Day 1 started around noon on the 18th of January. I left my house and took the skytrain to Main St. I got on a bus from there down to Seattle – saved about $300 with this plan.
I’m on a bus.
I got off the bus in Seattle and was pleased to notice that I actually knew where I was, and where I was going. All of those years going to PAX have paid off! A quick walk over to the Link Light Rail and I was good to go.
The Link Light Rail shares the same road with bus’s for about half of it’s route – very strange if you’re used to the Skytrain and it’s very separate track.
A half hour trip later and I’m in the Seatac airport. My plane leaves around midnight. My plan was to sleep on that plane for 4 hours and then again for 3 hours on the Houston-Belize leg of the trip. Unfortunately…my body had other plans and I completely failed to sleep on the Seattle flight. Bad news, since I’m landing around noon Belize-time and we have plans to hit the ground running! I managed to catch some sleep in the Houston airport, and then again on the second flight, so I wasn’t actually much of a sleep-dep zombie when I landed. It was pretty close though. >.<
Some people changed into shorts and t-shirt on the plane. They were smart. I hadn’t thought of that and had to wear jeans when I landed in Belize. Bad call. It was hot and humid the instant I left the airplane.
The pack picked me up in front of the airport and we were off.
The folks in the truck:
- Sean, driving.
- Kerry, his wife.
- Diane, Kerry’s mom.
- Sandra, Kerry’s aunt.
- Dayl, Kerry’s best friend.
- Me
They had rented a Super-Duty (I think) truck with a huge bed and a cab that comfortably fit 6. This truck was worth every penny since most of the roads in Belize that we traveled on were dirt and not paved.
My first Belize experience was lunch:
Delicious road-side pork, rice and salad. Good times :). From left to right: Kerry, Sean, Sandra, Diane, Dayl.
The plan for the afternoon was cave tubing. It sounded like it would be an adrenaline sport, but it was pretty low-key. My only photos of this are videos and I don’t want to post any videos yet, so you’ll have to wait for a couple days :). But essentially you sit in a yellow inner tube for about 45-60 minutes and slowly drift down a gentle river through some caves. Very interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly what I thought it was going to be.
After that we drove for about an hour and a half along a dirt road to the 5 Sisters Lodge. Sean and Kerry had been there before, but the rest of us were worried – the road was crap, it was the middle of the night and I was pretty certain we were driving into a dirty, middle of no-where place. It turned out well though…I’ll cut this post in half and leave this here for now.