Last weekend in Belize!

Fun last weekend on our own private caye- Tom Owens.  We left early Saturday morning to head into town and then left about 9:30 from the pier below- I attempted some artsy pictures.....
On the way there we saw LOTS and LOTS of dolphins- (NEW goal on my to-do list- swim with the dolphins-) they are so pretty and I just wanted to jump in the water and touch them, but I had to resist many times. I was the kid at the front of the boat reaching out to touch them, wanted to "fall in," but no worries I had someone hold onto my feet, just in case I got too excited. I was just so happy and excited to see the beautiful creatures gliding through the ocean waters so peacefully and jumping whenever they pleased.

Pier looking into the Sea of Honduras

on the island- look at the clear water....

The little island that we tried to snorkel too... but the coral was too high.

Hammocks were all over the island

Dinner! Barracuda

Lion Fish that are over populating the reef, so they must be killed... they are pretty tasty too

PTs catching fish!

sunset in the sea!

We arrived at the island a little before lunch, so we went swimming and snorkeling for a long time then had lunch.  The snorkeling here was awesome! The guide was great with making sure we knew where to go and were not stepping on the coral! He ended up catching the lion fish, shown above, and we got to sample that for lunch. Then we laid around in the hammocks, reading and sleeping.  We went fishing for about 3 hours after lunch. I caught 6 fish total, 2 fell off when I pulled them out of the water, so I learned I needed to hook them harder when I caught them.  Therefore, the next fish all swallowed the lines- whoopsies. But good thing there was a nice guy on the boat with us, Kenley who took care of that for me :) The other 4 I caught, we ate at some point during the weekend I think, lots of Yellow Tail Snappers.  What we used to fish were just lines with a rock and a hook on the ends that we threw into the ocean, and was wrapped around a piece of foam.  It was fun, only when I was catching fish. I don't have much patience to sit and wait.  When we caught enough little fish, we went trolling for Barracuda. We ended up catching plenty of fish for dinner!

Sunset from the rooftop

The Speak Easy returns

We took the eating tables outside to eat in the middle of the island, in the dark almost.  After dinner we played drinking games and did some dancing! Caroline and I brought the wobble to Belize, aka the best while girl wobble ever coming from me haha

My new friend in my room

Sunrise- probably at 5:15 am

We all decided it would be a brillant idea to get up early and go fishing at 6am, and watch the sunrise before. So I set my alarm for 4:50 and went up to the roof to watch the sunrise. Then we all piled into the boat, more awake than I was expecting from everyone! The boat ride was going great, until over half of us started feeling sea sick.... that's what it was for sure. So we asked the boat driver oh so nicely if some of us could get dropped off back on the island, while the others who were not sick continued to fish. That left 3 on the boat, of which they came back later with 6 fish! And we ate some for lunch, and then were able to take the rest back with us to Hillside!
The rest of us got breakfast :) I was so happy- there were fry jacks- this has definitely been my favorite not-so good for you food down here- fluffy tortillas that are fried. They are amazing, especially when you dip them in beans. Yummmy breakfast!

After that we all felt much better, and broke out the volleyball to play around on the janky court. But it's the people you play with that make the game :) Funny times, I still suck at not slugging the ball in the opposite direction when returning a serve.  Then we went snorkeling again, looking for lobster specifically this time. We all gave up after about an hour, but the boat driver and Kenley did not.  Therefore, 6 lobster were caught and we were able to have fresh lobster for lunch- amazing! But the snorkeling was neat, and then we just floated around with life jackets and then did jumps, flips and dives off the boat for a while until returning to the island for lunch.

After lunch, we relaxed a bit more, trying  to make up for the few hours of sleep some of us got (because it stormed that night... duh) , but only managed to take some power naps in between reading. Then we were off back to Punta Gorda.... nooooo- but we did see more dolphins :) and I was able to curl into a ball and take a little power nap again!

What a great ending for a perfect last weekend in Belize!

Qiang and I getting ready to snorkel

pretty clouds over the ocean

lobsters for lunch!