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.