Hello? Oh! Hi! It's been two and a half years since I posted. I know, I know, I was just as surprised as you are that my blog still even exists. But, it does! I find myself with a free day on a work trip in sunny San Diego. It is too hot and bright for me to want to go for a run right now. I thought I would spend an hour updating you fine people on the latest of our super adventures.
Since I last posted, Mike (now my husband! Eee!) and I have done quite a bit of exploring. We spent two weeks in Spain, eight days in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, ten days of the Big Island of Hawaii and nine days in Belize. I wish I had the time and motivation (ok, mostly the motivation) to update the blog for all of these trips. But, let's be honest, I am super long-winded and no one has the time to read all of that.
So... BELIZE! Belize has been on my bucket list since I read they have whale shark diving. When I was young my grandmother took me to an IMAX film about sharks. I was fascinated. People could swim with whale sharks, the huge whale-like fish that looked like dinosaurs. I knew I wanted that experience. When we went to Cabo over Christmas, Mike and I snorkeled with whale sharks in the Sea of Cortez. It exceeded all of my expectations. I knew nothing else about Belize, but it continued to be on my bucket list. When our first anniversary was looming, we decided that we wanted to do something exciting to celebrate. Diving in Belize ended up being that something. I learned they have the second largest barrier reef in the world, along with world-class diving.
We spent four days on Caye Caulker, a tiny island in the Caribbean 45 minutes by water taxi outside of Belize City. The island has a main dirt road along the beach with all sorts of restaurants and shops owned and operated by the most friendly and laid back people in the world. We were there to dive. I booked three days of diving with Frenchie's Dive Shop which happened to be right across the street from the condo we rented. The condo was a cute studio on the ground floor. The roof had a lanai and hammocks that overlooked the turquoise water. We spent quite a bit of time up there between dives and dinners relaxing in the hammocks.
Our first day of diving was the Esmeralda site just outside of San Pedro on Ambergis Caye. My first peek into the water revealed a world teeming with schools of silver and blue fish, curious nurse sharks and seemingly unlimited visibility. The nurse sharks were like puppy dogs swimming around us and following us throughout the dive. They wondered what we were up to and never showed a moment of being dangerous. I couldn't believe the diversity of life under the water. The reefs were pristine. The Belizeans care very much about their country and want it to stay nice.
The next day was another bucket list item:
Diving the Great Blue Hole. We had to be at the dive shop at 530AM for our trip to the Blue Hole. There were 10 divers and 3 dive masters on this trip. The sunrise was beautiful over the dive shack. The Blue Hole is two hours away and the ride was really rough. We saw flying fish escaping from our boat. Cool! They can glide a long way. The first dive was at the Blue Hole. We were the only boat there. Yay! I was glad to be advanced open water so I could go to the real depth. The dive was 28 minutes with a deepest depth of 139 feet. Whoa! Mike was fine. I got a little narc’ed which made me panicky. I found someone to focus on and I was ok. It was a quick drop down down down to 130 feet. The water around us grew darker. Not dark, just darker. Colors don’t exist down there so everything is grayscale. Five beautiful silver reef sharks swam underneath us as we swam among huge stalactites hanging in the darkness from a fallen sea cavern. It was amazing! The dive was very surreal. The more I think about it, the wilder the whole experience seems. It was incredible, peaceful, and unique. I was reminded of the cathedrals we visited in Spain. We were only down there a few minutes then came up slowly to 45 feet then 30 feet. At 30 feet there was a sandy coral area with a few fish. We saw a turtle who was missing a leg. It was a short, but memorable dive. Both of us had plenty of air left.
The water was so warm at 85 degrees that I ditched my wetsuit for the rest of the trip. The rest of the dives were amazing upon amazing. We saw lionfish, snapper, triggers, groupers, blue fish galore, big silver fish. A school of silver and yellow snappers swam with us for a while. Huge schools of blue fish swirled around us. We saw harlequin shrimp, an enormous crabs, huge green tube coral, four eagle rays which are dark with white spots, a couple of sting rays, and octopuses (octopi?). We also saw a whole wall of lobster, big swimming eels that followed us, shrimp, nudis, flamingo tongue snails, crab, and a turtle right at the end. The coral was exceptional. There were large plant like corals? Or were they plants? I’m not sure.
On the last evening in the Cayes, we grabbed flashlights and met Jose, our dive master, at the Split in the island (caused by a hurricane). He took us out to the mangroves on the opposite side of the island to see the bioluminescence and look for crocodiles. We didn’t find any crocs, but the bioluminescence was gorgeous! It looked like glitter in the water. There was a lightning storm in the background one direction and stars in the other.
I was really sad to leave Caye Caulker, but we had booked 3 nights in the jungle at a resort. We took the water taxi (and a regular taxi) to the bus station where we caught the G Line Express bus to the driveway of
Caves Branch outside of Belmopan. The bus broke down three times on the way there, but we made it and saw a lot of countryside.
We were immediately impressed with Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch. It’s a gorgeous outdoor resort in the jungle. The grounds are well kept, but not manicured. It was lush and beautiful. We were upgraded to a bungalow. It had a huge mural of leaf cutter ants and a toucan painted on one wall. The other walls were windows covered only by screens and open to the elements. We had a beautiful bathroom with an outdoor private shower. That was awesome! A king bed dominated the room. There is no wifi, cell phone service, TV or air conditioning on the property. A huge ceiling fan kept us very comfortable. After check in, we wandered the botanical gardens. Caves Branch has some of the most active orchid gardens anywhere. They were not blooming since it was out of season, but totally wonderful to see all of the biodiversity anyway.
Our tour for the first day was the River Caves. The tour started with a bus ride through an orange orchard to the river. The orchard had a blight they were trying to combat so a lot of the trees were dying. We paddled our tubes upstream to the mouth of a cave. Inside we explored a bunch of different chambers with beautiful formations, a few Mayan pottery and carvings, and a shrine to a fertility goddess. There were crickets, scorpion spiders, fruit bats, insect bats and crawfish. We had lunch inside. We had paddled in further along the way, which meant a long float out. Halfway back they made us turn off our lights. It was pitch black. Everyone was getting further and further away. I turned on my light and realized I was stuck on something. Whoops.
After the tour we got cleaned up and went to a cheese tasting at the resort. Caves Branch makes 12 different unpasteurized cheeses onsite from local cows. We tried seven of the cheeses and listened as they explained the processes of making and aging cheese. They also make all of the soap used on the resort.
The next day was the tour we came to this resort for. After breakfast we caught our bus to the Cave Waterfalls tour. There were just four of us on the tour plus two guides. We had to wear long pants and boots. This was a different cave system in the same orchard. It’s all part of the Caves Branch property. Our guide carried a machete. We walked about 1-1.5 km into the jungle to the mouth of a cave. Inside we saw bats and an opossum. We hiked, crawled, climbed, ducked, and swam upriver through incredible huge caverns with tons of amazing formations. Mike’s favorite were the flow formations which had different levels of ponds. They were beautiful.
We climbed six waterfalls and swam in the pool of a seventh. The water level was lower than usual. Then we turned around and jumped off all of the waterfalls. The largest was about 15 feet, but felt higher. We had lunch inside the cave on a big flat rock. One guide was behind us, but somehow met us there with most of the food already spread out. It seemed like the walk out was really quick, probably because we weren’t taking pictures of everything.
We decided to do one last tour with them and left our stuff at the front desk. Today’s adventure was the Black Hole Drop. It sounded more intense than it was. We joined with an Irish couple from the Sleeping Giant resort nearby. The tour was a hike through the jungle, a rappel into a sinkhole, lunch, and a hike back out. One the way in, we saw a bunch of frogs, an awesome lizard that looked just like a leaf, and some leaf-cutter ants. The rappel was more of a belay which was only okay because it allowed me to spend time looking at the amazing caves on either side of the sinkhole I was dropping into. Beautiful jungle filled the middle. Our guide let us explore the entrance of one of the caves and gave us some folklore surrounding it. I can’t describe how massive the entrance of the larger cave was. It was hundreds of feet up and down, stadium sized? I don’t know. HUGE! The resort does overnight cave explorations here. Cool! The climb out took less time, but still had some cool things. We saw a tarantula.
Our last night was spent in Belize City at a B&B. It wasn't much to write home about. I think it might have been worth it to stay at Caves Branch one more night and pay for them to drive us instead. All in all, we had the most amazing trip. We spent a total of nine days in that country. I could live there. It's a wonderful, friendly, beautiful, lush country.
See? That wasn't so hard, was it. Oh, it's really long. Yeah, that's why I've been remiss lately. I'll try harder to make these less verbose, but when there is JUST SO MUCH to share... *sigh*
This week my partner in crime and I stayed at Clear Lake Butte Lookout outside of Government Camp, Oregon. There are about 2000 active fire lookouts in the US. Of those, many can be rented in the off season when they aren't being used. Because of how unique they are and the amazing views they offer, booking is extremely hard. Dates become available six months ahead of time. These dates are almost immediately snatched up. I was lucky and found two days together, probably because of the poor timing. We stayed the 6-8 of January which were Wednesday and Thursday nights. That's right, after two weeks off for Christmas, I went back to work for two days before taking off again. My boss was remarkably not upset about it.
Using the GPS on my phone, which said we were on the right track, we followed directions until we clearly weren't going to find a road. Then instead of trying to maintain this route, we just aimed for the lookout. Somehow this worked out for us. We wandered through a couple of miles of deep, untouched snow. The huge evergreen trees were sagging under the weight of the snow on their branches. It was silent, beautiful and unique. Mike did most of the trail breaking up the side of the mountain. He's kind of amazing like that. By the time we found the lookout, the sun had just set. It had taken us about 3.25 hours to walk in.
The lookout station consisted of three buildings: the lookout itself, a wood shed, and an outhouse. The lookout is 40' tall and maybe 15 feet square. Inside are a kitchenette, a desk, a wood stove, drawers and a bed, with windows making up all the walls. The views were astounding! We could see Mount Hood majestically towering through the clouds, two beautiful alpine lakes, thousands of acres of trees and snow. Once Mike had the fire roaring, the building warmed up very fast and stayed as warm as we let it (which was a bit too warm the first night). There are games, puzzles, cards and magazines stocked in the tower. Solar panels power a single overhead bulb and a mini-fridge. I cooked smoked salmon chowder for dinner and we played Phase 10 before bed.
When we returned to the lookout, Mike chopped enough wood to ensure the next couple of guests would be well-stocked. We watched the sun set over Timothy Lake. The snow dusted trees glowed in the light. It was gorgeous! Seriously, look at the picture below!!!I made turkey and sweet potato chili for dinner. Before bed, we carefully navigated the icy steps to the ground and stargazed. Without light pollution, the sky was clear. We could see a billion stars and the dusting of the Milky Way. Mike let the fire die during the night so he could clean out the ashes in the morning. It was still around 60 when we awoke.
