Day 5 - Belize City, Belize

 As we were up at the crack of dawn to be in the theater for a 6:45 show time, we got to follow this ship into the bay.  Today's shore excursions is a tendered situation. What this means is that there is no dock so we are moored in the bay and lots of little boats come and get us.  as we had tours we had priority to get off the boat (this is a good thing!)

 Butch and the girls waiting (yeah, yeah, yeah, it's blurry, but you can see them two rows up)

 this is the first picture I thought to take, it is right after w e had pushed off and another boat had already slipped in to take our place beside the cruise line.  Our cabin is on the opposite side of the boat, however, if it were on this side it would be on the 2nd row up - 2nd from the front - two port holes (don't worry, you'll see this again from another port!)

 you can see that "next boat" already snug up against the cruise ship, they weren't wasting any time getting us to shore to spend money!

 The next boat over is a Norwegian cruise line.

 the NEXT one over is the Carnival Line we followed in :)

 Here is a comparison of all three, ours is the tiny one to the right.  It's small, but I liked that it was smaller :)

we waited inside the shops at the doc for a few minues, then we were off into our bus to go to our tour.

 Fun road signs.  :)

 I don't know why, but I like cemeteries.  These have crypts, but we were told that the people were actually buried under ground and the concrete crypts were just there to ensure no-one was buried on top of you.  This was the largest cemetery in Belize City from what he was saying, it was only about two blocks long... and not very wide... I highly doubt it was the biggest... it was definitely not well kept!

 The mountain in the distance was also said to be the highest peak.  It appears to be a man laying down and the nose is the highest peak.  The top of the head of the "sleeping giant" is to the right and you can barely see more mountain over the lady's head in the seat.  There was never a good chance to get a better picture.

 We went out about 30 miles on a paved road that had issues as it was, then on to dirt road for what he said was 6 miles, but sitting where we were on a school but it sure seamed like more than that... oh, and they were ALL blue Bird buses for those from Fort Valley :)

 THIS is what we have to go up first... yep... STEEP

 you can see the cut in the rock going up from left to right... nice steep hill to climb up!

 lots of Tarzan vines just wrapping the trees and Bougainvillea leaves bigger than my head!!

I didn't take any pictures of the first "cave" as it wasn't really a cave, but a natural bridge type of a pass through.  We walked through that and down through the jungle into the next very LARGE cave called Jaguar cave. There was a very cool piece of rock in them middle of it that had the shape of an open mouthed cat.. really, stalagmites were the teeth and everything.  VERY cool piece of rock.  BIG too - as in taller than 10' in the middle of it and about 10' or batter long... the shadow it cast looked just like a hissing cat.

The light at the end of the tunnel!

 A cute little frog in the cave...

 there are bats in this picture flitting too and fro... not sure if you can pick them out or not...  that was the last of the walking caves.  We then walked by the river for a bit, then into the tubes... refreshing is right.  The temperature of the water was about 70 degrees  NOT bad after the hot walk through the jungle!

 our tour guide Axel

 The LAST sunlight....

 whoops, one last peek from a side cave after we floated in... yeah it's blurry, but I loved the GREEN of it...

 goodbye light!!! (over my shoulder)

 We floated through the caves for about 10 minutes... not nearly long enough for me.  I did enjoy it.  There wasn't anything really to see in the caves.  There was a lot of debris stuck in holes at the top, so you know when it rains they fill to the very top of them!  That would be a LOT of water for sure!

 We stopped at the little restaurant/shop area to have lunch of chicken, slaw and rice and beans.  It was very tasty and I tried their hot sauce.  VERY good sauce.  The local wine, not so much. It was made from a palm nut that was like a coconut (it was a 12% alcohol set up.. YIKES!  yeah, it was like cough syrup.  I didn't get the wine... they really liked it.  Cohune nut was the nut in question.  Very strong stuff.

 What you may be able to make out in this picture is the BRIDGE.  it was a wooden slat bridge with no rails and looking a bit rugged shall we say?

Then back to the ship!!

Oh, and the most important thing to take from this?  I tasted all of the jungle things that Axel tossed my way, Geranium leaves, stems and such that we were told we could eat to survive in the jungle. What not to touch.  I also ate a termite.  Yes Folks I ate a termite.  Tasted like the sap smelled off of the one tree used to produce bug spray... not so hot... but I ate one.

 Belize City is by the diver to the right... where we went was by the tapir (bray animal in the middle)

we ate lunch where the two rivers meet by the tapirs back leg and floated down the river to the right of that meeting river.  Very cool, eh?

Day 4 - Roatan Honduras

Up early... woke up to a change in waves is all I can think caused it.  Early is 5;30 am.  The day prior was 6:30 and with the time change it was about the same.  Sigh..

Bright lights out he window!  Ok, so it's just sunshine!

coming into Roatan

waiting in the madhouse of shore excursions

 Full theater waiting on shore excursions.

 We are thrilled, can't you tell?

 Walking down four flights of stairs to the exit on deck 1 (moooooo)

 On the dive boat waiting to go out on our dives

 The resort across from us looked GREAT!!

Diving was great too!  First dive was a wreck dive in about 100' of water however I think we maxed out at 70 some odd feet.  There were a lot of sea fans and beautiful fish everywhere.  Lots of LARGE puffers too.

There was a huge pod of dolphins the captain tried to put us on top fo to see while snorkling.  I was at the back of the line to jump in and was watching them from the boat and got to see them split around everyone in the water - why on earth would they come near 15 splashing folks in the water???  they had calves in with them too, so they were protective of the babies.  I did get to see two large ones jumping about two or three boat lengths back from us, that was so cool to see in the wild!

the folks in the water got to see some of them swimming below them with the calves, I was in the boat watching the whole pod go by and saw a lot of the babies too.  I never did jump in!

We motored back to the dive shop to change tanks and wait out our surface interval.  Liz and I got a snack before heading back out.

Dive two was a shallower dive.  There were about 5 to 6 turtles on this dive.  One very big mature one was munching on coral and we got within 5 feet of him while he was eating.  Very cool, he didn't even stop munching to look at us twice :)

The folks from our tour were in a big hurry to get back to the bato area.  NO time to shower and change :(

Oh, well, we wandered around the port area and piked up souvenirs and took a few more picutres.

I bought the ship package for all photos and have been begin the kids to take every picture they see.  they're not doing as well as I hopeed, but we have a good stack of pictures so far

Dinner was great with Thai Shrimp and escargot  Yes, we all had some.  Basically garlic flavored mushroom texture.  not horrible.

Tonight we have to rest up because tomorrow is Belize and 6:45 am show time for Butch and the girls.  7;45 for Sally and I, however we're all in the same rooms, so I'm sure we'll all be up at the crack of dawn for this one :)

Day 3 - day at sea

Today was a day at sea and a lot of list souls running around the boat looking for others. You would think on a semi tiny boat it would be easy to find people.



I see a blue cactus ;)


I think I like this ;)

Butch, Sally and me at the front of the boat enjoying the day


These are apparently for the trapeze folks.

Yeah,


Dinner with the girls is always entertaining ;)





Both the girls cabin and ours had an Elephant however OURS has sunglasses (only cause mine were on the night stand)


Along with day threes itinerary. We will most likely miss the daytime activities as we will be out on exclusions.

Day 2 of vacation

We had a nice breakfast and loaded up to head to the cruise.  Talk about a HORRIBLE goat rope with zero instructions or hint on what you're supposed to be doing.  Really ZERO.  Tossed off a shuttle and todld to get out of the road then nada.  nothing but "Sir, you can't take your luggage in there"  when you ask the same person where are you supposed to take it they say NOTHING.  really??  I guess I'll have to assume that the porter did not speak English or something because he was of zero help to me.  He didn't say "I'll check it here, you just give it to me and then get in line there"  nothing... just stared at me.  Sigh.  Such a goat rope.  So, when someone yelled at us yet again for being in the way and not knowing what we were doing, they finally figured out we had ZERO clue what to do and got us a porter.  Goodness... that took way too much off my life on that part, really!

Once that was worked out, we got in line after line.  Through an airport type security check with x-ray machines as well.

 And no food was to be brought in... Liz had a bananna

 So did Butch... :)

 Mooooo... total cattle call ;)  When then got our Sea Card (room key/money card/lifeline) and got on the boat!

We ate some lunch at the buffet then went to our rooms to drop off stuff (rooms were to open at 1pm

They weren't open  yet :(  We only had to wait a few minutes before we could load on in...

 no luggage yet.

  So we dropped off most of our stuff and headed to the deck to watch our departure and prepare for our drill... I was on the top deck and had heard all the hoopla about "there will be 7 short blasts on the horn, then one long" and we were then to report to our stations... well, I was asleep on the top deck when it came.  I heard the horns, but they were so distant I thought it was the boat next door that was doing it... then someone came by and said "there will be a drill..." I thought, yeah, they told me that... but what he was saying is THIS IS the drill.  ha!  I did get up with the 2nd guy came by to tell me that this was the drill.

 Me in the foreground, Butch and Sally in the background!  Angela got stuck at the front of the line and I couldn't get a good shot of her!

 Liz was one of the late arrivals at the "back" of the line of people in our group.

 top deck watching as we shove off

 Butch and Sally having a margarita for the departure.

 Our room all loaded up :)

 Dinner the first night!  We did the formal dining every night, however after the first formal breakfast we opted to do the buffet and omelette bar from that day forward.  So each night we ate dinner in the dining room and did breakfast and lunch at the buffet.

 the Centrum was beautiful all decorated up for Christmas.

There was another cruise that left as we did.. they were so pretty in the distance.  I'm sure we were just as lit up and pretty to them :)

Day 1 of vacation.

Departure and drive down






I was very surprised to see fall colors as we reached mid Florida ;)

We found our hotel without issue. It was under construction. Butch had been told a few rooms were under construction however we found the whole lobby was filled with drop cloths and construction workers. All in all they left by 6pm and weren't there until after we were leaving the next day. The thing that was really affected was parking and I almost made a COSTLY booboo. I asked if the parking lot next door was available and the guy said yes, the same person owned both hotels. So I parked in the very nice open lot as the hotel lot was full of construction workers cars and dumpsters.

The next day I went to move Sally's car over there only to read the sign that it was the restaurant next door and was marked on the entry that it was a tow zone. Oops! I promptly put Sally's car back and went and brought MINE back over to the hotel lot. Geeze! When I pulled in a construction worker told me they really will tow if are over there so I was lucky my car was still there THAT next morning too!! Yikes!!

Anyway that night we went to Walmart and to a few other places including a very BIG Dicks sporting goods store. ;) you can imagine the fun we had with Sally for that turn of phrase. ;)

After shopping we ventured out to a Korean restaurant nearby.


The name cracks me up however it was far from sorry ;)

Say a prayer for us!

We're turning the gas on Thursday in the little house. This will mean HEAT and HOT water in the house. What a change that will be from rinsing out paint brushes and rollers in COLD water the last few times we've been there. Why a prayer for us? Pray that the heater is in good working order and that everything goes smoothly with the lighting of the pilot lights for it and the water heater :)

Next up is electrical work and dry wall fixes in the kitchen.

Well, really, next up will be getting the stove delivered into the house on the third THEN getting an electrician into there to get the work done that I want done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that the delivery is premature as we don't have a floor yet - however, we purchased it at a VERY good price. The price was even less than I could get with Black Friday prices (like $600 off good price)... so we bought it and put it on layaway with very ambitious timelines. Ah, well. We'll put it into the laundry room for now, then get the rest worked on and finished in due time...

We have passed inspection!

After the whole issue with the gas line pressure leaks and such, we have officially passed inspection as of today!  I'm so excited!

 

Sally was a God-send to be there for the inspector today.  I had been getting a crown yesterday when my phone started ringing and it was Butch... I answered told him where I was and that I would talk to him later and then promptly turned the ringer off.  Sigh.  I then proceed to miss four calls - all of them important.  Sigh.  One from the plumbing company telling me that they would be doing the inspection between 9am - 12pm today, one from Sally telling me that she could be there for it (thank heavens), one from Mom and Dad and one from Liz.  Good grief!

 

To my defense, I was numbed to my eyeballs from the crown and didn't come out of my drunk talking numbness until about 7pm that night... so I'm not sure I would have dashed down there regardless... however, this morning at 6am I was sorely tempted to make the run... but then thought better of it as it was pea-soup foggy here and remained so for HOURS after the sun tried to come up.

 

I'm thrilled to say the least - now to get the water turned back on, the gas hooked up and the appliances running (heater and hot water heater)and tested... we'll have HOT water in the house now - what a shock to the system THAT will be!!  I've been washing paint brushes in cold water for the last few months at the house.  It wasn't so bad in October, but let me tell you what, in November with the colder temperatures that cold water is SHOCKING first thing in the morning - even if it is just on your hands :)

 

So... next up is drywall, then flooring... and the list goes on and on and on....but we're moving right along.... slowly, but moving along!