What a birthday!!

Today is my birthday. I think that it is days like today that normally would make me miss everybody at home. And to some extent I do. Fortunately though, I am in Guatemala and there is plenty to do to keep me occupied rather than sitting at home feeling upset that yet another year has passed me by. For my birthday we had a "pool" party. We are in Rio Dulce, Guatemala our hotel is not technically in Rio Dulce, it is in a Mangrove forest about a two minute boat ride away. The hotel is built on stilts for the parts that are over the water. My room has an immense king size bed with a mosquito next around it. If I walk too far out the back door I will have to go for a swim.
Back to my party though. We caught a boat this morning down the Rio Dulce to Lago Izabel (Lake Izabel.) It was about an hour boat ride and a fourty minute hike to our destination simply called, Agua Caliente. It was a simple swimming hole along a small creek at the base of a mountain. With one very big bonus, a hot spring waterfall. I worked up a pretty decent sweat getting to the swimming hole and the the cool water was very refreshing then I made it to the waterfall which was like a shower with the greatest water pressure in history. Our group bought food to eat and we had a picnic on the rocks surrounding the hole. It was a very interesting amd very nice way to spend my birthday.

Enough about that let me get on with the travels...
The last time I wrote I was in Caye Caulker, Belize. The following day was my fist dive as a certified open water diver. Belize is home of the second largest coral reef in the world. Inside the reef the water is calm and really nice. Outside the reef the seas were whipping. In the twenty minutes it took to get geared up I had the beginnings of my old nemesis, sea sickness. Fortunately, I got in before I got sick. My friend Anne and I began to the bottom. Ann didn't have enough weight to sink so the dive master added some weight and she went straight down. The dive master followed right behind her. I was having trouble getting my ears equalized so it took me a little more time to get down. The problem with that was visibility was pretty much nill. By the time I was ready to head down they were gone. No where to be seen. I tried to swim in the direction that I thought that they were headed, no one, no bubble, nothing. Here I am in the middle of the Carribean on my very first dive, and I am lost. We didn't talk about this in the Padi Class. After about 5 minutes of searching (which felt like hours) I finally decided to surface and head for the boat. My first look on top of the water yielded no boat to be found. After a few frantic turns I finally caught site of it between a couple of waves. I ran into the dive master on the way to the boat and continued to descend to 70 feet, I kept my eye on him this time. It was a fantastic dive along a Coral wall near Wilson"s Caye. Because I had used up so much air freaking out and looking for everybody I was the first to run out of air. This means I was the first back on the lurching boat. Not good. I put on the pressure point wristbands. They worked for about twenty minutes. All in all I had a great time next time I am bringing benedryl.

Caye Caulker is amazing though. I highly recommend a visit if you are looking for a place to go and just chill out. Or as the locals say it "go slow."
After just two nights in Caye Caulker we were off to San Ignacio. This was a six hour bus trip and my first experience with "Chicken Buses." There weren't any chickens on the bus, but there were alot of people. Our hotel wasn't actually in San Ignacio it was in a village about 10 minutes outside of town at a place called Trek Stop. It is run by a couple of California expats named John and Carol. The two of them built the place over the last twenty years when they retired from teaching and moved to Belize. A very cool place though, there was a nine hole frisbee golf course, a small nature museum and a a butterfly arborerium.
Our primary reason for the visit to San Ignacio was to check out the caves that were about an hour drive away. The cave that we visited ATM (the name is shortened I won't try to spell the real name.) The cave was used by the Mayans to appease the gods of the underworld. It housed many intact artifacts as well as the calcified remains of a woman who was sacrificed in the cave over 1000 years ago. Visiting this cave was probably one of the coolest things that I have ever done. If you ever come to Belize the ATM cave is a must. I think that National Geographic did a film called Secrets of the Underworld.

That is all for now Tikal is comming soon.

Vagabond