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.
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