Vacation - Belize City

From Roatan we went to Belize City in Belize. Belize City is also brutally poor. We went cave tubing there and to get to the cave you ride ~40 miles in a bus which was clearly retired from service in the US before heading down south. Those 40 miles show you some slums and plenty of poor folks in them. The cave tubing itself was awesome, the water was cool but not cold and the hike in was through beautiful rain forest which is only just recovering from a fire a few years ago. We booked our tour through the travel agency but if I were to do it again I'd use cave-tubing.com, their equipment was superior and they hiked in farther so they got a longer ride on the river. Our guide wasn't anything exciting, he tried but... Cave-tubing.com is also about half the price.

We had to tender into Belize City which means you get on to a smaller boat and ride in to the dock which is too small to handle big cruise ships. I quite enjoyed the trip on the smaller boat, the pilots we had were amazing. Its great to watch somebody who really knows how to handle such a craft.
Belize City has the same sort of touristy area that Roatan does but unlike Roatan its not really safe to go wandering real far from the dock. I did see some little shopping areas but we didn't know what to expect with the cave tubing and hadn't brought much money or our camera.


Instead I'll give you a picture of me on the upper deck of the ship. Off to the upper right is the bridge and this is by far the windiest point on the ship, or at least the windiest portion that passengers are allowed on. Strangely the wind is in my face although I'm facing the rear of the ship which is headed at about 20mph in the same direction as the camera. When I jumped, as I did just after the picture was taken, I'd go backwards a good 2 feet.