Ziplining
Thursday: This morning we will get out of here by around 8a for the 1.5 hour drive – North this time. We will visit a national park where they let you rappel down the waterfall and also have ziplining. After we do that we plan to try to get a factory tour at Marie Sharp’s … hot sauces that you get EVERYWHERE here and that we like. There are many varieties but we have mostly only tried the one that you find at restaurants. We hope to correct that situation by visiting the small factory which is near where we are going today. We will then head home, return the one bicycle that we rented (the place had six, but we needed to rent one), probably get dinner in the village again, then start packing up for the trip home tomorrow. Friday will be a tough day because our flight is at around noon and it’s a solid four hour drive up there. With allowing for “issues” and leaving time to return the car, we figure we better leave here by 5a tomorrow morning.
Our last full day in Belize we ‘slept in’ a little bit, and then drove 1.5 hours North to the Dangriga area to visit Mayflower National Park where ‘Mama Noots’ has some eco adventures. We rappelled down the face of Bocawina Falls (100’). Everyone did pretty well but most of us struggled with it a bit. I felt as though if I could have tried it again right away I could have done much better. Still, it was a fabulous thing to do. And hanging out in the swimming hole at the bottom was nice, too. The walk through the jungle was set at an aggressive pace by our guides, but was a beautiful jungle trail with many interesting sites and sounds.
After hiking up to the waterfall, rappelling down it and then hiking back down to the lodge area we had lunch in their on-site restaurant. The food was good but the portions were too small and we had to wait a long, long time for our food. So that was the low-point of the day. Everyone was very nice, though, even at the restaurant. After lunch we trudged up the hill to where the zip lining lodge was located, geared up again and tromped up into the rainforest to the first zip line station. Zip lining was very fun. Every one really enjoyed it. We zip lined down a long way, 12 stations. Beautiful views, very fun. We got lucky and had Jesus as our guide. No, really. The guy’s name is Jesus and he is the most highly reviewed on the trip advisor site. We understand why. He was incredibly strong and competent while being relaxed and funny. We really enjoyed our day. The only downside is that we were all massacred by mosquitos. We are still all furiously taking and applying Benadryl. My legs from where my capris pants stopped to where my shoes started are simply covered in mosquito bites. Still, would I do that again? I would, yes.
The whole adventure took longer than we expected – which was fine except that it kept us from visiting the Marie Sharp hot sauce factory and we really kind of wanted to do that. Still, Aristotle bought some hot sauce to bring home at one of the gift shops. We bounced home – Aristotle and Alex were very amused to count all of the speed humps along the way, particularly the 30 (thirty!) that lead down the Placencia isthmus. Once home we rested, cleaned up, then headed back into town. I had to turn my rented bicycle back in, so that meant I was on foot – slowed things down. Probably weight too heavily in our decision to try the closest to home restaurant. It actually turned out to be okay – most of us had snapper, I think. It just wasn’t as exciting as some of the other places and it took them a very long time to feed our hungry crew.
