Pro photos - sneak peek

I am literally in awe of these images and will let them speak for themselves!

Detroit Photographer:

Dionne & Joe at The Shooting Gallery

www.theshootinggallery.com

(side steps at Fort Street Presbyterian in Detroit)

(side steps at Fort Street Presbyterian in Detroit)

(Hart Plaza, Detroit)

unBELIZEable part 2

OK…I’m just picking this up again, thank goodness when I initially started trying to write I made a quick outline of the remaining days! Old age is a B.

Day five: After trying to sleep in a little we sunscreened ourselves up and rented a golf cart for a few hours to do some souvenir shopping. See, on the island transportation is a bit different. There are minivan taxis, a few cars/motorcycles/trucks, bikes and golf carts! Of course, tourists like us think, “neat a golf cart!” and shell out big bucks to rent them even when a free bike beckons. But you get less sweaty and let’s be honest it’s going to be fun zipping around in a golf cart. Except for the gigantic pedestrian bumps (two foot tall speed bumps) every 25 yards, those hurt like a mother in a golf cart. I was over it before it started. LOL. We seriously did so much touristy shopping I thought I would pass out but we ended up with a Belikin beer shirt for Mark, a tee & jewelry for Taylor and a new dress for me. It was almost worth the incessant walking around a different store with essentially the same stuff.

We finally had lunch on the beach at the restaurant Mark wanted to try, Wild Mango’s. It was good, we saw the owner heading to a water taxi with kids and wine, and the margaritas improved my mood and almost got rid of the bump induced headache. On our way back we explored the areas just south of our hotel by golf cart and saw an area where the molestation of crocodiles was prohibited. Mark was intrigued.


That afternoon we spent the rest of the day at the pool and Mark got the crocodile molestation scoop from a waiter. Apparently, a local teen had been feeding the giant crocs chicken and they became a bit tame. So tame, in fact, the kid would do tricks like place his hat/sunglasses in the mouth of the crocodile. Tourists would come watch and the kid collected some cash but then the government decided that this was too dangerous and shut him down. Then the waiter insisted we would see a crocodile if we went a dusk, telling this to Mark would be the equivalent of telling the hyper-hypo kid from SNL the ice cream truck swings through the playground at dusk. So along comes dusk and off we go on our trusty bicycles. I watched for them from the road, a good 30 yards away from water’s edge. Mark not only went to the water’s edge he went out onto a peninsula to investigate. Sure enough, he found one and then proceeded to THROW A STICK AT IT. I pretty much passed/flipped out yelling all my crocodile knowledge to him, “run in a zig zag! They rely on the element of surprise! Make eye contact! Get the Sam Hill away from there right now!!” I had to fake a seizure to get him out of there. Who throws sticks at crocodiles?!?! My husband…great.

No clue what we did for dinner, probably because I was still too freaked out from the crocodile incident. Assuming we went into town again with our favorite cabbie.


Day six: Adventure day! We had signed up to do a tour of some Mayan Ruins and go cave tubing. The ruins, Xunantunich, were so cool. I also can not only prononuce that word but spelled it right without looking it up.  I think I should clap it out....Anyway they are the second highest ruins in Belize and it only took us a few hours to get there by boat and then van. We used a tour company that our hotel set up for us, Searious Adventures. Excellent language pun and excellent guides! I felt like we learned a lot that day and we got to eat lunch off the beaten path. Then we went cave tubing which sounds awesome! Except you have to get down this river with zero current, and you must form a human chain with the other strangers on your tour. Add to that nerdy life vests and helmets (there were no rapids or any possible way to tip over) and it’s not quite all you think it’s going to be. Overall we enjoyed the trip but think the full day at a larger ruins location would’ve been better.

Since our day was so long and, of course, hot we wanted to do an earlier dinner close to the hotel. Enter the Hidden Treasure. We’d heard others say how great the food was and were eager to check it out. Everyone knows the US economy has tanked but it was particularly interesting to see how that plays out in an area that relies so heavily on tourism, specifically US tourists. On a beach walk one afternoon we saw what we thought was people building a palapa bar (beach hut style bar). Instead they were taking it down, no business. The owner was there supervising and she instructed us to fix the economy and return so she could reopen. We all laughed but it was an awful feeling! OK, so back to dinner, there was one other couple in this huge open air restaurant. Our waiter was young and super friendly. Seeing as how it was our one week anniversary we had an appetizer, bottle of wine and a fantastic dinner but it wasn’t cheap. Hidden Treasure was by far our favorite restaurant, the food was phenomenal and the location quaint—plus they pick you up and drop you off at Victoria House free of charge. After dinner the head chef even stopped out to give me instructions on how to make the coconut rice! Eventually a few more parties wandered in but they have to be hurting just as much as anyone else on the island.

We attempted a bar crawl by walking back down toward some other hotels but didn’t see anyone out and ended up back at the Victoria House bar for a nightcap.


Day seven: Sad, our last full day. We decided another long bike ride was in order, this time we ventured way beyond our initial ride up the island. In fact we went insanely far—probably about 10 miles up the island. And it was great! I did have to commandeer a resort beach hammock to cool off but we had a blast. We hit up the bar over the water (Palapa's) that was closed the last time we did a big bike ride and left our graffiti behind. Mark even took me to the now open Legends for a burger where veggie burgers make the cut. Just not that day.

We cooled off back at the pool and got ready for dinner which, again, I can’t remember the name of.


Day eight: Home again. Boo! Good thing Mark took the next day off too and got our vacation laundry finished.

unBELIZEable part 1

When I travel I’m a huge nerd and keep a journal. In all the chaos leading up to our honeymoon I didn’t even get a new one nor did I even think of it until the trip was almost over. I’m bummed so I’m going to try and remember it all now:


Day one: e-a-r-l-y flight. But we made it to Belize and waited about 40 minutes for our puddle jumper to San Pedro. There were a handful of other newlywed couples waiting for flights but no one was staying at our hotel. There was an older couple who was going to Victoria House—this made me nervous since we both had anticipated going out and doing something with at least one other couple one night…or more! The little plane was hilarious and hot. We flew over the like bay and pulled in on a concrete runway to a dilapidated shack and dirt baggage claim area. We jumped in a taxi with the other couple and giddily scoped the landscape until we got to Victoria House.

Once we got to the hotel we were given a delicious fruit drink and shown to our room. Gorgeous! Small but exceptional and we had a private balcony overlooking the grounds. We stripped down and put on bathing suits (dirty minded people!) and toured the hotel property. AWESOME! Then we napped by the pool.

Mark made a reservation for Sunset Grill, we were still on our wedding high and had a great dinner though the food was less than stellar. I had shrimp for the first time in ages and it was good. I think the bottle of wine was a help in eating that.

Day two: Pool day. All day, we ate breakfast at the hotel and we took a bike ride up over the bridge. It was so early that none of the restaurants/bars were open on that side of the bridge. The bridge was about 2 miles from our hotel and it was 86% humidity on top of being in the 80s. but it was actually pretty cool to just tool around like that. After the long ride we cooled off then got hot again and laid out while mapping out the rest of our vacation. Dinner was at The Tackle Box. Local joint by the water taxi station that was actually pretty good. Not sure if we were still tired from the wedding or not but we went back to the hotel, played some Rummikub (score! We saw this at lunch and were so pumped!) and went to bed. It was like 8:30.

Crap I’m on day two and not remembering—boo! Wait, I’m remembering (I went back and filled it in!)


Day three: Snorkel trip to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve. Absolutely amazing trip, we saw so many different fish and in pretty deep water. For some reason I was FREEZING while we snorkeled, maybe it’s because my back was slowly frying into a gorgeous shade of crimson. While in Shark Ray Alley we definitely saw lots of nurse sharks and when I jumped off the boat I managed to land on a Sting Ray that had been chilling UNDER the boat until the moment I decided to plop in. Mark got a big kick out of that. I should have reminded him that Steve Irwin was probably laughing about sting rays too!


The other couple on our tour, Kristin and Hamilton, was a super fun couple from Chattanooga. Hamilton’s parents were originally going to take the trip but couldn’t make it at the last minute so they left their four(!) kids with the neighbors and came down instead. They were very fun loving and so nice—so nice in fact we were pumped to find out they were going fishing the next day too and booked the same trip. Once back on dry land we decided some adult beverages would be nice. So we had a few and split a delicious blackened grouper sandwich. Then we met another newlywed couple who we decided were pretty fun. We made plans to go out that night after dinner with Wade and Betsy.

Tackle Box was the meeting point and also where somehow we decided to forgo dinner. Next stop was some bar, with no people at it. We took a drunken golf cart ride to hotel (thanks Betsy) while searching for food since we skipped dinner. Stopped at Karaoke bar near hotel hoping for food, again no clue on the name, and there was no food. Betsy sang that song by Four Non Blondes. I couldn’t tell you how it goes at the moment. But Mark was singing it in the shower the next morning and didn’t know why. HA!

Day four: Deep sea fishing day. I started with a hearty breakfast of Huevos Rancheros. My stomach wasn’t 100% since we were out late and drinking the night before. I wasn’t too sure how this boat ride was going to settle that at all. So I pulled the trigger. But after emptying out the Huevos Rancheros I knew there was more and it was only a matter of time before that wanted to come out too. I was seriously debating skipping the tour but I so, so, so wanted to go. So I did.


That “matter of time” turned out to be about 7 minutes. At that point I heaved so violently over the edge of the boat I couldn’t breathe. Awesome. Mark tried to give me some water, Kristin suggested Coke so the bubbles would settle my stomach and she kept saying, Sara I’m so sorry. I had to let her know it was 100% my fault as I can’t recall EVER being sea sick. Neat. I took a nap and laid down in the shade for about 94% of the trip. When I did try to fish I wasn’t quite ready and gave my seat to someone else. Hamilton then proceeded to catch four fish in a row. I then felt better and fished some more with no luck. Now my sweet groom fished for an hour while I napped and chatted with whomever was sitting out. Then he heaved for quite some time as he claimed to suffer from seasickness. Oh well, we had a blast anyway!!

I felt perfectly fine on our way back in and once we were on land, so did Mark. Light lunch and then some relaxing on our private balcony. The cool thing about catching fish on the trip is that the hotel chef would prepare it for dinner. So we ate in the restaurant which was quite good and it was fun to eat our catch of the day. Sort of “ours” anyway! We took the Rummy game up to our room and had the delicious molten chocolate volcano dessert sent up. SO delicious.