Sara and I had always wanted to go Central America and do some adventures so we decided that Belize was an easy way to start. For starters most people speak English and second they have one the best barrier reefs in the world.
But I am getting ahead of myself, our journey starts with our flight to from Dallas to Belize. We arrive at the small airport where we were surprised a commercial plane could land. We walk off the plane and step into a wall of humidity we hadn’t felt since summers in the Midwest.
After getting of the plane we went through the passport check inside and we got our phrase of the day from a older lady in line ahead of us. She asked the passport person, “Is that where I get the liquor at?” pointing inside to where the Duty Free Shop is located. Sara and I were laughing so hard…
Next we walked outside to meet our driver to take us to our first spot, in the Jungle at Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch Jungle Lodge. We climb into a white van and off we are on one of only paved highways in the country.
We didn’t realize for one how flat much of the country is and second how rural it gets quickly when you get out of Belize city. There are rural jungle towns all over the place.
The farther we drove the more hilly, green and rural it became. Upon arriving at Caves Branch our driver took us to the main office/bar/outdoor dining room and outdoor pool area.
We got checked in and signed a bunch of wavers (for the adventures to come) downed a complementary rum drink (went to our heads after traveling all day) and were shown to our Hut… yea I said HUT! 🙂
Along the gravel path to our room there was the beautiful Caves Branch river flowing..looking very inviting in this heat.
Further up the path is our Hut for the next three nights, it funny on the website it said we would be one with the jungle, hearing all the sounds etc it had to offer and it wasn’t kidding. The hut was completely screened in besides the shared wall with our neighbors. It had a ceiling fan and one electric light in a small room with a toilet and a sink, otherwise it was hurricane lamps for light..no wonder they told us to bring a flashlight or headlamp because it gets dark in the jungle. Everything here runs on generator so you never know when it is going to be on or off…
Words don’t do this description justice so here is couple of pictures and a video tour to check it out:
Ok So your next question might be…so where is the shower..well that is even more fun. These jungle showers are outside in a shared setting.
There is a couple of huts grouped together:
Inside these huts is a tiny changing area and a metal bucket suspended in the air with pvc pipe going into it..so we are game and smelly from our trip so we ( i mean Sara) gets underneath it
When we turned on the water a light rain of water came down at the perfect temp ( I can’t even get it perfect at home – ha). Ok so the rest of the shower will not be available in pictures for reasons I think you understand 😉
Every evening at 6 we would gather at the outdoor dining hall and have dinner with all of the residents in a buffet style meal and get to know new people, talk about the days events and a guide would walk around and ask about what adventure you wanted to sign up for the next day. He would then brief us on the time and what we had to bring.
For our first day in the Jungle we chose the ATM with our new friends from dinner John and Meredith from Long Island
See Day 2 for that adventure……
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