Canadians in Belize 2018

I will get back to Day 5, but first I want to offload some pictures of our walk through town today on Day 6. We are having a relaxing, non-tour day after our exhausting jaunt yesterday.  We had a late-ish brekkie in our hotel and then set off for downtown with camera and binos. Right away, we spotted a pair of woodpeckers on a pole - yet to be identified - but after that, it was primarily beautiful flowering plants, people and places. This house was clearly under construction and not nearly done, but this fellow was lovingly cleaning the glass of this china cupboard. This  was an “everything” store AND hotel.  How handy! Convenient shoe repair around the corner from the hotel. Hansi This is the woodpecker I mentioned earlier. He is Velasquez’s Woodpecker. Velasquez’s Woodpecker. From where we bought an apple turnover - yet to be eaten. From where we bought a slice of pizza. Eaten! Do I hear you sayi...

Saturday morning was mostly clear, so we set off to Crooked Tree Bird Sanctuary.  Our bird guide was Robert, (he had gone to Tourism school with our driver, Kareem) who also operates Beck’s B&B right there. We should have stayed at Crooked Tree instead of Belize City. We hiked along with him and saw many birds—some Rob photographed and some not. The Vermilion Flycatcher, Brown Jay, Roadside Hawk, Limpkin and my favourite, the Boat-billed Heron (a night heron). Vermilion Flycatcher Roadside Hawk Limpkin Boat-billed Heron Robert was most anxious to introduce us to the Acorn Woodpecker. In an area that was full of Oak and Pine trees, many of these were at work, collecting acorns and then drilling little holes in the softer pine bark to store them. Acorn Woodpecker on telephone pole Pine tree bark filled with the Acorn Woodpecker's stored acorns The body of water there was full with past rains, making waterbird sightings less promising than if w...

Let me just say that the Accu Weather app is calling for rain, rain, rain in Belize until the day we leave for home. That said, our first two days were NOT rainy, so, hoping for the best, we booked our driver to take us to Crooked Tree Bird Sanctuary, leaving at 7 am Friday. It rained buckets overnight, with lightning and thunder—and we awoke to a dark grey day with the sea shrouded in fog. We decided to put off Crooked Tree until Saturday. So, instead, though we had to walk along the sea wall in heavy rain, we went to the museum—once home to the prison here—and had a very informative afternoon. Maybe all of you know that Belize was once British Hondura. It is part of the British Commonwealth but, strangely, they drive on the right side of the road like we do. (Non-sequiteur, sorry).  English is the spoken language here though many speak Creole. The Creole people are descendants of British or Scottish slave owners and their African slaves who were brought over here to log...

Hi all, Don’t you just hate when your phone dies in the middle of an email and you lose everything you have written.  Me too! Now I have to try to reconstruct what I said.  But first, let me tell you that my wonderful and clever cousin and blog master, Susan Schuyler Walker, has created a new blog for this trip. http://canadiansinbelize.blogspot.com/You may prefer to follow this - esp. if you are seeing my pictures upside down and backwards, as some have told me. Yesterday we hired a cab to take us to Chakka Airboat Rides in a mangrove lagoon.  Purpose - to see and take photos of herons and the like. We had a very good, very fast and very loud ride.  Giant ear protectors in place, and hair flying back made for one of the least flattering photos of me that Rob has ever taken so you will NEVER see it! We failed to see, let alone photograph many birds because our driver did not slow down when a bird was spotted.  He just pointed to the bird and th...

Hi there, Rob and I are in Belize for 11 days, the first three of which we will spend in Belize City alone, and then join our “Intrepid Tour” for the last 8. We arrived yesterday on a late but otherwise uneventful flight from Toronto to this very small airfield. Passengers got off from the front or back of the plane and clumped down portable stairs to the tarmac and into warm, windy, humid Belize. Just outside the airport was a virtual sea of drivers holding up signs with passengers’ names. We were hoping to see (told to expect) such a sign with our names, as we had arranged transfer to our hotel. No such sign did we see, so finally dug deep into our luggage for that important piece of the itinerary with the emergency phone number. And that’s when our guy materialized. We are staying at the Ramada which is also the staging hotel for our tour. This Ramada is also home to Princess Casino in the lobby and a movie theatre which only shows movies on the weekend. ...