Sorry these reports are rather stream-of-conscious. I'll post a more concise summary....
Ok, the morning after the wedding, Joe went SCUBA diving one more time with Hustler, and I slept in a little bit and saw my family off. After he got back, we bid farewell to his family and our new friends at SunDiver and headed for Belize City. We decided we needed a night of COLD air conditioning, so we got a room at the Great House. Nice, quaint hotel in the Fort George district of Belize City. After 12 hours of sleep, we wandered around the city on Tuesday and shopped a little bit. There is not a lot to see in Belize City, but we found a great store called Special Affects in the Fort George area. Lovely things in this store!
Tuesday afternoon, we're off to Cayo. We took the "regular" bus and were the only tourists. Not a bad trip. Pretty scenery.
When we got to San Ignacio, we inquired about rooms and found a cute little hotel called Mida's just outside of town. Cute cabins, but HORRIBLY uncomfortable beds. The price was right - $25US a night. We stayed there one night.
On Wednesday, we got up, ate breakfast at Pop's in San Ignacio, and headed out for a tour to the Barton Creek Cave, jungle horseback ride, and Mountain Pine Ridge and Big Rock Falls. We used Mr. Mike's tour company. I wasn't overly impressed. We had a young, precocious tour guide who started out good, but he spun so many tall tales about himself, by the end of the day, he lost all credibility with us. I think he was trying to impress the young British kids who were on the tour with us. The cave was interesting. I enjoyed the horseback riding and LOVED big rock falls. I just wish we had a little more educational guide.
We then headed up to the Mountain Pine Ridge and Five Sisters Lodge. Boy, was this place beautiful! I loved it! Especially the large tiled bathtub right in your bedroom of the thatched-roof cabin. The falls are gorgeous, and we had a gorgeous view of them from our cabana balcony. The service was good, the food was so-so (breakfast was good - I LOVE FRY-Jacks!!!).
We had a good night's sleep and played at the falls the next morning (Thursday). We then decided to go back to San Ignacio. We get bored sitting in one place too long, and the tours were way too expensive from the resort.
Thursday night, we ate dinner, went to a fun bar or two and stayed at Martha's Guesthouse in the middle of town. Cute, clean guesthouse with friendly service and a good restaurant.
Friday - TIKAL. We went with Mayan Walk tours. It was amazing!! The architecture was fascinating, but even more fun was the wildlife!!! MONKEYS GALORE swinging from the trees, foxes, some sort of strange ardvark/racoon-looking thing, and other interesting animals. It was a long day of walking, so we were beat when we got back to San Ignacio. We ate at Martha's, went to bed early.
Saturday, we said good-bye to San Ignacio, and traveled by bus to Belize City to catch a flight out.
Great trip, great people, we'll be back!!!