Central America


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Our trip did not get off to the best start. We had an overnight stopover in Richmond, Virginia where we'd planned on checking our bags and spending a "night on the town" returning to catch our morning flight. Unfortunately, because of terrorists, they've removed all the lockers in the airport. Apparently, the out of the way corner of the airports where you can normally store your bags is a prime target. Needless to say neither of us felt like spending a "night on the town with two backpacks, opting instead for the equally amusing "sleeping on a filthy airport floor".

The first two pics are of our hotel (using the term loosely) on Caye Caulker, and Susan can be seen making the most of her time lounging on the beach. The next are a couple misc. from the island and one on the "ferry" from the mainland. Until then I never understood those news clips about 30 ft ferries in the third world that sink and kill 400 people. The packing philosophy now makes sense to me.
The first two critters are a couple of nurse sharks just inside Belize's barrier reef that we jumped in to snorkel with. It was around here that I experienced possibly the world's worst seasick/heat stroke/dehydration combo. It lasted for about 12 hours, I was puking off the boat, in the water...I barely held it in underwater. Blaine will be thrilled. Susan was just happy that the puke brought all the pretty fish to the surface. I was a little distracted.

Caye Caulker was also home to a nightly invasion of crabs all along the beach. Very creepy in a cool sort of way. Even creepier was the god car we came across.
We also went out to Half Moon Caye near the Blue Hole, home to a colony of frigate birds and red-footed boobies.
The last pics are from the blue hole, in the first one you can kind of make out the curve of the surrounding reef. It's followed by pictures of several dolphins following the dive boat. For supposedly being one of the smartest mammals around, dolphins don't seem to know jack about the effect of backlighting on pictures. I hope the jerks get their stupid selves stuck in tuna nets.

The last row is comprised of pictures stolen from other web sites. The first being an aerial shot of the blue hole. I had seen this picture before going and was confused when we got to the dive site. I thought it was surrounded by an island. That's actually a submerged reef around it. When we dove there was a school of about 20 blacktip sharks (same species as the ones depicted), and a few bulls. It was seriously cool.
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