Belize it or not, Steen is not at home

Belize it or not, Steen is not at home, please leave a message at the beep. I must be out, or I’d pick up the phone, where could I be? Belize it or not, I’m not hooooooome!

As promised, here is the post with the film photos from my trip to Belize with Doc. All photos were taken with the Lomography LC-A on Lomography color negative ISO 400 film.

Belize was an amazing vacation for us, and it doesn’t hurt that its national language is English and that it is relatively close. People are certainly correct when they say that Belize has more of a Caribbean culture than a Central American culture, although there is certainly a large Central American influence, especially a sort of reverence for the Mayans.

There was so much wildlife; in the wild we saw: a manatee (intense being unexpectedly close to something so huge in the water), howler monkeys (and lots of howler monkey babies), sea turtles, sting rays, electric rays, tarantulas, parrot fish, angel fish, sergeant majors, Bermuda chubb, nurse sharks, and more. We also ate a lot of lobster.

We went the first week of September, which is still part of the rainy season / summer / slow season, so we could pretty much go anywhere and do anything we wanted.  I’ve heard that during the tourist season, places and activities get booked up months in advance. Good thing we didn’t go during the busy season, because we went to Belize on a spur-of-the-moment and actually didn’t know where we would go for our vacation until about 1 week before we left. We had no plans or reservations, and we didn’t need any.

It was kind of weird seeing large packs of stray roaming dogs everywhere, and actually kind of sad. It was also kind of weird to learn that there were large Amish and Mennonite communities in the countryside (and that they subsequently discovered oil on their land), but also very interesting.

We also visited one of the oldest Mayan sites in Belize, Cahal Pech, followed by one of the newest Mayan sites in Belize, Caracol. As cool as the jungles and ruins were, however, the Cayes were absolutely the highlight of the trip. It was freeing being able to walk to the ocean and jump in for a swim whenever we pleased. The jungle rivers were fun to swim in too, but we had to book a trip any time we wanted to swim in those. Which surprisingly made the Cayes cheaper as well as more fun, since so much of the fun we had on Caye Caulker was DIY.