The other day someone asked me how long it took Laura and I to plan our trip. I wasn't exactly sure how to answer this. We had been talking about it since January, discussing which countries we were planning to hit up and figuring out which flights we needed to buy. But besides that we didn't really do much planning. Our style of traveling pretty much involves a plan-as-we-go method. We work one country at a time - only looking ahead one country as we go. So when we were in Honduras we began making our plans for Belize. The only thing we knew for sure we would do was
Caye Caulker. While reading her trusty Lonely Planet Laura came upon an incredible sounding 3 day/2 night sailing trip down the coast of Belize. The tour company operating the trip is called
Raggamuffin, which just happens to be what Laura's mom called her when she was a little girl. We took this to be an obvious sign that we needed to book this trip!
The night before departure we met at the office for a quick briefing. We found the "alcohol lecture" the funniest part of the briefing notes. One would think that maybe they would ask you to watch your consumption, etc.... Nope. In fact it was quite the opposite. Verbatim from the sheet, "From our experience half the crowd will be the alcoholics and half the non-alcoholics and at this stage it doesn't matter who is who. However, when you get to the camp sites those who could identify themselves as the party animals can quickly see who is not indulging as much as yourselves. We request that you take note and remember to respect those persons with regard to not harassing them whilst you enjoy yourselves...don't try to 'tempt' them to get as drunk as you!!" Haha. Well the Rum Punch was flowing heavily throughout the trip and while no one was harassing the non-drinkers, it did take some encouragement to get even the party animals to drink too much of this sugary cocktail!
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| Ragga King |
The trip was incredible! We rode on a 40ft sail boat called the Ragga King. Designed as an island hopping adventure for people who wanted to experience an uninhabited Caribbean paradise, we spent our days sailing for two hours at a time and taking several breaks to fish, snorkel and swim. We could not have asked for better weather! There was not a cloud int he sky for most days! This was both good and bad... When we were in Greece and Croatia Laura was all about the sun. She doesn't believe in SPF over 15 and never laid in the shade. When we went to London and Honduras with my fam, I was glad to have a break from the sun as I felt my body couldn't handle any more sun (even with regular applications of SPF 30). Laura on the other hand was sad to leave the beach and could not wait to return! Well, on this trip I also learned that even Laura has a sun limit! After the first day in the sun - we were all exhausted! We spent the next day maneuvering our bodies to get into the shade of the sails.
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| Tobacco Caye - look how small it is!! |
After a day full on the sea we spent each night camping on the beach. The first night we slept in the most beautiful location! Our own private island, Rendezvous Caye, was literally so small that our 7 tents took up the entire thing! The second night we slept on a slightly more inhabited island, Tobacco Caye, but that's not really saying much as the first island had a population of 0 (17 when we were docked).
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| standing on the dock of the island |
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| our new travel buddies Chole and Gail |
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| Rendezvous Caye |
Our group consisted of 6 single ladies, 4 couples and 3 crew. We met some really amazing people and got a lot of advice for the rest of our trip! In additional we gained two new traveling buddies, Chole and Gail from South Africa, who will be joining us for the rest of our Central American journey!!
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| our group |
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| going out in Placencia with the single ladies from the trip |
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