The adventure begins

We are back home, and Aubrey got all our pictures uploaded last night.  I took a quick look through them and grabbed a few to get this blogging started.  In short, our trip was incredible.  Even with 7 kids I would do it all again.  I love Belize, and I especially love how much our kids fell in love with the country as well.

We left home on August 18th for the exciting red-eye flight to Atlanta.  As Mark and I had been to Belize before, we knew a bit about what we needed to pack, and what not to pack.  What we knew we needed was food.  Snack food.  When 9 people go out to eat, that can add up even in a 3rd world country.  We figured that if we could at least have breakfast and snacks at our hotel every day, that would save a lot of money.  So each person had a large suitcase, and each suitcase weighed precisely 50 pounds.  Our clothes took up about 1/4 of each suitcase.  The rest of the space and weight was crackers, rice krispie treats, granola bars, waffle mix, a waffle iron, an electric tea kettle, instant oatmeal, cookies, nuts, beef jerky, maple syrup, oil, mixing bowls and measuring spoons, Gatorade powder, Crystal Light powder, powdered milk, paper plates, bowls, cups, spoons, forks, paper towels, baby wipes, sunscreen, bug spray.  I weighed and packed until each suitcase was at it's maximum.


After an hour delay getting off the ground, our flight took of for the 4.5 hour trip to Atlanta.  7 kids and no sleep on the plane.  But they sat still and were happy to be going to Belize, so there wasn't any trouble.  We got to Atlanta and had some breakfast at the airport, and then started the 3 hour flight to Belize.  You know that I love clouds, and I can tell you I have never seen such beautiful clouds as we saw in the sky that day.  Tropical storm Harvey was stunning.  Big fluffy clouds miles and miles high.  Actually, it was like a cloud poster (you know I had one on my wall as a kid, right?) where you can see every possible type of cloud all at once.

The Belize City airport is small, and when your plane lands it just parks on the tarmac and they wheel some stairs up to the plane.  It's awesome.  When you step off the plane in Belize, the air takes your breath away.  Literally.  The wave of heat and humidity just overcomes you.  We then took 2 taxis to our hotel.  Normally when you load up the trunk of a car, you close the trunk, or at least secure it if what is in the trunk doesn't quite fit.  9 large suitcases did not exactly fit in the trunks of 2 Crown Victorias, but what did that matter?  We were in Belize.  They just piled the bags in and took off with the trunks open.

Also in Belize, there are no lanes or traffic lights.  It's insanity.  Our two taxis were trying to pass each other the whole way to the hotel.  If there is a vehicle in front of you, the car you are in must try to pass it. I believe that is the unwritten law.  Blind corners, hills, curves.  Doesn't matter.  Just pass the car in front of you at all costs.

We stayed at the Best Western Biltmore Plaza.  It had a nice pool, and a decent restaurant.  Belize City is not the place you want to be out exploring, to put in mildly.  But it is a good base for a few mainland adventures.  We stayed at the hotel, swam and ate dinner there.  We were all very tired and headed to bed around 8:00.  We thought we were going cave tubing at Jaguar Paw in the morning.

But Tropical Storm Harvey changed our plans.  It rained probably 3 inches that morning, which was enough to close the park due to dangerous river levels.  We had hooked up with David of cavetubingrus.com for both cave tubing and Lamanai.  He told us that we could not go tubing, but I told him that we were from Oregon and rain didn't bother us and surely there was something else we could do.  So he worked some magic and switched our Lamanai trip to Saturday.  We went DURING the tropical storm.  Rain like I have never seen--and I have seen a lot of rain!  I'll get to posting about Lamanai here shortly.