Sharks, Rays and Turtles

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While Couchsurfing in Placencia, Belize last week, I received the opportunity to get out on a snorkeling trip to Laughingbird Caye. My past snorkeling has been from a boat and the opportunity to snorkel from a gorgeous white sand beach on an island in the barrier reef was quite a treat. As an added bonus, we chose to continue on in the afternoon to another spot where we got to snorkel with sharks, rays and two sea turtles, my favorite!


I owe thanks to Jeff, our Couchsurfing host who let me tag along as his guest on a trip he won at a charity event. It was an amazing day and I am very thankful for the opportunity (and the underwater photos).

Rotary Club Collaboration

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Rotary Project Dedication

Worldwide there is an amazing collection of worthwhile projects pursued by the 1.2 million members of Rotary Clubs. Projects focus specifically on supporting education and job training, providing clean water, combating hunger, improving health and sanitation, and eradicating polio. Knowing that there are groups of people around the world individually and collectively committed to the ideal of [...] Read more »

Choosing a Budget Hotel

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Inadequate Shower

After a particularly poor night’s sleep, here are my brief reflections on important things to notice when choosing a budget hotel in central America. While there are a handful of things you won’t be able to know in advance, (like, are there cockroaches? for instance), there are a lot of problems you can avoid with [...] Read more »

Slice of Life in Belize

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One of the great benefits of Couchsurfing or staying with locals in some other fashion, is the chance to do things tourists just don’t have anyway to know about or get to. For instance, yesterday, we spent the day at a waterfall/swimming hole in the mountains, about 45 minutes outside Placencia. We are totally reliant [...] Read more »

Rio Dulce, Guatemala

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Today we  caught a little boat up the river to The Roundhouse, a highly rated hostel located about 20 minutes up the Rio Dulce. We chose to sleep in Livingston on this trip, so didn’t actually stay at The Roundhouse, but we were looking for a base upriver to kayak a bit and I’d heard [...] Read more »

Mangoes!

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Mangoes are quite possibly the best food on the planet. Just an opinion of course, but based on the few really good ones Daryle and I had managed to sample prior to our trip, we knew they had the potential to be quite amazing. And we were betting they’d be even better fresh. Not only [...] Read more »

Enjoying the Journey

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Life is a journey, not a destination. I know I am not the first nor will I be the last person to tell you that. Even more obviously perhaps, traveling is about the actual traveling as much as it is about the places you are headed. However, there are days in life and in travel [...] Read more »

Avocados – a local crop

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This is a photo of a salad I was served at a restaurant in Guatemala. I just want to share it with everyone, because it came with 4 ENTIRE AVOCADOS! Even at my best, I have only ever been able to consume one whole avocado in a single sitting. (Note in the interest of accurate reporting that [...] Read more »

How to Eat Cheap On the Road

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Since this blog is after all titled Learning to Travel, I thought I should start sharing things we’re learning along the way. Lesson 1: Learning how to eat cheap on the road. Look for where the locals eat. If the menu is in English and you are not in an English-speaking country you are probably [...] Read more »

Tikal National Park – Guatemala

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Tikal Grand Plaza

Tikal National Park, which was once home to over 150,000 Mayans, is a UNESCO world Heritage Site located in NE Guatemala, in the department of Peten. If you make it to Tikal at some point, I would recommend staying a night in the park so you can do a sunrise tour. Not only is watching [...] Read more »

Lamanai Mayan Archaeological Site

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Mask Temple at Lamanai

When we first visited Belize in 2010, one of the things we chose to skip was a tour of the Lamanai Mayan Archaeological Site. This time it was high on my list of must sees. Lamanai is unique among Mayan sites for two main reasons: 1) Lamanai was continuously inhabited from 1500BC through 1800AD – [...] Read more »