Fall Carbon County ATV ride

 And the 3rd day/ second stop was especially SPECIAL as it was Belize AND my mom's birthday! The last  time she cruised to Belize they couldn't get off the ship due to bad weather so now she got her chance for adventure and You Better Belize it was an amazing time!

First we had to get up super early to ferry in from the ship. There's our cruise ship floating way out at sea still!

 And then we were in for an hour and a half bus ride each way through the city and then the jungle to reach the play ground of Chukka where we were going to Zipline and Cave Tube! We were sooo stoked!

The city of Belize was.. well a little scary. I was glad to be on a tour bus but our bus guides were super enthusiastic about teaching us the culture and history of Belize. Oh! And how to talk like we're from the Caribbean. It helped make the bus ride not feel quite so long..

 Once we got into the jungle, we got to take a school bus, may 1/2 mile over some sketchy roads to the Chukka playground! It was feeling like an adventure already!

 On our bus ride there we passed this massive cemetery. I mean huge, it was on both sides of the street and went on forever! I can't remember the numbers but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's the largest one in Belize.

 And we enjoyed quite a few chuckles over the street signs, the one above in particular.

First up on our adventure was ziplining. We put our excess stuff in the lockers and got all geared up with harnesses and helmets. The guides were all so fun and had great energy!

 The we all got lined up with our group to go learn the safety briefing... ooooooo

 And of course you can see how excited we were (*cough and some maybe a little nervous.) I actually wasn't despite maybe looking it since I've ziplined before. I don't worry about heights but can sometimes worry about speed. Lucky for us they explained most people don't even need to break as their lines are all gentle enough you slow down on your own but we had thick gloves to add a little more break if we needed.

 All thoroughly involved in learning about how to come in for a landing... (the most important part)

And here we are all lined up to do the first line. This was pretty much the only waiting period. Once you got going you pretty much hit each line and didn't stop. We had to make the 2 scardy cats go first so they wouldn't chicken out. And Birthday girl first! 

Our motto of the day other than you better belize it, was "I'm coming in hot!" And I do make a rather graceful incoming if I do say so myself. 

One of my favorite parts was how jungly it was! I mean seriously the plants, trees, vines were all sooo cool! And while we didn't really see any wild life... we did see monkey poop! 

I did get a video  of the first couple lines!

After zip lining came my favorite part: Cave Tubing! The only downside here was that we had to carry our tubes a little ways to the entrance of the caves and while it was an easy enough walk... we weren't all that prepared for it. 

We did get a lot of great pictures with our flash light helmets and huge red life preservers on the way. And we had mixed feelings about our guide. He was so knowledgeable and gave us so many facts on the history of Belize on different plants and wildlife too. The only downside was it took us a while to get to the caves (like we started as almost the first group and ended up being the last) I didn't mind it at all but they did have a cool gift shop and restaurant we didn't have time to enjoy afterwards. 

 And we got many gems selfies on our way. 

The river system itself was gorgeous as well. The water was crystal clear and felt great! 

Once we reached the caves, our guide had to lace all our tubes together so we had some time to just swim around and cool off. Seriously a great swimming hole and I do have a deep appreciation for swimming holes... 

 There were two caves one behind us above and one behind us to the right. We started in the one to the right but it sounds like there were river tubing excursions that took you through the other caves as we saw people coming out and continuing on through the next cave while we swam. 

 The opening to Hell as our guide liked to reference it. He said the water was actually quite low so there wasn't much of a current. I can only imagine these caves with more water in them! 

 Getting ready to shove off. There's all our tubes laced together. I got to sit in the front to lead the charge.

 Seriously though look how clear that water is! 

My face as we enter Hell.... a little too excited maybe?

Looking back at the cave entrance from whence we came. It was pretty neat seeing all the stalactites hanging from the ceiling and only imagining what kind of world was beneath us in the dark water.... 

It was prettyyyyy dark the whole time but we came upon little water falls and this amazing view where the top of the cave caved in a long time ago and the jungle along with sunlight... makes its way into the cave. Pretty sure I've seen many photos captured of this same spot in National Geographic. It was really cool. My picture does not even come close to doing it justice. 

 Sad that our journey would soon be over. Though we felt bad for our guide since there was very little current.. he was litterally swimming and pushing us the whole time and it seemed like quite the job pushing all of us dead weights in our tubes.

A clearer look of what the ceiling looked like throughout the caves.

 After that is was a long bus ride back to the cruise dock where we had to rush and get on a boat to take us back. Lucky for us we ended up on like a speed boat that we got to sit up in the sun shine for. The sun felt great and the water was gorgeous! 

Once we got back to the boat the unloading area was already taken so we had to circle the cruise ship in order to wait it out and get a better position. As we were waiting another boat pulled up and our driver was so funny. We were all talking about how they have to wait their turn and he actually stood up and yelled at the captain of the other boat to wait his turn. It was awesome! I loved the people in Belize with their dark skin and bright blue eyes, they all had such humor and personalities. One day we'll have to come back and explore just Belize! It seems we only scratched the surface of this amazing country.