Hello Darkness... and the Gym

 I've had this post in my mind and ready to publish for awhile now and I decided I should actually publish it.

Hello darkness.  My old friend.  Oh wait... that is not what I meant to say.  I don't get daylight savings time. It seriously sucks.  I mean does it really save us money when it's dark when I get up in the morning and I have to turn on my lights in order to get ready and then it's getting dark on my way home and I must turn on my lights to do anything once I get home?!  Does it make any sense?  Does it really help the farmers or whoever the hell it's supposed to help?  I doubt it.  Actually I think someone should do a study about it and see if it is really beneficial for anyone or anything.  OK, I think I am done with that rant. 

I signed up for a gym membership a couple of weeks ago.  I am kind of excited about it and I had these grand intentions of going a few days a week, but it's proved much harder than I thought.  Things keep on coming up when I plan on going or I don't feel like going out in the cold or blah blah blah whatever my excuse is for that day.  But I am determined to get myself there at least three days a week.

The gym is close to my house; there is lots of equipment there and one of my friends has a membership there too. I am hoping with these three factors it will help me to go more.  We will see.

P.S. I am still running, but since it's starting to get cold outside and it gets dark so early, I have only been running once a week and then do other things like workout videos and now go to the gym. 

Day 5-Sunrise Over the Caribbean, Our Last Day

 Apparently I was up bright and early a lot on this trip.  On our last day, I watched the sunrise over the Caribbean Sea.  Although I had been up for a while in the night with diarrhea (tmi, I know), it was worth the early morning wake up call. 

 I think this shot is my favorite!

 My spot for watching the sunrise. A 30-second walk from our room to the beach.

 Downtown San Pedro was a pretty clean, cute, and colorful town filled with lots of golf carts.

 My feet in the Caribbean Sea!

  Nate and I took a stroll along the beach in downtown San Pedro.  It was beautiful!

 I liked this shot with the cool trees on the beach and the lady setting up shop.

 I liked this colorful high school.

 Cayemart!

 Look how colorful the police and fire stations were.

 Nate and I on our rented golf cart.

Since I did not go snorkeling in the Caribbean, I decided I needed to take a swim in the sea.  This picture does not show me in the Caribbean, but it was taken after I had gone swimming.

 The weather was lovely the whole time we were there.

On our flight back to Belize City to catch our flight back to the states. This flight was full, so full that they had a passenger sitting in the co-pilot seat (no joke).

Overall this trip was awesome!  I loved visiting and exploring two new countries.  Thanks Nate for letting your little sister tag along with you!

Rest of Day 4- Golf Carts and the Glass Bottom Boat!

 We made it to San Pedro.

 I think I had beans at every meal.  They were good, but I sure did eat a lot of beans.  Also those scone type things were really good.  (I cannot remember what they're called, but they were yummy.)

 I was surprised and thought it was awesome that the main mode of motorized transportation for tourists and a lot of the local population were golf carts.

 We caved in and rented a golf cart.  It was good though since our hotel was quite a ways from the center of town, where all the action was.

On our way to the center of town.  Nate drove the whole time. 

Ok, so it's hard to see but if you make the picture bigger you can see how big that speed bump is.  They had speed bumps EVERYWHERE.  As soon as you got close to any town in Belize and Guatemala, they had speed bumps.  These weren't just ordinary speed bumps.  These were speed bumps where you must slow down to 5 mph otherwise you would hurt your car.

I must admit, that Nate might have driven over a few speed bumps a little too fast and I might have gotten some good air ;).  It was lovely.

Hammock time.  This was the beach at our hotel.  The hotel was lovely!  And the beach was pretty awesome!

So Nate and I went on a glass bottom boat tour.  And it was awesome!  If you don't like snorkeling or can't go for some reason, a glass bottom boat is the way to go and see the fishies and coral and stuff.  Just make sure you get a boat with a pretty big glass bottom.  Our boat was great! 

On our way out to Shark Alley and the coral reef. The coral there is apparently the second biggest reef in the world next to the Great Barrier Reef.   

It might be hard to tell, but the water was beautiful!

Me on the boat.

Shark Alley!  See all those sharky sharks.  They're nurse sharks.  So our boat driver/tour guide had some dead fish he would throw into the water and the sharks would swarm the place he threw the fish. Hence the congregation of the sharks. 

Our boat driver/tour guide. This is from Nate's camera.  I really liked this picture!  

This is not me nor anyone I knew, but I thought people were brave for swimming in this area and especially so close to the sharks.  I was not brave enough to get into the water here.  Actually I did not get in the water at all, but since the water was clear and we had the glass bottom, I felt ok about not getting in ;)

Our boat driver was baiting the birds with some pieces of the fish.

The fish our tour guide was using to feed to the sharks and birds.

 This is from Nate's camera too.

Although Nate was not able to capture it on camera, I did touch a couple of the sharks.  They felt rubbery and a little bumpy. 

The glass bottom part of the boat. 

So I thought this was interesting. All of the things on the bottom are conch shells.  Apparently it is a dumping ground for conch shells once they are done being used.  You are not allowed to take any, you can only dump them.

Nate checking out the fish from the glass bottom.  Like I already said, the glass bottom boat was awesome!  Thanks Nate for inviting me on this trip! 

Rest of Day 3 and Part of Day 4- Flores, Guatemala and flights to San Pedro, Belize

 I have so many pictures.  It's hard for me to narrow it down, so you just get lots of pictures and a lot of posts :)

 This is outside the room we stayed at in Tikal.  It was a nice, clean, spacious room.

 The dining area of Hotel Tikal. The hotel was such an enchanting place!

 We took the bus back to Flores, where we spent the night so that we could catch a flight to San Pedro the next morning.  This was the view from our window in Flores.  Isn't it beautiful?!

 I thought Flores was a charming little town (until the night time when people were partying loudly until the wee hours of the morning, but that's beside the point.)  It was colorful and clean and beautiful and not too touristy.  (I mean there were some tourists but it was not overflowing with them.)  I bought some souvenirs here.

 We ate at this restaurant for dinner and it was awesome!  We were the only customers there and their food was delicious!  Seriously so good!  Highly recommend!

 This is the front of our lovely hotel.

 Some colorful buildings!

 Isn't it just so cute?!

We woke up bright and early the next morning to catch our flight back to Belize City then onto to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast of Belize.

The lake looked beautiful in the early morning light!

I loved these little cars they had all over Flores.  I took this picture before I even knew that we would ride in this little car to the airport.

In the awesome little car with no front doors and three wheels.

We flew in a 12-seater plane to Belize City.  I am pretty sure that was the smallest plane I've been in.  There were only four other people on the plane.  This was the view for part of the way.

Guatemala was very green and lush. 

On the plane.

This is our flight from Belize City to San Pedro.  Nate and I were the only people on board.  So yes we had our own airplane for a whopping 18 minutes... :)

Look at that lovely water below!

Look at the sky.  During the whole trip, we couldn't have asked for better weather.

So much to see.  So much to take pictures of.