We arrived in Belize around 5am their time, 8am our time. We had to tender into the island to meet our shore excursion guides. We had over an hour's drive to get to our cave tubing excursion. Our tour guide gave us lots of history & info about Belize on the way there and back (such as Belize is made up of over 200 islands). I noticed all the schools are run by churches & one of them was the Church of the Nazarene. Since our bus drove by quickly, I mostly got video footage on the way back to town of the scenery.
Our cave tubing excursion was so much fun. Neither of us had done anything like it before. We hiked 35 minutes in the tropical rain forest to get to the water.
We had to cross this stream before we could use our innertubes.
This was our tour guide Suzie. She also guided us down the river along with Eliomar. He walked with us during the 35 minute hike to the water. He was in the Army and had gone through survival training. He showed us all the trees or things we could eat, what not to eat, what causes rashes, and what cures the rashes. All the tubing pictures were taken by their staff and then sold to us on a CD.
The tubing was difficult for me to navigate. They would not let us put our feet in the middle of the tube due to all the rocks. The tubes were so large that only about 3 inches of my fingers could reach the water, which makes it hard to steer or doggie paddle. I mostly grabbed onto Vince's tube & let him guide us. Then in the second cave, we linked with all 12 people in our group & let our two guides pull us through. The caves were amazing with lots of rock formations in the ceiling. Some of the rocks shimmered like giant diamonds. The caves probably at least a 1/2 mile long each & we went through 2 of them. It took us about an hour to get through them.
After the tubing, we changed into dry clothes. I bought 2 local meat pies for lunch. They looked like a dinner roll, but tasted like a pot pie with taco meat in it. We then boarded the bus for the long drive back to the dock.
The town was very poor and had been ravaged by hurricanes. They are still trying to build it back up for tourism. Their graves are all built above ground since they are below sea level. We did pass a Publix.
After the town tour, we made it back to the shops at the dock & got on the tender to get back to our ship.
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