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Iguana Center, San Ignacio Resort Hotel

 

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Cozumal

April 16th to May 1st 2011

It was interesting and somewhat amazing to see the many differences between Mexico and Belize when we crossed the border: from tortilla to rice & beans, from tequila to Rum, from Spanish to English, from concrete houses to wooden houses built on stilts, from luxury buses to old school buses without air conditioned.  The people, the land, the houses, the music, and the food: everything looked somewhat different.

We spent two nights in Corozal (Northern Belize) and I can say it was a quiet, peaceful and beautiful small town.  I still can’t believe the color of the water: it was an amazing turquoise color.

We rented a vehicle in Belize City, picked up my mom at the airport and left for Cayo district (Western Belize, close to the Guatemala border).  The jungle was dry and fields were burning everywhere.  Nonetheless, waking up every morning to the sound of parrots and dozen of bird species was very pleasant.

The iguana center was definitively one of the highlight during our trip.  An educational center for locals who used to eat (some still are) iguanas.  The iguanas are breaded and released into the wild, when they reach adult size.

The butterflies farm (the largest in Belize), was only the size of a small house, but there was hundreds (thousands?) of blue morphos flying all over the place.  We visited many butterflies farm over the years (including St.Maarten and Malaysia), but none of these equaled the amount of butterflies flying in there.

We visited interesting Mayan Ruins and climbing to the summit of Xunantunich (130 ft) was quite and adventure! 
The view was beautiful and Alixe and mom a little scared…
Pustinia Land Art Park was interesting, but an open air museum in the forest, when it is 35 degrees was unpleasant.  As well, I can say that the art pieces did not really impressed me except the ‘’Observer’’, a carved face in the forest.

 

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Sea stars in Caye Caulker

We visited Hot mama sauces!  Definitively a stop if you like to add some spices to your life (and food!).

We came back to Belize City and took the boat to Caye Caulker.  It was amazing to see these little fishermen’s houses in the middle of the ocean.  No bathrooms, no land: just wooden houses on stilts. 
Caye Caulker was absolutely quit, beautiful and peaceful.  It is not an island (too small to be called that, because it is only 150m across and 2km long).  Can you imagine, we could see the sun rise and set on the ocean from the roof of our condo!  Very unique.
I went diving on the barrier reef, the second largest in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.  The reef is 300km long in Belize only and more than 900km long from Mexico to Central America!  The visibility was good and the amount of soft coral very impressive.  We spent one week on this Caye.  What a relaxing stay!

We came back to Belize City and spent an overnight there.  All I can say is that Belize City is very poor, somewhat violent with little to see or do.  I am still happy that we spent an afternoon there eating amazing food at Bird’s Isle Restaurant directly located on the ocean

The next day, we took a bus to Chetumal (Mexico).  The Express-non stop bus stopped at least 15 times and took 4.5 hours to complete the 130km journey!  This is much better than the buses we took when coming down.  At least 50% faster…

Chetumal was a very pleasant city with a nice ocean boardwalk.  The Mexican pancakes (known as Marquesitas) were fantastic!  I was very interesting to see how Mexico is much more developed and organized than Belize… 

Anyway, it took us 2 more days from there to come back to Torreon as our flight from Mexico City was cancelled.  Overall, a great trip with transport to and from Torreon being long, disorganized and somewhat painful.  It took almost 70 hours from Caye Caulker (Belize) to come back to Torreon (Northern Mexico).


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Xunantunich Mayan Ruins, Santa Elena, Western Belize

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Iguana Center, San Ignacio Resort Hotel

 

 

Belize Cayes, on the way to Caye Caulker

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