A Visit from My Brother and His Family

My brother Andy, his wife Rhea, and their two-year-old son Logan visited us. They live in Flagstaff Arizona (at 7,000 feet) and were looking forward to some sunshine and beach time.

We last saw my brother and his family in San Diego in August, just before we moved to Belize. Our boys and their boy have changed quite a bit since then, but they were very happy to see each other.

Liam sharing some of the local wildlife with our newly arrived guests

We spent the first several days in San Pedro, either spending time at the beach or hanging out at home. Logan got to experience a lot of firsts--picking a coconut, seeing an iguana, and riding on a sailboat. Liam also taught his uncle Andy how to spearfish, and they got a lionfish under the Xanadu dock.

Logan picks a coconut with Bro

At the beach!

On a boat!

The proud fishermen

Breakfast at Estelle's

 We took a day trip to Caye Caulker on the weekend so the boys could accompany us. It was enjoyable, as always, and Logan seemed quite comfortable cruising around in the shallow waters of the Lazy Lizard as the boys and I rode the tidal 'conveyor belt' through the Split over and over again.

Me and my Sweetie at the Split

Amy and the boys at the Split

Liam watching a fisherman ply the channel

Waiting for the boat back to Ambergris Caye

One day while the boys were at school we took Andy, Rhea and Logan to Hol Chan and Shark Ray Alley. Amy has experienced both of these places several times through her volunteer work with the Kids Meet Sharks program, so she generously offered to stay on the boat to hang out with the Lochlan while the three of us snorkeled.

Heading out to the reef

Amy and Logan wave goodbye as we swim out to Hol Chan

What a handsome devil

We had very good views of several sea turtles

Permit! It's hard to get a sense of scale, but this individual is about 2.5-3 feet long

There were many, many large fish--the species name for this school of dark fish eludes me

We saw several nurse sharks on the north side of the Hol Chan cut

We saw many rays (and sharks) at Shark Ray alley

The guide brought a juvenile shark up to the boat so Logan could touch it

Bro chasing a juvenile nurse shark

After a week on the island, we pulled the boys out of school for a couple of days and headed to the mainland. We took the Thunderbird water taxi from San Pedro to Corozal, then a transfer south to Orange Walk town. Orange Walk is also known as Sugar City because it is in the middle of the primary sugar cane growing region of Belize. The town is an agricultural hub, and as such, is not particularly geared towards tourism. However, Amy found a really cool lodge called the Lamanai Riverside Retreat.

We chose to go to Orange Walk because it is a great starting point for seeing the Mayan Ruins of Lamanai. Our tour included a 25 mile boat ride on the New River, during which we saw a spider monkey (each boy got to feed him a banana!), a crocodile, and loads of birds. One of the highlights was watching an osprey dive into the water and come up with a fish, just a few feet in front of the boat!

Andy in front of the Thunderbird shortly after arrival in Corozal

The New River, as seen from the Lamanai Riverside Retreat

The restaurant

Liam and Logan in the grassy field adjacent to the restaurant

The lodgings--our room was the one on the left

Cousin time!

Logan enjoyed soaking Lochlan with his squirt gun and Lochlan "played dead"

Men harvesting sugar cane. Our guide gave this fellow some bananas, and he gave us some sugar cane, which we chewed in the boat on the way to the ruins.

We saw TONS of trucks full of cut cane, and a few really interesting contraptions such as this

At the launching point for our tour

We passed by the big sugar factory on our way into the jungle...

...where we were approached by this spider monkey.

He came right down to the boat

...and both of our boys fed him a banana

The boat ride was super-duper fun

The crocodile

Lamanai means "submerged crocodile" and the site is right on the banks of the New River lagoon, an extremely wide spot in the river. It functioned as a port city and profited from trade between the Mayan settlements on the coast and the major cities in the jungles and mountains of present day Guatemala and Mexico. The architecture of the ruins at Lamanai is different from the other sites we've seen, but the most impressive aspect is the extensive use of very large masks representing the deceased rulers buried inside.

In front of one of the many super cool masks

Another mask

A howler monkey, just hanging out

A view of the high temple

We climbed to the top of the very steep temple and were rewarded with sweeping 360 degree views

Logan sacked out on Dad's back

The boys in front of the Jaguar temple

Close up of the Jaguar Temple

Lochlan rode in the bow the whole time

The next day we walked through the town, Andy and Rhea bought some souvenirs to take home, and we stocked up on some cheap fruits and veggies. We went back to the hotel, and decided to go for a swim. We had seen a couple of crocodiles in the river the previous night, and I thought it would be pretty cool to swim in a river with crocodiles. We asked Lance, the owner/manager of the hotel, if it was safe. Not only did he assure us that it was safe, he jumped in and swam with us!

Liam came in for a bit, then Andy and I followed Lance to the other side of the river and back. It was very refreshing, and no one was eaten by crocodiles.

My brave boy leaping into the crocodile infested waters

Cousins smiling

COUSINS YELLING!!!

The whole group

We spent the evenings looking for frogs and lightning bugs (and found many) with Uncle Andy and in the mornings Liam and I woke up before sunrise to go birding. We saw many new species, and saw a few favorites, including four aracari toucans!

We had a delightful time with my brother and his family and I think they had a pretty good time here in Belize.

CODA

When it was time to check out, I asked Lance if they accepted credit cards or if we needed to pay in cash (over the past 8 months I've learned to ask this question). What followed was a pretty awesome Belizean story:

Me:  "So Lance, do you accept credit cards, or is it cash only?"
Lance:  "Well, our machine is broken."
Me:  ...
Lance:  "I need to go to the bank and talk to them about it."
Me:  ...
Lance:  "OK, actually, the bank froze our account."
Me:  "Wow! That sucks. Why would they do that?"
Lance:  "Well, my dad was the vice president of FIFA [the governing body for competitive soccer in Central America], and he took the Belize national team to Costa Rica. They won, and qualified for the next round of competition in the United States. When he got off the plane in Dallas, he was arrested by the DEA."
Me:  "Holy cow! Why did they arrest him?!"
Lance:  "Uh, well...they call him the 'Kingpin of Belize.' They seem to think he's a drug smuggler."
Me:  "Please don't take this the wrong way, I know my government is far, far from perfect, but look, they don't generally send the DEA to meet a plane to arrest a foreign national unless they have a pretty good reason. Is there any credibility to their accusations?"
Lance: Long pause.
Lance: "Well, there was this one time...his car broke down, and he needed a ride. He was picked up by these guys in a van, and they were stopped at a checkpoint. It turns out there were two packages of cocaine in the back of the van. But they weren't his! Plus I had to go tow his car, so when I went through the checkpoint, they saw that his story checked out, and they let him go."
Me:  "Ok..."
Lance:  "And then I guess there was this other time, he was staying in a hotel [I think he said the hotel was somewhere in the States, but can't recall exactly], and it had two adjoining rooms. Well, the DEA busted in the door of one of the rooms next to my dad's, and so they busted his door in too, and...ah...they found 500 kilos of cocaine in the room next door."
Me: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I paid with cash.

After we got back to San Pedro, I was relaying the story to George, our taxi driver, and about halfway through, he looks at me and says "WAIT! Are you talking about Rawell Pelayo?" I said "Yup." George laughed and said "Ah, that guy's a HUGE drug smuggler!"

Here is a story about the arrest.

The End