Wow, this is REALLY long! Was hoping to contribute since I read so many before I left... feel free to scan/read/ignore - if nothing else it'll help when people search on certain keywords to get recent results.
My husband and I arrived on AC via Tropic Air from municipal after the "turf" part of our "surf 'n turf" vacation as I've heard a lot of people do the first time. For our land part we stayed at
Mopan River Resort in Benque Viejo del Carmen (Cayo district by Guatemala for those not familiar). If anyone has any questions, I'll answer them or even do a trip report for that section, but for now...let's focus on AC.
The first day we arrived around 1pm and hopped a cab to our "home" for the next 6 days,
Banana Beach . Our cab driver was extremely friendly and warned us that the roads south of town were pretty bumpy from all the rain they had received the previous day. I of course quizzed him about what the weather forecast said, and he gave me the answer everyone always gave..."might rain, might not" LOL
We were greeted very warmly by the staff at Banana Beach and they were wonderful about toting up our million bags to our 3rd floor oceanview room - 330B (thanks for the tips on room selection). We had been staying inland AND we brought all our SCUBA dive gear here so we were travelling pretty heavily.
The room was condo-style like I expected, but warm and friendly with good strong AC (not that we needed it that week). We grabbed lunch at El Divinos (3/4lb burgers my husband loved) since we hadn't eaten since early that morning and then relaxed for a bit before heading out to explore town. Our "short walk to town" took the rest of the day, we got pretty lost (go ahead, say it, how do you get lost on such a small island - we're talented). The roads were pretty wet and we ended up on back street which had mud puddles I could have swam in. But oh well. Only part I was bummed about was missing //www.ambergriscaye.com/protech/ being open for diving the next day, so we booked through Monkey Business (our hotel's travel shop).
The next day we got up excited to dive! We grabbed breakfast downstairs (which was pretty good for me, but my husband eats no eggs, so he gave up tring to get the free breakfast included in our room quickly - they're all eggs!). Turns out Monkey Business had given us the wrong time so we were late being out on the pier, I felt bad for the other divers but we hustled along and made up the time. The divemasters at ProTech (we had Nico that day for our DM) were very helpful and set everything up for us, all we had to do was dive!
Was husband's first ocean dive, so of course had a blast! I thought I saw more wildlife in Mexico last year, but there's no such thing as bad diving!!!
We, of course, tipped the DM and were really suprised that we seemed to be the only one out of 8 divers. Maybe a few were just discreet???
Went to Casa Picasso for dinner that night and had wonderful food. The owner was very good at alleviating my husband's fears about his shellfish allergy, which of course was great (always a good thing if you're not taking every bit expecting to pass out). We were concerned about it before we left the US simply because any great oceanfront/diving place is going to have great seafood, which even the slightest cross-contamination can literally kill my poor hubby. I know it's probably not what people go to Casa Picasso for, but they have to-die-for Cesaer Salad! I tried several different tapas and my husband had lasagna, all was very good! We of course also had dessert - chocolate cake with a raspberry toppping...mmmhhh!
I'll do the next day as a separate post since I'm sure I'll talk too much - we did the Blue Hole/Half Moon Caye/etc that day!