspaƱa.
Sounds having a great time! The underwater camera! That´s I wanted a lot on the beautiful beachs and islands in Brazil! Watch out the stinglays! you know what happened to the Aussie Steven. Anyway after more than 1 month, I updated my English blog too with a bit of photos. Check out if you have time. http://sambaloo.blogspot.com/ Chao.

Anonymous said...

Shannen~
Being you are chillin in Belize you can tell the locals that I will be visiting there! My uncle's good friend owns a time share there and has invited my entire family to stay! We just need to pick a year. It's a bummer that things are expensive, perhaps that is why tourism is down? Or perhaps we are all cheap-stakes. Karl and Nali send their hellos. In fact as I am writing this message Nali's wet beard smeared my pants. Lovely! Oh well, take care, be safe!
Lura

Shannen said...

*Kanabanana*

Spain, WOW!! I can't wait to read all about it! In English too, yippee!! (I'm lazy, ha ha) Are you speaking Portunhol to everyone now?
They said stingrays aren't so dangerous, and that Steve's accident was really unusual. Poor Steve.


*Lura*

A timeshare in Belize?? Wow you are so lucky!!! Do you know where? I'm very excited for you, hope you get that year decided soon! When I say Belize is expensive, it's about the same price as the US, which is expensive for Latin America (and cheap-skate backpackers like me).

Say HI back to Karl and slobbery Nali---I bet she's gotten HUGE by now!

Anonymous said...

My English seem like Belize language hehehe, You know, I am practicing my self.
Urgent: Stop the Global Warming!!!

Anonymous said...

Glad you found a new sport that you love! Although I still feel that I'm invinceable, diving scares me. I won't bother mentioning that shrimp and other crustaceans creep me out too! I'll stick to surfing so that I can pretend that they aren't there. hehehe

sister Sam

Shannen said...

*Sis*

There are lots and lots of creepy swimmies under you when you surf, the least you could do is go under and check them out! ha ha Last night I did a night dive and there were all these beady red eyes staring at me, they were red shrimp! When we came back to the boat, there were these glowing jellyfish all over the place---first thought, cool! jellyfish! Second thought, hey, aren't they dangerou---OW! OW! OW!!!!!

Anonymous said...

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