The Flower of Belize

The Animals of Belize

The Ruins and the Rainforest

The resort where we stayed offered various "Adventures" for their guests. These tours ranged from zip-lining in the jungle to bird watching to scuba diving, there was something for everyone. Kyle and I went scuba diving, hiked in the rainforest, went bird watching, toured the Mayan ruins, and went on a riverboat tour. It was a great way to see some of Belize, and each day the tours ended with plenty of time to take a nice relaxing swim and lounge in a hammock for a bit...sounds perfect to me!

In the next few days, I'll be posting pictures from our different excursions, and up today is our tour of the Mayan ruins and our hike through the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary and Jaguar Preserve...and no we did not see jaguars (even though I really really was hoping to). With a name like "Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary and Jaguar Preserve", I expected to drive around in an enclosed car and watch the big beautiful cats. Wait, what was that? This is a hike through the jungle not a safari, you say? All my wishing and hoping for a jaguar sighting was futile. I suppose it doesn't help that jaguar are nocturnal and weren't up and about during the day, but that's probably for the best since we were hiking and roaming around on foot not barreling through the forest in a large, protective, fast vehicle. Even though I was a bit disappointed that we didn't see any gigantic wild felines, the trip was a lot of fun and the rainforest is beautiful as are the Mayan ruins.

Hopkins

The resort where we stayed was just outside of a village called Hopkins. One day we rented a golf cart and went exploring the village. These are a few of the shots I snapped as Kyle whizzed up and down the main street of the village (as much as you can whiz in a golf cart :) ).

A basketball court (that was packed every other time we saw it when we were coming and going through town to embark on or return from our tours)

The school playground

A Sunday afternoon baseball game

A local home

The town church

And some local businesses:

A fruit and vegetable store

The local barbershop

And a local restaurant and tourist spot

This bike was parked outside of a grocery store. You probably can't tell by the picture, but it would be too big for me if I tried to climb on. This little girl, I swear she was probably only 7 or 8 and much shorter than I am, comes running out of the store, jumps on the bike, and rides it down the street with both feet on one pedal because she's not big enough to reach the pedals from the seat. I was pretty impressed!

And the road through town

Belize

I know, I know I have been horribly negligent of my blog for the last few months but between work/school, planning the wedding, and going on vacation I haven't had much time to take pictures let alone post them.

That all changed in Belize on our honeymoon. I accidentally took over 2,200 photos on the trip so needless to say, you'll only be seeing a small handful of them here on this site. As for the others, I'll be posting a huge album somewhere yet to be determined.

Let me start by saying that Kyle & I had an absolutely amazing time in Belize! The resort we stayed at was beautiful, the weather was gorgeous (except for a couple random thunderstorms, but that's to be expected in the Caribbean :) ), and the tours that we went on were a ton of fun. We visited Mayan ruins, hiked in the rainforest, took a riverboat tour, went scuba diving, and saw some beautiful places, animals, and plants. I sat down yesterday to choose my favorite shots from the trip to share, and I ended up with 96...oops! That's way too many shots to upload on one post, but I don't really want to weed any of them out so I've decided to break it up. Starting today, I'm going to be posting 10 or so shots from the trip every couple of days for the next week or so. I hope you enjoy them!

First up, here are some pictures of the resort where we stayed:

The main lobby and adjoining restaurant

The view from the restaurant

The beach

The "old" building

One of the docks, the sea, and the sky :)

One of the pools, complete with Tiki Bar

The paths in between the buildings were even pretty.

Since we were on our honeymoon, we got upgraded to a beachside villa in the "new" building. Lucky us! Our room was the one on the ground floor furthest to the right, and it was awesome!

This was the view from our room. Because July is part of Belize's "rainy" season, there aren't many tourists around that part of the year. The resort wasn't very crowded while we were there, and we were able to claim this as our own private pool during our stay.

And "our" hammocks