Bobbing Along At the Bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea!

I woke up on my own this morning.  They keep changing ship time, and for some reason, my phone doesn't update to the ship time.  My watch hasn't updated to the correct time since Daylight Savings Time kicked in.  I was planning to get up at 7:00 and have a nice, leisurely time getting ready.  Have breakfast with Bruce before disembarking for my submarine trip at 10:30.  Sleeping in didn't cause me any problems, though.  Everything was packed and ready, and all I had to do was get dressed and go.  And I had three and a half hours to do it in.  So, I got up and we were docked.  

By the time I took my meds, people were disembarking.  I finished getting ready, and Bruce and I headed upstairs.  I had my purse packed with the camera, extra batteries for everything, my ticket, sunscreen, money – everything I could need except water.  We had breakfast.  I had sausage links and roasted potatoes with tea.  We ate leisurely, watching people walking out along the pier.  Then I headed down to the 4th deck, where I picked up 2 waters, put them in my purse, and headed out.  Apparently, Bruce went up to the room and out to the balcony, taking stalker pictures of me leaving.

They have all kinds of photo backdrops in the shopping area between the pier and town.  The same shops we saw at every port, but all this statuary is kinda new.  

There is even a little iguana park, and they have signs asking that you leave the iguanas alone.

I walked out of port and everything was closed.  I could have spent $12 for a taxi to go about 1 km (½ mile) or walk.  I chose to walk.  It was flat and I wanted to see what all was there.  Besides, last night we went to the shop to get some chocolate and potato chips because the deserts on the ship here tend to suck.  I ordered chocolate cake one night, and it wasn't very good.  There are no pies.  Just little tarts that aren't very sweet or cookies.  The cookies are good, but I'm getting tired of cookies!  Everything except the Pemex was closed, but I made note of some of the places that might have what we wanted for a reasonable cost.  Last night, a Toblerone bar was priced at $8 and a tube of Pringles was $5.  I saw several possibilities, including the Pemex.  The town's letters (at least one set) was on my way, strategically placed so a cruise ship is usually behind it.

When I got to the submarine place (I booked privately, not through the ship), it was still closed.  So I walked around into a little resort club spot that wasn't open yet and sat down.  The guys painting the bar shelter didn't run me off.  

When the Atlantis Submarine Agency opened, I went in, and the girl told me there was a sub leaving at 9:30 that had room, and she could move me up to that one.  I agreed.  After paying the park fee ($11 US), I looked around the shop a little and found an adorable onesie for Baby Frankie who will be born soon.  We watched the movie about boarding the sub and things, then boarded the boat “Ana” to take us out.  We stopped at the pier along the way to pick up those who had purchased from the ships.  I saved some money and was taking the same excursion.  

When we got to the submarine, we loaded through the top hatch and went down to take our seats.  "Octopus's Garden" by the Beetles was playing on a loop.

The trip was amazing and the views were spellbinding!  The pictures are not representative of the beauty I saw.  My camera had fits!  Not only was it not in water taking pictures under water, but it was going through three and a half inch acrylic windows to do it.  There's lots of distortion here, both in color and focus, and that doesn't count the reflections, which they kept to as much of a minimum as they could.  You can tell they get mostly US tourists in this sub because the altimeter is in feet instead of meters.  We descended quickly and leveled off the first time around 80 feet.

As soon as I turned from the altimeter and looked out, I had the opportunity to shout, "Tortuga!" and the guide let everybody know there was a turtle.  He was cruising right along.  This was my best shot, and even with the post processing tricks George taught me when we got back, this is the best I could get it.

Lots of little fish on the reef.  THIS is what a reef is supposed to look like.

More of the beautiful, thick, and wonderful reef.

I do not have video editing software, so this is how the video came out of the camera.  The in-person visuals were sooooo much better!  There were lots of trigger fish, which are some of my favorite.  Two of them are in this video.  

Surgeon fish

Triggerfish with his tail fin closed up

This is maybe a tilefish, but I'm not sure.  They're not supposed to have spots.

Ray, probably an Atlantic ray, but they were moving around and I didn't get a good enough look.

Yellowtail snapper

Triggerfish

We started to descend further and played with 110, but I could only catch the altimeter when it was at 109 feet.

Soon after, I saw my first colony of garden eels!  Once they plant themselves, they rarely move, though they are able to swim and will do so for mating.  They eat plankton as it swims by.  This was amazing!

A couple of angelfish

Close to the end of the ride, we went by a shipwreck that had either been sunken or left below water to help grow the reef.  Here is a part of it with several fish, including a pretty shot of a sergeant major.

It was a wonderful sub ride, and if you've never taken one, I would strongly suggest doing it.  Next time, I want to snorkel, though.  This is a nice reef, and I'd like to see it from above.  We did pass some divers while we were around 80 feet.  I hope they were going deeper.  It's a fabulous reef!  

After the sub ride, they loaded us back on the Ana and showed us the QR code to download our certificates.  

Then they took everybody back to the Atlantis office.  They gave the option to everybody to either walk back to the port or they had transportation for those who were picked up at the pier.  I walked so I could find the chips and chocolate we were looking for last night.  I got a bag of Sabritas (which are made by Lays) for about $2 and 2 Milky Ways and 2 Snickers for about 75 cents each in a little tienda.  And I was able to pay in dollars for a reasonable exchange rate.  Even a like-to-like comparison can be made.  This little tienda had Pringles for about $3.00 a tube.  Even with import taxes on the price, it was $2 cheaper than at duty free!

Bruce had also mentioned that he wished he had gotten a Pirhana Joe's T-shirt.  Pirhana Joe's is a shop in the port shopping area of each stop.  So, once I got back in the port area where all the shops that have a contract with the cruise lines are, I found the Pirhana Joe's and got him a T-shirt.  He was standing on the balcony watching for me when I came back.  He has me Lo-Jacked on Life 360, so he was checking.  And, like the stalker he is, he took pictures again.  Now I know why it took so long for him to wave back at me.  It wasn't because he didn't see me!

We had a snack in the buffet before I dumped my pictures.  Dinner was surf and turf (lobster and filet).

The next day was at-sea, and I hadn't walked the ship yet.  I tend to like to see all of the ship, even the parts I don't use.  It is a pretty ship, but they did something at the pool area of the Lido deck that really upset me.  The staff had an organized game going on with some of the passengers, and they were using what looked like white plastic bags, maybe large kitchen garbage sized.  While I was on the sun deck, I saw one of those bags go flying out into the ocean.  I walked back over to where I could see the pool, and they were still playing with bags, so I assume they pulled another one out.  The Regal Princess (aka The Love Boat) is a pretty boat, though.

We stopped and got some boudin on the way back home to Biloxi.  Not much time left before heading back north!

UnBelizeAble!

Getting up early for today's excursions.  I booked two - a river cruise with Bruce and a snorkel afterward on my own.  I arranged the river cruise with Princess and the snorkel independently.  The river cruise was sold as a two-hour cruise starting at 7:00 am.  Given that, I felt comfortable booking a snorkel that started two hours later.  I confirmed this with the shore excursion desk on the ship, who said it would be tight, but I should be able to make it.

It turns out, 7:00 am was when we were supposed to meet on the ship to be assigned a tender group because the ship doesn't go into a port, as the ports are too shallow for the cruise liners.  It also turns out that instead of tendering out in the ship's tenders (smaller boats that don't need the depth the ship needs, usually stored along the sides of the cruise ship), there is a shuttle service.  This shuttle service is miserably slow.  They are large shuttles, so it takes significant time to fill them.  That's the case whether the fill is the first shuttle in the morning (which is controlled by the ship loading by groups) or returning from the dock (which is uncontrolled) because the shuttle won't leave until it's full.  Even though they say they leave every 30 minutes or when the next shuttle arrives, they will sit, side by side, waiting to get full before they pull away from the dock or the ship.  Therefore, we spent almost the entire two hours I had calculated for the river cruise just getting from ship to shore.  When we boarded the boat for the river cruise, our guide, Sharon, confirmed that there was no way I was going to make the snorkel.  I had to make a choice, but I had already considered that I might have to.  Bruce likes to do things that let him see animals.  I mean, yesterday in Roatan was proof of that!  But he's not much of a solo traveler.  He doesn't like to do things like this by himself, especially now that it's more difficult for him.  And I like doing things with him.  So I decided to take the river cruise with Bruce and hope to catch a last-minute snorkel when we got back.

It was a really good cruise.  We started out in the little delta where the Belize River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, where we spotted manatee.  While the Florida manatee and the Belize manatee are different subspecies, their differences are difficult to spot.  These guys don't appear to be used to people, and people aren't allowed to go out and touch them, so all we saw was those beautiful snouts break the water for fractions of a second before they submerged again.  Not something I could get a picture of.  I did catch the frigate birds that were flying around.  Looks like two juvenile and one adult, all males.

As we started down the river, Sharon gave us some history of the country, specifically the name.  There are several theories of where the name "Belize" originated.  The one she shared was that a Scottish buccaneer named Peter Wallace, who established one of the first settlements, was the namesake.  The letter W is pronounced as a B in the local Mayan dialect, so "Wallace" was pronounced "Ballace" which eventually became "Belize".  I can Belize that.  By this time, they were handing out orange juice to the kids and rum punch to the adults.  I stuck with water, but did have several "sips" of Bruce's rum punch.  It was quite good, and they were not stingy with the rum!

The first animal we saw after starting down the river was the bare-throated tiger heron.  That's a new heron for me.  It gets its name from the stripes in its plumage, looking like a striped tiger.  He was hard to see, nestled in the mangroves.  In fact, I shot in the general direction and hoped I was getting him.  All I saw was a clump that could have been just a handful of branches or prop roots, but the camera picked him up well.

Our next sighting was the elusive and rare dalmation, who came out to greet us, wagging his tail as if we were long lost friends.  His buddy stayed in the yard.

We saw lots of other critters as we traveled down the river and back, and the spotter made sure I got a good shot of about everything, checking with me to see if I was happy with what I had before leaving and even having the captain reposition the boat to make sure I got a good shot.  It pays to bring an actual camera (or two) instead of just a phone!  The river is right in front of the largest city and runs parallel and close to a main road, so the amount of animals wasn't like going through a reserve, but we saw a pretty good variety.

Morelet's crocodile, mostly underwater

Spiny tail iguana

Green iguana

Male green iguana getting his mating colors

Howler monkey.  There was a small family of them.  I liked this guy hanging upside down by his tail, pulling branches toward him and eating leaves while hanging upside down.

As we re-entered the Gulf, Sharon showed pictures of the current Belize dollar and told us that, even though they have been an independent country since 1981, they have been afraid changing the appearance of the currency would cause it to lose value.  They have just recently voted to remove the picture of Queen Elizabeth II from the dollar and replace it with a local hero.  Then, the spotter came around and gave the children a Belize quarter.

When we got back to the pier, I checked with the local tour operators, but apparently all snorkel trips are four hours because they go far out to the reef and allow people a lot of time in the water, so I had missed the last trip that could get me back to the boat for a far-too-early 3:30 pm departure.  One lady offered me a beach that is barriered off and salt water is pumped in, but it has no critters to look at.  If we anchor at 7:00 am and leave at 3:30 and it takes 3 hours to get to and from the ship, that only leaves five hours in port.  That's not enough time.  This is another reason I probably won't take another Princess cruise.  There were some other ships that appeared to stay longer than we did.  This was one of the stops I was most looking forward to, and the port where we spent the least amount of time.  That really stinks.  Bruce actually said he would consider flying down to Roatan and Belize with me to spend more time since I didn't get to have enough time in either place to snorkel and there are so many more things to do on land and on top of the water.

Even though I got us seats along the edge of the shuttle (but not an edge that had a good breeze), it stood so long and there were so many people that Bruce started overheating before we set off back to the ship.  After he showered and I got the cameras out of the backpacks, we went up to the lido deck for a snack from the buffet.  For dinner, we just ordered burgers from room service that we ate while watching a movie.

In spite of the issues with the shuttle and the limited time in port, Belize is definitely an unBelizeable place, and I must go back!

It's a Monkey Mugging and I Want to Come Back Here!

An early day today because they changed the ship's clock and our watches and phones didn't change with it.  So we were up an hour early.  No problem.  Just gave us time for some protein for breakfast.  We went up to the Lido deck and got some breakfast.  I went to make me some tea and find somebody to get Bruce some tomato juice.  While there, I insinuated myself into a conversation between two guys at different tables talking about how dangerous it was to have taken one of the excursions to the Mayan ruins in Mahahual.  The concern was what would have happened if the vehicle had broken down on one of those tiny back roads.  I interrupted and told them the driver probably would have just called for another vehicle.  They do have cell phones in Mexico.  Then they mentioned the dangers of being stranded on the back road.  I told them about driving through Mexico several years ago and that in spite of all the fear mongering, we never felt unsafe, and we did get lost and have some car troubles along the way.  I mentioned that Mexico was a big country, and there are neighborhoods I won't go in in the US, too.  No different in Mexico.  One of the guys said, "But there are some bad banditos looking for you in Mexico!"  I responded that they aren't looking for ME.  They don't even know that I exist.  So long as you don't go getting into their business, trying to buy drugs and potentially picking the wrong dealer, or trying to compete or stop them, they aren't interested in you.  They really didn't seem to like me raining on their "crap on other people you know nothing about" parade, but Bruce's tomato juice arrived, so having had my entertainment for the morning, I said my goodbyes and went back to our table.

After breakfast, we went back to the room and finished getting ready.  Our room-service breakfast came, so we put it in the fridge.  I will eat fruit throughout the day.  We had plenty of time, so we watched the ship dock.  There appear to be some sunken shipwrecks close to the docks.

When they announced that the ship was cleared, we made our way down to the gangway and disembarked.  We walked through the port area with their shops and restaurants, where excursions booked through the ship meet.  Finally leaving the port area, there was a taxi stand and a road going almost straight uphill.  For $2 each, we could take a taxi up that hill and back down to where the private (non-ship) excursions are allowed to pick up.  This was a no-brainer.  We got the cab.  Our cabbie took us over the hill, found our tour guide, and let us sit in the air conditioning of his car until our guide came down to meet us and all of our group gathered.  I didn't take a picture of the hill going up, and it doesn't look as steep from this side, in part, because of the curve, but also because it just wasn't as steep.  I've been practicing and trying to build up, but I wasn't going to be able to even walk that much uphill with my heart problems!

There were a couple of birds in the trees, and I had time to take their pictures. 

Great-tailed grackle

Golden-Fronted Woodpecker (subspecies that is endemic to Roatan, Honduras, male)

When everybody showed up, Adolfo, our excursion guide, loaded us all into a van and we headed across the island of Roatan, Honduras.  While driving, he gave us some history of the island and its inhabitants.  I had always thought they were just part of Honduras all along, with early Spanish ownership, but that's not quite the case.  Apparently, the island was a possession of Britain for most of history, and the inhabitants in power were white or black British citizens or slaves.  The native Mayan language is almost gone because the government would kill the indigenous who dared to speak their native language.  Nothing but English to be spoken.  Soon after the country of Honduras was formed, having gotten its independence from Spain, Britain sold the island to Honduras.  As residents from the mainland began moving to the island, the Spanish language started being integrated quite a bit.  However, English remains the primary language on the island with Spanish running a close second.  Some people have begun bringing back the Mayan languages, but they are very few.  As we drove along, we came past a large white house.  According to Adolfo, this house was built by a former governor of Honduras with "sticky fingers."

Adolfo decided to bypass the iguana park, taking us to the Daniel Johnson Monkey and Sloth Hangout before the crowds got there.  When you go in, they put groups into four different waiting areas.  While we waited, we watched some Roatan spiny-tailed iguanas.  These guys are indemic to the island and are omnivorous, so they eat pretty much anything.

It wasn't long before Caleb, our Hangout guide, collected us and took us to the sloth area.  We were given instructions to clasp our hands in front of us and act like a tree in no wind when it was our turn to hold the sloth.  We started with Snow White, a lovely lady who snuggled in quite comfortably.

A little bit later, they brought out Bon Jovi, and he was active!  He ate and wiggled around, and tried to steal one lady's hat, and all kinds of things.

Once everybody in our group had their one turn holding a sloth, we migrated over to the capucin monkeys.  These guys are pretty cheeky.  We were told to leave averything except watches and cameras/phones that we would be holding tightly outside, even glasses.  So, we put everything in my purse and set it on the shelf outside the monkey habitat.  We stood in a circle and waited for the monkeys to decide to play with us.  When a group left, Caleb decided to move us to where they had been so we would be out of the sun.  At the time, Bruce happened to have a monkey on his head!

They jumped around on us, and at one point, one of them got interested in my camera!

If you look by his eye closest to his hand, you can see where he left a thumbprint on the lens!

Another member of our group from Texas took pictures on his phone of the monkey playing with my camera and emailed them to me.

Bruce couldn't have his glasses, so he couldn't see well enough to take any phone pictures.  But he positioned himself under their gym/swing/activity area, so he got mugged pretty consistently!

Once the monkeys were finished with us, we moved to the macaw habitat where we each had a macaw sit on our heads for a while.  Bruce had his glasses back, so he took some selfies.

The bird seemed interested, too.

He managed to get a shot of me, too.

Once we were done at the Hangout, we loaded back into the van, and Adolfo took us back to the inguana park.  The green iguans were on showcase here.  These guys are herbivores.  We got to play with the babies and hold "Grandpa".

We fed them bananas and leaves, and they climb over each other to eat.  They appear to be well fed, and there is all kinds of vegetation around that they can eat whenever they're hungry.

When the males are ready to mate, they turn orange and get agressive.  This guy chased one of our group around.  I think he stepped on the iguana's tail.

The iguana park has a little dock down by the water where they raise tarpon.  These guys were relocated from the other side of the island to prevent them from being buried in a construction project.  I asked if they were native to this part of the island, and our iguana park guide, Didi, said they were not.  But, she said, they have gotten well established here, so they are not an invasive species.  I didn't say it, but I thought the lion fish would be happy to know that's how the invasive species thing works.  I did ask if they caused any problems with other species, and she said they did not.

For drop off, Adolpho was able to drop us off at the port entrance, where we got the taxi going out.  They won't let them pick up there, but they will let them drop off.  We went back to the ship and had some salad and fruit for lunch.  Then I dumped photos and got the cameras and backpacks ready for Belize tomorrow.  We showered and Bruce napped.  It was hot out today, and that took a lot out of him.  So, instead of him needing to get up and dressed, I went up to the Lido deck and got him a couple of slices of pizza for dinner.  I went to the Trident Grill for me with the intention of getting a fish sandwich, but they don't have fish sandwiches on the boat!  So I settled for a chili dog and chili cheese fries.  Bruce's pizza was good, but the chili sauce had something sweet in it and was disappointing.  That's okay.  I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  We're taking a river boat cruise in Belize tomorrow and I'm hoping to get back in time to snorkel.  The people at the shore excursion desk think it will be tight, but that I should be able to do it.  If I miss it, I'll try to get another snorkel from the pier.