2nd Stop: Belize

On Wednesday, January 21st, we "tendered" near Belize, which meant we had to take a little ferry boat to the Belize dock. We made sure we headed out first thing, since we had a reservation for a Cave Tubing Expedition. Of course, we were early, and ended up having to wait for the rest of the guests anyway. There was NO snorkling to be done in these waters! The water was very dark and gloomy looking!

We took a ~45 minute bus ride to the place where we picked up our tubes and headlamps. We got down to the river and had the option of walking across (with tubes in tow!) or going up to a small cliff & jumping off. The girls and I opted to walk across (the girls got help, I did not!!) and Ted jumped in. Then we walked for quite awhile through the rainforest until we got to another part of the river where we did our cabe tubing! Because of a fatal accident, Carnival no longer offers this excursion anymore. I was a little intimidated at first (we had our kids with us for Pete's Sake!), but once we heard the full story, we decided it was safe to continue with our journey. Basically, when the cruise ships were offering this excursion, they allowed too many people to go through the caves at a time and a woman got wedged against a wall. Our guide only had the 4 of us in his "chain" and was EXTREMELY careful. Aside from the water being VERY chilly, this was an awesome excursion! It was like going through a cavern (like the ones in the mountains), but in an innertube!! Obviously, I couldn't bring my fancy camera, so hopefully our dinky waterproof film camera produces some good shots!

Belize was not somewhere that you wanted to spend a lot of time in the port (especially unattended by a tour guide!), so we shopped very briefly when we returned, then got back on our tender to head back to the ship.