Tourism Belize

We are just back from another tremendous weekend playing tourist in Belize. We spent the weekend at the Five Sisters Lodge in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forrest Reserve. It was a blast. Let me tell you a bit about it:

Some of you have teenage girls, were teenage girls, had sisters that were teenage girls so you will understand what I mean when I say 'horses'. Now my girls are old enough to have passed thought he totally insane horse crazy years but enough of that remains that when we are anywhere that offers horse back riding we are pretty much obligated to go. And we did. We were driven out of the park and to the stables where we met the owner, and guide, Jose. Having been in Belize for awhile, my mind automatically notes the ethnicity of new people and clicks the correct accent translator on so that I can understand what is said. Jose is Mayan. The translator kicks in. Then Jose starts to talk and I discover he is not your typical Mayan. He is a Mayan with a cleft palate/lip and a hearing problem. The translator kicks into overdrive. I can understand him if I focus all my concentration and energy on the translator. (This will be important later in the story.) Now that we are acquainted we meet our horses: in an ironic twist of fate, Adrianne is paired with Rocky; Brynn has Humpty Dumpty; Kori is on Caramia; Alfred has Romeo and I am given Jason. Yes, our horses are Rocky, Humpty Dumpty, Caramia, Romeo and ... Jason.

There are only two rules on this ride: 1 - Rocky leads. There is no messing around with this rule as Bryn finds out when she and Humpty Dumpty try and stage a coup. That's right they got rebellious and tried to pass Rocky and Adrianne. Rocky was having none of that so he kept swerving in front of the insurgents. Finally Humpty and Brynn gave up and fell back into line. Coup successfully diverted.

Rule 2: keep at least two feet of distance between your horse and the horse in front of you. Now this rule can be played with a little bit. For example Jason had his nose pretty much up Romeo's bum for long stretches of time when my focus was on 'translator' and not 'rule'. Usually 'translator' requires very little attention and I can do two things at once but as already explained, the translator was in O/D. When I was able to refocus I would slow Jason down and re-distance us. This system seemed to be working for all involved until the proverbial straw broke Romeo's back. Out of nowhere, Romeo braced himself and began to kick. All heck broke loose. These were not your focused aim-and-fire type kicks. These were the scatter-fire-do-as-much-damage-as-possible type kicks. It was chaos and then Jason ans I were standing in a bush and all was quiet again. Surprisingly Romeo missed me all together and didn't do much in the way of dissuading Jason, either. We just got back in line and Jason tried to get right back up behind Romeo ... again. But I am not a slow learner. I decided it was more important to focus on Jason and ignore Jose for awhile.

The ride itself was beautiful. Much of Jose's property is on an ancient Mayan city so we were able to see the ruins of houses and farms. He stopped us at what looked like a water reservoir and we all dismounted. Then he showed us another type of home the Mayans used. A cave. The girls and I went in and we were shown pottery and an alter that date anywhere from 400 BC till about 900AD. We also saw a replica of a carving in it's original place. (The real one is in a museum.) I have a few pics. Take a look:

After the cave we rode to Big Rock Falls for lunch and swimming fun. (I'll show you the pics at the end of the blog.) Then on home. Now here's a word of warning: if you only ride horses once in a long while, 6 hours on a horse is too long. I may never be free of pain, in certain areas, again! I can stand and walk fine but sitting is a challenge. I would not have missed this ride for anything!

The Big Rock Falls. They are about 90 feet high. The girls climbed the rock on the right about half-way up (that's 40 -45 feet for those math challenged among you) and jumped from the cliff into the water. They had so much fun! I just watched and prayed on the sidelines.